Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/398

vD 62 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. and that in spite of its continual repetition and the simplicity of its lines. Among the original motives to be found in these paintings, there is yet another which deserves to be named for its uncommon character, we mean those tables for offerings which are shown loaded with vases and other objects of a like nature. As if to mark the importance of the funerary gifts, the stems of these tables are made so lofty that they rise high above two trees, apparently cypresses, which grew right and left of their feet (Figs. 289 and 290). The Egyptians made use of the afterwards common decorative motive of alternate buds and open blooms of lotus, but they entirely failed to give it the lightness and elegance with which it was endowed by the Greeks. Their buds were poor and meagre, their flowers heavy, and the general design not without stiffness.^ The colours are often well preserved, at least in parts, and, as one combination^is repeated several times, it is easy to restore the missing parts by reference to those which are intact. The gilding, however, has disappeared, and left hardly a trace behind. Gold was used pretty generally in order to give warmth and brightness. The obelisks, those of Hatasu for instance, were gilded upon all four faces ; the winged globe was sometimes gilded,^ and so were the bronze plates with which the temple doors were covered. The important part played by the gilders, some of whose books of gold have come down to our time,^ is chiefly known to us by the inscriptions. Their employment may also be divined here and there by the fashion in which the stone has been prepared, sometimes by the peculiar colour effects in certain parts of the bas-reliefs. In some tombs gold is found in Its pure state. During the excavations at the Serapeum, Mariette opened the tomb of Ka- em-nas, a son of Rameses II. When the mummy chamber was entered, the lower parts of the walls and of the mummy cases shone with gold in the candle-light. The floor was strewn with scraps of the same metal, and as many as four books of gold leaf 1 Lepsius, De7ikma:Ier, part iii. plate 62. Prisse, Histoire de V Art Egyptie?!, atlas, plate lettered Frises Fleiironnces. 2 Description^ Antiquitcs^ vol. ii. p. 533. 2 There is one of these books in the Louvre {Salle Ftineraire, case Z) ; the gold leaf which it contains differs from that now in use only in its greater thickness.