Looking Through the Pylon
“Dignified and beautifully proportioned, it is symbolic of an attitude toward the dead their part in the hereafter, expressive, but respectful and reverential, which arose in the valley of the Nile centuries before Christianity and is consequently so detached from modern creeds, prejudices or sentiments that it can appeal to any belief.”
With these words, Denison Olmstead, Professor of Astronomy and Natural Philosophy at Yale University, laid the cornerstone of the New Haven City Burial Ground (now Grove Street Cemetery) on July 18, 1845. He emphasized the universality of ancient Egypt—a civilization so ancient that it predates any ideological differences that might divide people one hundred and sixty years ago, or, indeed, today.
The Grove Street Cemetery gateway is constructed in the shape of an ancient Egyptian pylon, the pair of towers at the entrance to a temple. The New Kingdom temples of ancient Waset (modern day Luxor) are replete with nearly perfectly preserved pylons: Luxor Temple, Medinet Habu, and several at Karnak Temple. On a hill high above the West Bank is the so-called Thoth Mountain with the remains of the first known pylon, the mud-brick stumps of a temple constructed in the late Eleventh Dynasty (discovered the same year by the same Georg Schweinfurth ["Ein neuentdeckter Tempel in Theben," Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 41 (1904): 22–25] who first recorded the Late Antique site in Moalla that I discussed previously). Pylons remained an essential part of temple architecture until the Roman era and the end of of ancient Egyptian religion itself.
1879 photograph of the Egyptian revival gateway of the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, CT.
The two towers of a pylon, called bekhenet in ancient Egyptian, symbolize and physically represent the twin mountains of the horizon, the akhet in ancient Egyptian, written with a hieroglyph of a sun disk between a pair of hills. Through the architectural horizon of the pylon, images of the deities of a temple also go and come, or “rise” and “set,” at the Egyptians described in cosmic terms ritual procession of a divine statue. The physical mass of the pylon visually anchoring the monument to the earth is balanced by the sloping sides of the gateway that draw the viewer’s gaze upward. Architectural details, such as the cavetto cornice (curving top element), torus molding (projecting rounded corners), and monumental low-relief decoration prevented monotony in the otherwise flat planes of the pylon surface. The immediate recognizability of the pylon shape as a uniquely Egyptian form and its adaptability in scale, proportion, and ornament made it ideal for Egyptianizing monuments.
How did a pylon become the gateway to a nineteenth century cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut? Architect Henry Austin in 1839 proposed the design for the New Haven Cemetary gateway nearly two thousand years and more than an ocean away from the last Egyptian temple built in the Nile Valley. Austin may have derived inspiration from temples such as Dendera and Esna North, where the hypostyle hall occupies a large room with the overall shape of a pylon, the forward columns—with curtain walls—forming part of the façade. Although the study of the ancient Egyptian language and the large corpus of Egyptian religious texts were in their infancy when Austin began the design on this gateway in 1839, the published results of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt provided ample visual references for Austin’s monument).
The faithful reproduction of Egyptian architectural details can be seen in a juxtaposition of the New Haven Cemetery gate with one of Austin’s potential ancient inspirations: the temple of Esna North. The overall proportions of the two facades are similar and show neither the extreme horizontal emphasis of John Haviland’s New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention (the “Tombs”) nor the final, vertical phase of Egyptianizing architecture, such as the designs of A.J. Davis. The edges of Austin’s cemetery gateway are framed by appropriate ancient Egyptian motifs.
The torus molding on each exterior corner and below the cornice has accurate incised details, originally representing rope bindings around a reed core, but a stylized feature by the time of the Egyptian New Kingdom. The cavetto cornice of Austin’s gateway contains alternating groups of vertical lines and oval depressions, again accurately reproducing the designs on original cavetto cornices; in ancient Egyptian temples, the ovals decorating the cornice are actually cartouches (royal name rings).
At the center of the cornice of Austin’s cemetery gateway is a winged sun-disk with two pendant cobras; these solar serpents were called iareret in Egyptian, thus giving us, via Greek, the specific designation uraeus. The details of the winged sun-disk on Austin’s gateway are impressive and correspond to the three different types of feathers shown on well-executed ancient examples. The detailing of the cobras on the New Haven gateway betrays the hand and aesthetics of the nineteenth century sculptor—while the overall shape mimics ancient prototypes, the ridged backs and unusually-shaped heads are invented details.
Henry Austin, Entrance to the New Haven Cemetery
The two columns of the New Haven Cemetery gate are stylized versions of the closed papyrus-cluster column. The plain abacus is typical in ancient Egyptian columns, and although more angular than Egyptian papyrus columns, the capitals in Austin’s design capture the overall form and impression of a closed papyrus flower. The collar and shaft of the column are also based directly on ancient Egyptian forms, with several distinct zones of decoration. The columns of the now-destroyed temple of Hermopolis Magna, images of which would have been readily accessible to Austin in the Description de l’Égypte, are a possible prototype for Austin’s design.
The Yale Beinecke Library houses Austin’s original water-color design for the Grove Street Cemetery gateway. In the final version, the winged sun-disk is moved to the cornice so that the lintel can be inscribed with “The dead shall be raised” (1 Corinthians 15:52). Egyptians designs brought stability, immortality, and even the sublime to a world in flux, while avoiding many of the more specific and immediate associations of those inspired by classical antiquity or Gothic Europe. For Henry Austin, the Egyptian pylon linked the newly constructed New Haven cemetery to an ancient past and a culture that had succeeded in achieving a type of immortality for its dead. As Professor Olmstead observed, Egyptian designs were so remote in their antiquity to “appeal to any belief.”