Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/26

A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. terminatino; in an open hand (see Fig. 2). Among these ruins we find, upon the sculptured walls of subterranean chambers, representations of royal and princely villas, where elegant pavilions are surrounded by vast offices and dependencies, by gardens and pieces of ornamental water, the whole being inclosed by a crenellated wall. These representations were called by Prisse plans cavaliers, a vague term which hardly gives a fair idea of the process, v/hich deserves to be analysed and explained. They are, as a fact, plans, but plans made upon a very different principle from those of our day. Certain elements, such as walls, are indicated by simple lines varying in tliickness, just as they fc AC/LOU/^ ^ 1- IG. 2. — The adoration of the solar disk by Amenophis IV. ; from Prisse. might be in a modern plan, giving such a result as would be obtained by a horizontal section. But this is the exception. The houses, the trees, and everything with any considerable height, are shown in projection, as they might appear to the eye of a bird flying over them if they had been overthrown by some considerate earthquake, which had laid them flat without doing them any other injury. As a rule all objects so treated are projected in one and the same direction, but here and there exceptions to this are found. In a country villa figured upon one of the tombs at Thebes (Fig. 3), one row of trees, that upon the right, is projected at right angles to all the others. The reason for this change in the artist's