Volume II Part 30 (2/2)

Drawn in perspective to a scale of one half]

[Illustration: FIGS 283, 284--Details from the tomb of Ptah-hotep]

Six colours are used in this decoration: black, white, red, yellow, green, and blue The result is sober, well-balanced, and by no means without harmony

In other parts of the same tomb we find this taste for literal imitation applied to another theme As interpreted by the ornamentist, lotus and papyrus were sure in tietables found are reproduced with a feeling for truth that could not be excelled by a284 a bird arasp of a huisch-photographischen Expedition_ Berlin, 1869, folio, part i plate 8

The ornamentist also borrowed motives from those robes and carpets of varied colour, which are preserved for us in the paintings (see Fig

285) But with tiination er contented to convey his ideas wholesale, from nature on the one hand, and on the other froes of every civilized society He learnt to create designs for hins which can certainly not be traced to the ure 286 will give some idea of the variety of s of the tos at Thebes The chess-board pattern which was sothe Ancient Empire, is found here also; but by its side appear patterns co lines, and rosettes

Below these, again, are designs in which lines twist the each other and enclosing lotus flowers, rosettes, and forms like the shafts of columns The flowers are in no way iested, not supplied, by nature The papyrus ns, while in the last we find a motive which afterwards played an important part in Greek and Roman ornament--namely, the skull of an ox The two speciiven by Prisse, are taken frohteenth and twentieth dynasties[358]

[358] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, text, p 369

[Illustration: FIG 285--Carpet hung across a pavilion]

These tombs and the mummy cases they contain are often decorated with syns and those suggested by the national flora The co decorations have scarabs in their centres, and upon the mummy cases it is occasionally substituted for the uraeus-crowned disk in the centre of a huge pair of extended wings Beneath it, figures of Isis or Nephthys, the guardians of the to 287) The effect is silobes which are found upon cornices In the latter the disk which represents the sun is red, and stands boldly out froain, are relieved against a striped ground, on which bands of red, blue, and white are laid alternatively Thanks to the happy choice of these colours, the result is excellent from a decorative point of view, and that in spite of its continual repetition and the simplicity of its lines

[Illustration: FIG 286--Speci decorations From Prisse]

[Illustration: TOMB OF PTAH-HOTEP

CEILING AND UPPER PART OF WESTERN WALL

Drawn in perspective to a scale of one fifth]

[Illustration: FIG 287--Painting on a mummy case _Description_, vol ii pl 58]

[Illustration: FIG 288--Winged globe Froinal s, there is yet another which deserves to be named for its uncos which are shown loaded with vases and other objects of a like nature As if to ifts, the steh above two trees, apparently cypresses, which grew right and left of their feet (Figs 289 and 290)

The Egyptians made use of the afterwards common decorative motive of alternate buds and open bloohtness and elegance hich it was endowed by the Greeks Their buds were poor and n not without stiffness[359]

[359] LEPSIUS, _Denkyptien_, atlas, plate lettered _Frises Fleuronnees_

The colours are often well preserved, at least in parts, and, as one combination is repeated several ti parts by reference to those which are intact The gilding, however, has disappeared, and left hardly a trace behind Gold was used pretty generally in order to give warhtness The obelisks, those of Hatasu for instance, were gilded upon all four faces; the winged globe was soilded,[360] and so were the bronze plates hich the teilders, soold have come down to our time,[361] is chiefly known to us by the inscriptions Their employment may also be divined here and there by the fashi+on in which the stone has been prepared, sometimes by the peculiar colour effects in certain parts of the bas-reliefs

[360] _Description, Antiquites_, vol ii p 533

[361] There is one of these books in the Louvre (_Salle Funeraire_, case Z); the gold leaf which it contains differs froreater thickness