Volume II Part 34 (1/2)
Wooden articles were often entirely gilt A Hathoric capital in the Louvre (Fig 336) is an instance of this The outlines of the eyes and eyebrows stand out in black upon the dead gold which covers the rest of this little -stick handles Boulak]
The coffin-e consumers of wood Some mummy cases were of that material, others of a very thick board ether with such skill and fir substance had all the hardness and resonance of wood Cases of both kinds were covered with a thin coat of plaster, varnished, and decorated with designs in colour The thickness of the plaster coat may be easily seen in the numerous cracks which these coffins display
All the decorative raved by the chisel upon the walls of buildings and upon works in terra-cotta, in metal, and in wood, must have been repeated upon the woven stuffs of the country, and upon those needle e in which the superiority of Egyptian manufactures is better shown than in linen cloth Linen has been recovered from the tombs which is as fine as the best Indian muslin Some has been found which feels like silk to the touch, and equals the best French _batiste_ in the perfection of its weaving We know froyptian stuffs had the transparency of gauze Body-linen was usually of a dazzling white, but in some instances it was dyed red, and in others it had borders ns were either woven in the stuff or applied to it by a process which gave effects not unlike those of our printed cottons Golden threads were introduced into specially fine tissues But the great excellence of Egypt in suchthe epoch of Roht after[400]
[400] MARTIAL, _Epigrammata_, xiv 150 LUCAN, X v 141
[Illustration: FIG 335--Wooden pin or peg Boulak]
[Illustration: FIG 336--Hathoric capital Louvre]
-- 5 _The Coreat Theban Pharaohs, Egypt found herself ie fro isolation, her vast internal coreater effect over the foreigners hos, or the colossal statues, bas-reliefs, and paintings hich they were adorned During the Middle Eates to some extent to certain tribes of Semites and Kushi+tes, elt close to her frontier After her conquest by the Hyksos, and the establishment, some centuries later, of her own supremacy in Syria, she never ceased to hold intercourse with her neighbours
Her foreign relations were, however, peculiar in character During many centuries it never occurred to the worshi+pper of Osiris that it was possible to live and die out of the sacred valley of the Nile
Thrown by some accident outside those limits which for him coincided with the frontiers of the habitable world, he would have felt as helpless as a Parisian stranded upon some cannibal island In later years, after about the seventeenth century BC the separation between the Egyptians and the people of Western Asia became less complete The tiypt; but even then the Egyptians shrank fro in the valley watered by their sacred river was too coreat, to allow of theirreadily with those whom they looked upon as barbarians Still ness, their fear, to confide their ypt There alone could they count with certainty upon the care and skill which would preserve it from final destruction Nowhere but in the _Western Mountain_ could they be sure of receiving the necessary offerings and houided the soul in its subterranean voyage and shi+elded it during the tests to which it was exposed after death, dwelt in Egypt alone Military expeditions were pushed into Syria, and even as far as the Euphrates, but no Egyptian crossed the Isth for the day of his return He brought back the plunder of his successful combats to the crowded cities of his own country, with their countless lorious past; he could enjoy life only where the to_ marked the spot where he should repose when that life had ceased
By taste, then, the Egyptian was no traveller But in time the men of other nations came to seek him; they came to buy from him the countless wonders which had been created by his skilful and patient industry The Phnician, especially after the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, took upon himself the useful office of middle-man; in later days, under the Psemetheks and their successors, the Greek cauese and the Dutch in China and japan, first the Phnicians and afterwards the Ionians had their _factories_ at Memphis and in the cities of the Delta Thanks to these adroit and enterprising n trade without either shi+ps, sailors, or merchant-adventurers Upon this point much valuable information has been obtained froy have been stillus to form a true and vivid conception of the trade carried on by the inhabitants of the Nile Valley
Ever since attention was first drawn to the wide distribution of such objects, not a year has passed without articles of Egyptiandiscovered at some distant point Syria and Phnicia are full of them; they have been found in Babylonia and in assyria, upon the coasts of Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, in Greece itself, in Etruria, in Latiue; they are, in fact, spread over all Western Asia and the whole basin of the Mediterranean At the an to secure the yptian workshops had no rivals in the world; and when, after an to pour theirto coes of good work and well earned notoriety
CHAPTER VI
THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN ART, AND THE PLACE OF EGYPT IN ART HISTORY
In the study which we have now almost completed, we have ypt We are without the qualifications necessary for such a task We do not read the hieroglyphs, and are therefore without the key to that great library in stone and wood, in canvas and papyrus--a library which could afford material for thousands of voluyptians
Our one object has been to e and its originality in a clear light, and to show the value of the example set by the first-born of civilization to the peoples who caan to experience the wants and tastes which had long been completely satisfied in the Valley of the Nile The iinality of the national forms of art were hardly suspected before the days of Chaenius; his intellect was too penetrating and his taste too active, to leave hihts and sentiypt which was so dear to him ”I shall write to our friend Dubois fro thoroughly explored Egypt and Nubia I can say beforehand, that our Egyptians will cut a ure in the future, in the history of art, than in the past I shall bring back with h to convert the ypte et de Nubie_, p 113
The forecasts of Champollion and Nestor L'Hote have been confirmed by the excavations of Lepsius and Mariette The conclusions deduced by the former from their examination of the remains in the Nile Valley have been indirectly corroborated by the discoveries which have successively revealed to us ancient Chaldaea, Syria, Phnicia, Asia Minor, priypt It is recognized that its origin dates fro antecedent to that of any other race which, in its turn, played the leading _role_ upon the stage of the ancient world Justice has been rendered to the richness of its architecture, to the skill of its painters and sculptors, to the inventive fertility of its handicraftsmen and the refineypt what such men as Winckelmann and Ottfried Muller did for Greece, Etruria, and Rome The methods of analysis and critical description which have long been employed with success upon another field, had never been applied to her art as a whole; no one had atte and slow evolution The difficulties were great, especially when architecture was concerned The ruins of the Pharaonic buildings had never been studied at first hand with such care as had been lavished upon the classic monuments of Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean The works to which we have had to turn for information have many plates which make a fine shohich are acco, but e examine them closely we are amazed to find the most unforeseen omissions in their materials both for restorations, and for the reproduction of buildings in their actual condition
When we attempt to make use of two separate works for the restoration of a temple, we are met with an embarrassment of another kind
Differences, and even actual contradictions, between one author and another are frequent, and that without any new excavations having taken place between-times to account for the inconsistency Both observers had the same facts under their eyes, and it is often difficult to decide which of the two has observed badly For one who does not wish to admit pure fancy into his work, all this causes doubts and hesitations which add greatly to the difficulty of his task
The deeper we penetrate into such studies, the ret the insufficiency of the ht it imperative that we should fill in the framework of our history It has one peculiar aspect which distinguishes it frohbours and received nothing fro which the character of their art as a whole was established The features which are distinctive of Egyptian sculpture and architecture were deterhbourhood sufficiently advanced to have influence upon them This was not the case with Chaldaea and assyria, at least, to anything like the same extent Their work, ypt is, then, the only country in which a coy and aptitude of one gifted race, can be followed through all its stages Everywhere else the exahbours have had an influence upon the ress, but at the saree from its natural channel; they may have helped men to do better, it is certain that they led theoal uide, but it was reached by a path different from that they would have taken had they been left to their own devices In the Valley of the Nile there was no guide, no precedent to follow
There, and there alone, did the evolution of the plastic faculty preserve a noranic character from the commencement of its activity almost to its final decease
Froypt may be reviewed in terms more definite, and that the conclusions drawn from it are more certain or, at least, more probable, than that of any other nation It is, if we may be allowed such a phrase, more transparent
Elsewhere, e find a new decorative form introduced, or a new style become prevalent, it is always open to us to ask whether theyis suspected we have to trace it to its original source, and often the search is both slow and painful In the case of the Egyptians such problems have to be solved differently There is no need to extend one's inquiries beyond the happy valley where, as in an inaccessible island surrounded by a vast ocean of barbarians, they lived for ages whose nuuessed Other civilizations are to be partly explained by those of their predecessors and their neighbours; that of Egypt is only to be explained by itself, by the inherent aptitudes of its people and their physical surroundings Every eleenous; nowhere else can the fruit be so easily traced to the seed, and the natural forces observed which developed the one from the other