Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/368

336 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. have passed gently over them, but since all the world has taken to visiting Egypt, including even the foolish and ignorant, they have suffered greatly from the barbarity of tourists. Of this the state of those beautiful decorations in the tomb of Seti which have excited the admiration of all cultivated travellers, is a painful instance. Several mummy masks are in existence which prove that encaustic painting, in which naphtha and wax were used, was employed by the Egyptians ; ^ but this process does not seem to have been developed until after the Macedonian conquest. Speaking generally, we may say that the Egyptian method was distemper. The Egyptians produced easel pictures as well as wall paintings. In one of the Beni-Hassan tombs two artists are represented painting animals upon a panel.^ Herodotus tells us that Amasis presented his portrait to the people of Cyrene.^ Supposing it to be the work of a native artist, we may fomr some idea of its character from the Egyptian portraits, dating from the Roman epoch, which are now in the Louvre. Doubtless the portrait of Amasis was very different in style from these productions of the decadence ; but it is probable that, like them, it was painted upon a cedar panel. We have no reason to believe that the Egyptians ever suc- ceeded in crossing the line which separates illumination from painting. The convention which saw only single flat tones on every surface being once adopted, it was sometimes pushed to extraordinary lengths. Not content with ignoring the varieties of tone and tint which nature everywhere presents, the Egyptian artists sometimes adopted arbitrary hues which did not, even faintly, recall the actual colours of the objects upon which they were used. As a rule they represented the female skin as a light-yellow, and the male as a reddish-brown. This distinction may be understood. Besides its convenience as indicative of sex to a distant observer, it answers to a difference which social habits have established in every civilized society. More completely covered than men and less in the open air, the women, at least those of the upper classes, are less exposed to ^ Prisse, Histoire, etc. text, p. 291. - Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, etc. vol. ii. p. 294. ^ Hr.RODOTrs. ii. 182.