Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/21

A HISTORY OF ART IN ANCIENT EGYPT CHAPTER I. CIVIL AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE. § I. — The Graphic Processes eynployed by the Egyptians i?i their 7'ep7'ese7ttatio)is of Buildings. We have seen that sepulchral and religious architecture are represented in Egy'pt by numerous and well preserved monuments. It is not so in the case of civil and military architecture. Of these, time has spared but very few remains and all that the ancient historians tell us on the subject amounts to very little. Our best aids in the endeavour to fill up this lacuna are the pictures and bas-reliefs of the tombs, in which store-houses, granaries, houses and villas of the Pharaonic period are often figured. It is not always easy, however, to trace the actual conformation and arrangement of those buildings throus^h the conventionali- ties employed by the artists, and we must therefore begin by attempting to understand the ideas with which the Egyptians made the representations in question. Their idea was to show all at a single glance ; to combine in one view matters which could only be seen in reality from many successive points, such as all the facades of a building, with its external aspect and internal arrangements. This notion may be compared to that which recommends itself to a young child when, in drawing a profile^ VOL. II. p u