Volume II Part 34 (2/2)

Another point of attraction in the study of Egyptian art is that extre the thread of the story, to a period when other races are still in the ilance into so reht and bewilders are like those of the Alpine traveller, who, standing upon some lofty summit, leans over the abyss at his feet and lets his eye wander for a moment over the immeasurable depths, in which forests and hbefore the earliest centuries of which other nations have preserved any tradition, Egypt, as she appears to us in her first creations, already possesses an art so advanced that it see development The bas-reliefs and statues which have been found in the tombs and pyramids of Meidoum, of Sakkarah and of Gizeh, are perhaps the yptian sculpture, and, as Ampere says, ”the pyramid of Cheops is of all hureatest”

The work of the First Theban E

”Twenty-five centuries before our era, the kings of Egypt carried out works of public utility, which can only be compared, for scale and ability, to the Suez Canal and the Mont Cenis Tunnel In the thirteenth century BC, towards the presumed epoch of the Exodus and the Trojan hile Greece was still in a condition similar to that of modern Albania, namely, divided up into many small hostile clans, five centuries before Roypt had arrived at the point reached by the Romans under Caesar and the Antonines; she carried on a continual struggle against the barbarians who, after being beaten and driven back for centuries, were at last endeavouring to cross all her frontiers at once”[402]

[402] RHONe, _L'egypte Antique_, extract from _L'Art Ancien a l'Exposition de 1878_

The princes, whose achieveyptian Horeat as those of the early dynasties, artists who raised and decorated the Great Hall of Karnak, one of the wonders of architecture

It is not only by its originality and age that the art of Egypt deserves the attention of the historian and the artist; it is conspicuous for power, and, we reat branches of art separately we have endeavoured to yptian artist, either in the decoration of the nationalfor We have also endeavoured to sho closely allied the handicrafts of Egypt were to its arts

Our aiyptian art as a whole and to forment upon it, but, by force of circumstances, architecture has received the lion's share of our attention Some of our readers may ask why an equilibrium was not better kept between that art whose secrets are the most difficult to penetrate and whose beauties are least attractive, not only to the crowd but even to cultivated intellects, and its rivals

The apparent disproportion is justified by the place held by architecture in the Egyptian social system We have proved that the architect was socially superior to the painter and even to the sculptor His uncontested pre-eminence is to be explained by the secondary _role_ which sculpture and painting had to fill Those arts were cultivated in Egypt with sustained persistence; rare abilities were lavished upon them, and we es were less admired in themselves, their intrinsic beauty was less keenly appreciated, in consequence of the practical religious or funerary office which they had to fulfil

Statues and pictures were always means to an end; neither of them ever became ends in themselves, as they were in Greece,--works whose final object was to elevate the mind and to afford to the intellectual side of man that peculiar enjoyment which we call aesthetic pleasure

Such conditions being given, it is easy to understand how painters and sculptors were subordinated to architects It was to the latter that the s, confided all his resources, and his example was followed by his wealthy subjects; it was to him that every one employed had to look as the final disposer; the other artists were no rasped in its entirety by the architect alone His work, eraces of a decoration which reckoned neither tieneous and well-balanced whole It was in inventing, in bringing to perfection, and in conteave itself up yptian building in its unity, as the product of a co under the directing will of the architect, we shall no longer feel surprise at the space deyptian temple of the Theban period, as we know it by our examination of Karnak and Luxor, the Rahest idea of the national genius We have had nothing more at heart than the restoration of these edifices by the comparison of all available eneral arrangerasp their original physiogno this effort we could never succeed in banishi+ng the Greek tee the art of each people entirely on its ownupon the question we shall devote a feords to it

The differences are considerable and are all to the advantage of the Greek creation Its nobility is enius ofto his work that unity which nature ihest productions, an unity which results froans, and allows neither the subtraction of any part nor the addition of any novel element

These contrasts ion of Greece and its social systeh to point out their existence

This superiority of the Greek teypt is certainly the ious buildings of Chaldaea, assyria, Persia, Phnicia, and Judaea, have left but slight remains behind them, and the inforeneral arrangeh to sketch out a parallel which is all to the honour of Egypt

So entirely composed of inferior materials, never had the richness and variety presented by the monuments of Memphis and Thebes Others were but yptian types Suppose that temple of Bel, which was one of the wonders of Babylon, still standing upon the great plains of Mesopotaht and its enormous mass, in spite of the various colours in which it was clothed, appear cold and heavy beside Karnak in its first glory, beside the i splendours of the Hypostyle Hall

Until the rise of Greek art, the artists of Egypt rereat masters of antiquity Her architecture, by the beauty of its materials, by its proportions, by its richness and variety, ithout a rival until the birth of the Doric te and interpreting the features of individuals or of races, and they succeeded in creating types which reached general truth without becoers to individuality

Their royal statues were great, not so much by their dimensions as by the nobility of their style, and their expression of calravity The existence of a few child-like conventions, from which they never shook the deep adht into life, the purity of contour, the freedouish their bas-reliefs and paintings Egyptian decoration is everywhere informed by a fertile invention and a happy choice of motives, by a harmony of tints which charms the eye even nohen the endless tapestry hich to, is rent and faded The suished by a desire for grace which spreads over them like a reflection froe of the brilliant civilization of Egypt to thethe earlier ages of antiquity, this civilization exercised upon the nascent art of neighbouring, and even of soous to that which Greece was in later days to wield over the whole basin of the Mediterranean For ed supremacy and offered a forecast of that universal acceptance which was to be the lot of Grecian art, when after two or three thousand years of fertility, of power, and of prestige, the work of Egypt would be done, and the time would arrive for her to fall asleep upon her laurels

[Illustration]

APPENDIX

The discovery of soht royal nalized the accession of Professor Maspero to the Directorshi+p of Egyptian Explorations, was the result, in soree, of one of those inductive processes of which M Perrot speaks as characteristic of modern research For several years previously those who kept account of the additions to public and private collections of Egyptian antiquities had suspected that some inviolate royal tomb had been discovered by the Arabs of Thebes, and that they were gradually dissipating its contents Early in 1876 General Caht the hieratic ritual of Pinote, and founder of the twenty-first dynasty--froraphs of a long papyrus which had belonged to Queen Notemit, the mother of Pinote appeared in the market, ”soh and coarse”[403] The certainty of a find and of its nature becareat that, in 1879, Maspero was enabled to assert of a tablet belonging to Rogers-Bey, that it ca to the, as yet, undiscovered tomb of the Her Hor family”[404] The mummy for which this tablet was made has been discovered in the pit at Deir-el-Bahari

[403] MASPERO, _La trouvaille de Deir-el-Bahari_, Cairo, 1882, 4to

[404] _Ibid_