How did the Egyptians influence Greek architecture?
“The earliest known vestiges of Greek architecture, Greek sculpture, and Greek decorative art are copied from Egyptian sources… Now, at Mycenæ, near the entrance to the Treasury of Atreus, there stands the base and part of the shaft of a column decorated with a spiral ornament, which here makes its first appearance on Greek soil. This spiral (though it never achieved the universal popularity of the meander, or “key pattern,” or of the misnamed “honeysuckle pattern” ) became in historic times a stock motive of Hellenic design; and all three patterns–the spiral, the meander, and the honeysuckle–have long been regarded as purely Greek inventions. But they were all painted on the ceilings of the Beni-Hasan tombs full twelve hundred years before a stone of the Treasuries of Mycenæ or Orchomenos was cut from the quarry. The spiral, either in its simplest form, or in combination with the rosette or the lotus, is an Egyptian design. The rosette is Egyptian; and the honeysuckle, which Mr. Pet
