2-913-624 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Crystal Palace - the Egyptian Court - Entrance to the Tomb of Beni Hassan, 1854. Exhibition at Sydenham in south London. '...we find ourselves in a dark tomb copied from one at Beni Hassan. It is the earliest piece of architecture in the Crystal Palace, its date being about 1660, B.C. The original tomb is cut in a solid chain of rocks that forms a boundary on the east of the Nile, separating the sandy desert from the fertile valley of the river. Although architectural remains exist in Egypt of a much earlier date than this tomb, it still possesses great value to us, for it may be considered as exhibiting the first order of Egyptian columns, which was employed in constructing buildings at as remote a period as two thousand years before Christ; this fluted column in another respect claims our attention, for there can be but little doubt that it supplied the Greeks with the model of their early Doric'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.