Identifier: historyofartinan01perruoft Title: A history of art in ancient Egypt Year: 1883 (1880s) Authors: Perrot, Georges, 1832-1914 Chipiez, Charles, 1835-1901 Armstrong, Walter, Sir, 1850-1918 Subjects: Art -- Egypt History Egypt -- Antiquities Publisher: London : Chapman and Hall Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image: f Avaris, he was noticed by the king for hisfrequent acts of gallantry, and promoted until he finally became something in thenature of high admiral. The Constitution of Egyptian Society. 35 taken place in Turkey and Persia to the surprise of none butEuropeans. When the master of all is placed so high above hisfellow men that his subjects seem mere human dust about his feet,his caprice is quite sufficient to raise the most insignificant of itsatoms to a level with the most illustrious. The priests of the highest rank, the generals and officers of thearmy and the great civil functionaries, while they made no effortto rival the splendour of the royal creations, consecrated steles,images of the deity, and chapels, at their own expense. It wasupon their tombs, however, that most of their care was lavished.These tombs furnish numberless themes of ereat interest to thehistorian. The tombs of the Memphite kings have not preservedfor us anything that can fairly be called sculpture. All that we

Text Appearing After Image: ■^ilMli—g Fig. 26.—Netting birds. From a tomb. (Boulak. Drawn by Bourgoin.) know of the style and methods of that art in those early times weowe to the burial-places which the members of the governingclasses were in the habit of preparing during their lifetime inthe necropolis of Memphis. We may say the same of the earlycenturies of the Middle Empire. The Egypt of the great kingsbelonging to the twelfth dynasty has been preserved for us uponthe tombs of Ameni and Num-Hotep, the governors of the noviesin which they were buried. It is to the burial chambers at Gizeh,at Sakkarah, at Meidoum, and at Beni-Hassan that we must otq forcomplete types of sepulchral architecture at those epochs ; to thestatues in the recesses of their massive walls and to the bas-reliefsin their narrow chambers, we must turn for those features ofearly Egyptian civilization which remained for many centuries 36 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. without material change; by these monuments we are enabled tobu

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