The structure of Urartu building was made of beams and columns with marquee beds; buildings had rectangular plans and
hypostyle halls were the specifications of this architecture.
A view of the Nile at dusk from the deck of the Sun Boat IV (above), columns depicting the Goddess Hathor in the Temple of Hathor, Denderah (right) and the Great
Hypostyle Hall, temple of Karnak (below)
As an example of the latter, the Treasury, a side room to the left (west) of the so-called "Hall of the Ennead" immediately before the sanctuary, is longer than the adjacent rooms within that part of the temple; this is because its back wall is aligned with the side rooms in the section before it, beside the Inner
Hypostyle Hall. One may well imagine the priests working on a daily basis within those fairly confined rooms being able to tell that a given chamber was somewhat deeper than the ones beside it, but whether they could have spotted the particular alignment with the rooms in the area immediately to the north is an interesting question.
The porticus Aemilia (193 BC), inspired by the
Hypostyle Hall of Delos, and the porticus Metelli (circa 147 BC), based on the architecture of Hellenistic religious sanctuaries, are examples of the popularity of the new Hellenistic styles before Cleopatra.
Marvel at the Great
Hypostyle Hall - 134 massive columns with fantastic stone carvings.
So it seems that it was more down to geology, rather than aesthetics, that the temple's famous Great
Hypostyle Hall was filled with more than 130 giant columns.
One of the most overpowering sights of the temple is the
Hypostyle Hall, an organised forest of gigantic engraved columns, each one so large it takes the outstretched arms of six people to encircle it.
Just beyond the main room of columns, the ceiling of the Small
Hypostyle Hall is engraved with astronomical figures (see the photographs at left).
In his water-colour of the
Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, for instance, he takes a low viewpoint to achieve an almost claustrophobic sensation of those huge columns soaring up above the small figures below.
I am also puzzled as to why Gee compares the cycle in the Great
Hypostyle Hall at Karnak to pBerlin 3055, rather than to pCairo-Turin and pBM 10689, both of which share much stronger parallels with the Karnak reliefs.
A model of the
Hypostyle Hall of the Mosque of Cordoba was built to commemorate the Spanish city of Cordoba and to mark the Spanish prime minister's visit.Aa
The system aims to deliver your bags from hold to belt in 10 minutes, so it's not a place to linger, but even so, this functional transit zone is conceived as a kind of elegant cavern or, as, Matthew Wells notes, a
hypostyle hall (shades of the Temple of Karnak).
