Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/356

o 26 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. that no idea of realistic imitation was implied in their use.^ Sculpture is founded upon an artificial understanding by Avhich tangible form and visible colour are dissociated from each other. When the sculptor looks to the help of the painter he runs great risk of failing to give all the precision and beauty of which form by itself is capable, to his work. Even the Greeks did not grasp this truth at once. The Egyptians had at least a glimmering of it, and we must thank them for having employed polychromy in their sculpture in a discreet fashion. § 10. The General Characteristics of tJie Egyptian Style. We jiave attempted to give an idea of the origin of Greek sculpture, of its development and its decadence. We have noticed those slow changes of taste and style which sometimes required a thousand years for their evolution, for a century in Egypt was hardly equal to a generation elsewhere. After proving that Egypt did not escape the universal law of change, we studied the methods and conventions which were peculiar to her sculptors and impressed their works with certain common characteristics. The union of these characteristics formed the Egyptian style. We must now define that style, and attempt to make its originality clear to our readers. In its commencement Egyptian art was entirely realistic. It was made realistic both by the conceptions which presided at its birth and by the wants which it was called upon to satisfy. The task to which it applied itself with a skill and conscience which are little less than marvellous, was the exact representation of all that met its vision. In the bas-relief it reproduced the every-day scenes of agricultural life and of the national worship ; in the statue it portrayed individuals with complete fidelity. But even in those early ages imagination was not asleep. It was continually seeking to invent forms which should interpret its favourite ideas. It figured the exploits of the king, the defender of the national civilization, in the form of a warrior brandishing his mace over the heads of his enemies. In the royal statues everything combined to mark the gulf between the Pharaoh and his subjects, their materials, ' Ch. JjLANC, ]^oyage dt la /Iaiih'-JtQ'/'f( p. 99.