First Presbyterian Church (now the Downtown Presbyterian Church), Nashville, Tennessee, designed by William Strickland, 1848
"...Congregants entered the church beneath a sun disk flanked by two outstretched wings, a motif that any ancient priest or priestess would recognise immediately as a common decoration above temple doorways. For the Egyptians, this was an image of the solar disk of the creator deity travelling between wings that originally represented the two halves of the sky. The two rearing cobras on either side of the disk signified that the heavenly bodyâs warmth and illumination reached to the earth, even into the underworld. In ancient Egypt, rearing cobras also adorned the brow of the king (as on the famous mask of Tutankhamun), the serpentâs burning venom evoking the fiery light of the solar creator and the kingâs might.
"In the 1880s, bright paintings and trompe-lâoeil frescoes brought the Egyptian designs â including many winged sun-disks â into the First Presbysterian Church and transformed the otherwise spare, rectangular sanctuary into an elaborate columned hall, as well suited to a theatrical set as to a church. German artists Theo Knoch and John Schleicher completed the original paintings, which have been wonderfully restored by EverGreene Architectural Arts.
"Three engaged papyrus-capital columns on each side of the pipe organ are painted to resemble their ancient prototypes. Triangles at the bases of the columns are stylisations of the new rhizomes of the papyrus, a manifestation of the ancient Egyptiansâ close observation of nature. Frescoes between the engaged columns give the illusion of two additional rows of columns, supporting architraves but otherwise open to the sky. Columned halls in Egyptian temples were roofed, but the frescoes in the Nashville church found inspiration in the famous âPharaohâs Bedâ on Philae Island, one of the most frequently depicted Nilotic vistas during the 19th century.
"Seated in the pews and facing the organ and paintings, you are transported to an ancient temple, but look up and you realise you are actually within that temple. The beams of the coffered ceiling, decorated with intertwined lotuses and gilded rosettes, frame panels of painted sky, mirroring the trompe-lâoeil frescoes. The ceiling of the church sanctuary has become the heavens.
"Sacred architecture can embody the divine, encapsulate the infinite, and model the cosmos. In ancient Egyptian temples, the twin pylon towers with their distinctive battered profiles â borrowed for the windows of the First Presbyterian Church â were the hills of the horizon through which the sun rose and set. The scholars and architects who designed the great Gothic cathedrals were also attempting to encapsulate the sacred geometry of the divine creator architect in their works. Probably without fully understanding it, architects of the 19th century who used the Egyptian Revival style â including William Strickland â were reaching back to a much earlier sacred architecture that had done the same."
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