ANCIENT
EGYPT
The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley
The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley |
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Ancient Egypt Magazine Volume Three Issue Four -- January/February 2003
Woodworking in ancient Egypt When examining surviving examples of Egyptian furniture we naturally
discuss both its style and construction and are in awe of its quality and
beauty. Often overlooked is that manufactured in ancient Egypt was often
dimensionally smaller than comparable modern counterparts. Geoffrey Killen explains the principles behind the outstanding
creations of ancient Egyptian craft workers in wood. PART
THREE: MEASUREMENT, SCALE & PROPORTIONALITY OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN FURNITURE From
the 1st dynasty carpenters explored how wood could be worked into one or a
combination of three constructional forms, the frame, stool and carcase.
However, was this furniture designed to meet the anthropometric needs of these
people or was it constructed to a set of accepted standards? Also can we see any
relationship in the proportionality of furniture to the measuring systems used
by ancient Egyptians? Royal
cubit Ancient
Egyptian carpenters employed a sophisticated measuring system when setting out
furniture. The standard unit of linear measurement used by carpenters was the
‘royal cubit’, which was based on the length of a man’s forearm. Being 524
mm in length, it was divided into 7 palm widths, with each palm subdivided into
4 thumb sized digits. A second smaller measure called the ‘short cubit’ was
also used: this was 450 mm in length and was divided into 6 palm widths. These
measures were inscribed onto graduated wooden rules or cubit rods. Carpenters
placed great importance in measurement to ensure accuracy and uniformity of
furniture construction. Although these measurements were standardised, ‘royal
cubit rods’ have been discovered, as one might expect, with an error of up to
plus or minus 2 mm in overall length. On an
interior wall of the nomarch Knumhotep III’s tomb (No 3) at Beni Hasan are
found lists of officials who served this provincial governor. An officer named
Neter-nakht is cited as being ‘superintendent of carpenters’. John Garstang
excavated the necropolis, which lay below these important rock-cut tombs at the
beginning of the 20th century. In one of these small burial chambers (BH 23),
which with others was attributed to a Neter-nakht, he found a broken wooden
cubit rod some 140mm in length. This instrument would have been an important
symbol for a workshop overseer, thus identifying this individual’s role and
status. From anatomical and skeletal remains of ancient Egyptian mummies we see
that these people were approximately four centimetres shorter than the average
modern European. Research has shown that the average height of an adult ancient Egyptian male would have been 1.71 metres. The lengths of discovered bed frames support these data, as they were designed and manufactured to meet the anthropometric need of the user. An Early Dynastic bed frame with bovine shaped legs discovered by Petrie at Tarkhan is preserved in the Manchester University Museum (5429) and has a length of 1.76 metres. The bed frame of Queen Hetepheres has a length of 1.77 metres, while those discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun ranged between 1.75 and 1.845 metres. Children used shorter bed frames and some may have been mistakenly identified as bed frames but in fact were simple seats on which the individual would kneel.
Furniture
reflects status The
slightly smaller stature of the ancient Egyptians is naturally reflected in
reduced bone lengths of the tibia and femur. However, these shortened leg bone
lengths cannot fully explain why the seat heights of stools and chairs are
proportionally smaller than modern examples. To
own or use furniture in ancient Egypt would have indicated that an individual
had status, as the majority of people sat on the ground. When designing a stool
or chair the seat height is the most important measurement and is seen to be
much lower on ancient Egyptian examples than on those manufactured today. We can
establish that the requirements of the intended owner of the seat governed the
proposed seat height. Generally the head of the family or important officials
used chairs and these had a seat height greater than those of stools. Lower
ranking officials and his family members sat on stools as illustrated in the
wonderful collection discovered in the Theban tomb of the architect Kha (TT 8). Painted
wall scenes in the rock-cut tombs at Beni Hasan show the nomarch seated on a
chair which appears to have a seat height of perfect proportion to his stature
where the upper and lower leg bones of this individual form the characteristic
ninety-degree angle. These scenes may be slightly misleading as the canon of
Egyptian art always drew the tibia too long and the femur too short which would
naturally effect the appearance of the seated individual. However, royal
furniture displays seat heights of considerable elevation, as illustrated with
Tutankhamun’s golden throne which was measured by Howard Carter and found to
have a seat height of 517 mm some 100 mm above that commonly employed on modern
chairs. Indeed, the seat height of the golden throne required Tutankhamun to
place his feet on an elaborate footstool. Unsurprisingly, this seat height,
without the addition of a cushion, is tantalisingly close to that of a ‘royal
cubit’. Hierarchy
of seating In
practising a hierarchy of seat heights those who sat on low stools were forced
to assume a crouched subservient position where the knees had to be forced up in
front of the body (figure 1). Those workshop overseers clearly understood and
rigidly enforced design standards and stools and chairs were scaled to the
status of the individual, rather than to anthropometrical data. Application of
these standards also practised an economy of materials where wood could be
carefully conserved. There are also clues that those who designed furniture, who
were probably not the carpenters, had a detailed understanding of geometry. The
important work of Pieter De Bruyne established the link between linear
measurement and geometry. In his thesis he shows the complex relationship
between space, measurement and proportionality. He analysed several pieces of
furniture including an 18th dynasty chair from the burial of Ramose and Hatnufer,
which is now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (MMA
36.3.152), (figure 2). This small chair clearly shows that it was designed with
predetermined and carefully considered relationships. Its height, from ground to
upper edge of top seat rail, is 524 mm - one ‘royal cubit’. If this height
is then divided into fifths the seat height lays exactly 2/5 above the ground.
The height of the back panel is therefore 3/5 of the overall height of the
chair, whilst the depth of the seat is 4/5 the height of the chair. If an
imaginary hypotenuse is drawn from the upper edge of the seat rail to the front
edge of the seat, its length is found to be one ‘royal cubit’. These
measurements therefore form a right-angled triangle with the relationship of
3:4:5. The overall width of the back panel of this chair measures 6? palms, while its inner panels are 5 palms in width (figure 3). De Bruyne showed by some complex measurement that the width of the back panel could be divided for his calculations into either ninths or twenty-sevenths. Each of the outer vertical stiles of the back frame was 3/27 or 1/9 of the width of the back of the chair. The djed and tyet symbols were each of a relationship of 2/27 and the god Bes figure in the centre is 3/27 or 1/9 the width of the back panel. Finally the space below the seat that is enclosed by the side pairs of legs forms a rectangular space with a relationship of the ratio of 2:1.
Golden
Section The
author has found that evidence of measurement can also be seen on other types of
furniture where the ‘royal cubit’ or ‘short cubit’ were often used as
the initial measure to determine either the length, width or height of a piece
of furniture. This is shown in the carcase of a box, which belonged to Perpaut
and dates to the 18th dynasty. This is preserved in The Oriental Museum of the
University of Durham (N 1460), (figure 4). The horizontal length of each side
panel is one ‘royal cubit’ (524 mm), whilst the vertical height of the box
from the ground to where the lid rests on the box has been measured as 324 mm.
These lengths of sides give this rectangle the proportions of the perfect Golden
Section; a shape that has not only natural harmony but has underpinned design
throughout the centuries. The Golden Section can be defined as a point on a
straight line where its position provides a proportion where the smaller part to
the larger part of the line is equal to the proportion of larger part to the sum
of both parts of the line. If we give real values to these lines a true Golden
Section rectangle will have a resultant for both calculations of 0.618
(conventionally given as the symbol Ø). For
the Perpaut box (N 1460) the following calculations are found: The
horizontal length = 524 mm = 1 ‘royal cubit’ The vertical height = 324 mm The
sum of both parts (horizontal length and vertical height) = 848 mm Therefore:
- 324 mm/ 524 mm = 0.6183 = Ø and 524 mm/ 848 mm = 0.6179 =Ø In
addition the width of this box, (figure 5), which is 344 mm, relates closely to
(2/3 of 1 ‘royal cubit’); while the height, 324 mm can be shown to have a
relationship to (Ø x 1 ‘royal cubit’). Several
scholars have dismissed the notion that the Golden Section was not the foremost
thought in the Egyptian mind when they began to design furniture. They feel that
smaller artefacts would have been designed either to the specifications of the
purchaser or the discretion of carpenter who was possibly trying to conserve
timber. These views may be generally correct but at least this example, whether
through coincidence or conceived design, has measurements, which on all planes
have a profound relationship to the whole. Ancient
Egyptian furniture was designed to meet the status of an individual and then
measurement underpinned its planned design. Either by using standard measures
and their subdivisions or even proportions of these measures, furniture was
accurately manufactured. Furniture designers confidently used those concepts of
geometry and had an awareness of space, which we are beginning to just
understand and rediscover. Geoffrey
Killen studied Design and Technology at Shoreditch College, a Constituent
College of the University of London where he specialised in ancient woodworking.
He is the Head of a Design and Technology Faculty in a school and community
college in Bedfordshire. As a leading furniture historian he has written three
major works on his specialism and is a contributor to both Nicholson and
Shaw’s: Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology and Redford’s: The
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. He has lectured and given
demonstrations of ancient woodworking processes and techniques in America and
Britain. Photographs
for the articles in this series have been kindly provided by Lorraine March-
Killen. For further information see: http://www.geocities.com/gpkillen/index.html Back to Ancient Egypt Magazine - Volume Three Issue Four contents
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