Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/172

148 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. forms and details which do not exist in the ruins of Abydos, of Thebes, or in the Nubian hypogea ; we should have been able to describe arrangements and motives which do not occur in the works of the three great Theban dynasties. On the other hand, the mouldings and other details of the same kind are monotonous in the extreme. Their want of variety is not to be explained, like that of Assyria, by the nature of the materials. Brick, granite, limestone, and sandstone constituted a series of materials in which a varied play of light and shade, such as that which characterized Greek architecture, should have been easy. The real cause of the poverty of Egyptian design in this particular is to be found in their habit of covering nearly Fig. 131. — Stereobate, Luxor. Fig. 132. — -Stereobate with double plinth, Luxor. .every surface with a carved and painted decoration. More elaborate or bolder mouldings might have interfered with the succession of row upon row of pictures from the bottom to the top of a wall. The eye was satisfied with the rich polychromatic decoration, and did not require it to be supplemented by architectural ornament. When the slope of a wall was ornamented with projections in the shape of mouldings it was because the wall was bare. At Luxor, for example, in the external face of the wall which incloses the back of the temple, the lowest course projects beyond the others, forming a step, and a few courses above it there is a hollow moulding similar in section to the cornice at the top ; the