3. The palm-tree, with its graceful and simple form, served as the prototype of their columns, the capitals of which were either open or closed lotus-buds or flowers. 4. Lastly, the feather ornament, as the emblem of sovereignty. The columns during the _pyramidal_, or old style expressed with distinct clearness their purpose to serve as a support; in the _hieratic_, or new style this purpose is detached from the outer form of the column, which no longer has to support, but merely to serve as an ornament, or to proclaim some mysterious tenet in symbolic types. The face of Isis is to look to the four quarters of the globe; the closed or open lotus to symbolise the mystery of creation, the fountain of life, the cup of plenty, and the fount of all blessings. In this treatment they went so far as to imitate the very dew-drops on the lotus, in granite. A strict naturalism was the foundation of all Egyptian conventionalism, and in many instances they succeeded in producing perfectly astonishing effects. In their columns we recognise the very plant which must have suggested the forms. When made circular and of granite, these columns still retained the triangular shape of the papyrus by means of three raised lines on the round surface. At a later period they were fluted, and apparently tied together under the capital with a strap, cord, or band of a broad fibrous substance; the capital above rose in four divisions in the form of a closed lotus. In the hieratic style the fluting of the columns disappears--they are smooth, round, and covered with hieroglyphs, but the base still discloses the plant origin, disguised in an ornament of palm or reed leaves. Characteristic in these columns is the expression of tension in the swelling shaft, which was probably an unconscious imitation of wood-construction; the heavy cross-beams pressing on the thin posts produced this effect, which has been slavishly copied in stone. With the Greeks this swelling of the column became one of the elements of its beauty, because with them it was an abstraction of symmetrical proportion, consciously done, to express the conflicting powers of pressure and resistance. With a proud obstinacy the Egyptians, during their hieratic period, insisted on separating the ornamental from the architectural part of the building, so that no organic connection existed between sculpture and architecture. This is most striking in those colossal sitting figures which are placed in the front and at the back of propylæa, or before the walls of pylons. It is a clear separation of matter and spirit, of purpose and form, which is altogether contrary to the fundamental principles of good architecture.