Do we have any idea what Ancient Egyptian "blueprints" or other building plans would have looked like?

by saddetective87

I am just wondering how they would design buildings with their hieroglyphics? Did they have a number system? Did they use something else to plan their buildings?

ianwill93

The 2 examples that come to mind for me are a sketch of an Egyptian Temple with the accompanying hieroglyphics in Barbara Mertz's "Red Land, Black Land" pg 199, and the original Turin plan for Ramesses IV's tomb.

These both included a sketch of the building under construction, as well as the measurements on how it was to built. I don't have a scan of the scribal sketch that Prof Mertz used, but the Turin Papyrus is relatively famous and easy to find.

Chamber by chamber, we're able to reconstruct the tomb. It seems that the measurements originally put down in writing were changed sometime during its' construction, as the completed dimensions are off in some rooms.

To give you an idea of how this worked, here is a translation of the "W" chamber taken from "Village Life in Ancient Egypt" by Prof A.G.Mc Dowell.

  • a. It's Door is Fastened
  • b.The Fourth God's Passage , of 25 cubits; width, of 6 cubits; height, of 9 cubits, 4 palms; being drawn with outlines, cut with a chisel, filled with colours and completed.
  • c. The ramp of 20 cubits; width, of 5 cubits, 1 palm.
  • d. This chamber, of 2 cubits; width, of 1 cubit, 2 palms; depth, of 1 cubit, 2 palms.

The Oxford Handbook of the Valley of the Kings gives us the equivalents of these measurements In particular, 1 Royal Cubit = 52.5 cm (and could vary between 52.3-.9 cm)

So when the papyrus says that the max height is 10 cubits in Yb. that means that it is about 5.25 meters. And the American University at Cairo puts the max height of this tomb at 5.21 meters. So you can see how precise they were in these plans.

Not only were the measurements precise, but the draftsman also included a hatch of the mountain that the tomb would be cut into, the sarcophagus is red mottled with black corresponding with the red granite sarcophagus actually used in the tomb, and the scene on the lid is actually faithful to the real thing! However, as mentioned, the plan is off when it comes to chamber Z.

As Mertz put it in her aforementioned book, a rock cut tomb is a relatively simple construct, and thus can afford lighthearted techniques that don't fully adhere to the design plan. However, temples such as Deir el Bahri, Karnak, etc. would've required much more attention to detail. Some temples make reference to archives of master plans, but we don't have the plans themselves. It is evident that the Egyptians did indeed know how to create proper floor plans, and would likely HAVE to in order to create the works of architecture that they did.

Other than the sources mentioned above, i'd also recommend checking out the original "The Tomb of Ramesses IV and the Turin Plan of a Royal Tomb" by Howard Carter (of Tutankhamun fame) and Alan H. Gardiner. Carter's Sketches can be found on the Griffith Institutes website.

Also, C.N. Reeve's Two Architectural Drawings from the Valley of the Kings

Hope this helps!