architrave. Thus treated, it bears a certain family likeness to the Doric
column; and one understands how Jomard and Champollion, in the first ardour
of discovery, were tempted to give it the scarcely justifiable name of
"proto-Doric."

[Illustration: Fig. 59.--Sixteen-sided pillars, Karnak.]

The column does not rest immediately upon the soil. It is always furnished
with a base like that of the polygonal pillar, sometimes square with the
ground, and sometimes slightly rounded. This base is either plain, or
ornamented only with a line of hieroglyphs. The principal forms fall into
three types: (1) the column with campaniform, or lotus-flower capital; (2)
the column with lotus-bud capital; (3) the column with Hathor-head capital.

[Illustration: Fig. 60.--Fluted pillar, Kalabsheh.]

[Illustration: Fig. 61.--Polygonal Hathor-headed pillar, El Kab.]

I. _Columns with Campaniform Capitals_.--The shaft is generally plain, or
merely engraved with inscriptions or bas-reliefs. Sometimes, however, as at
Medamot, it is formed of six large and six small colonnettes in
alternation. In Pharaonic times, it is bulbous, being curved inward at the
base, and ornamented with triangles one within another, imitating the large
leaves which sheathe the sprouting plant. The curve is so regulated that
the diameter at the base and the top shall be about equal. In the Ptolemaic
period, the bulb often disappears, owing probably to Greek influences. The
columns which surround the first court at Edfû rise straight from their
plinths. The shaft always tapers towards the top. It is finished by three
or five flat bands, one above the other. At Medamot, where the shaft is
clustered, the architect has doubtless thought that one tie at the top