Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/413

Metal-work and Jewelry. 377 vast number of these objects in coloured glass and in green or blue faience. They appeared everywhere; upon the walls of buildings and upon the persons of their inhabitants, upon every article which helped to furnish tombs or temples, palaces or private houses. Everything shone with the brilliant colours of this enamel, whose unchanofinof briofhtness was so o^rateful to a southern eye. It harmonized to perfection with the whiteness of the fine linen worn by the richer classes of Egyptians, and formed happy combinations with the rich red and blue fringes which bordered their robes and girdles. Enamel was much more easily cleaned than cloth. When it was tarnished by dust or dirt, a few drops of water would restore all its brightness. The lavish employment of such a material doubtless did much to give the persons of the Egyptians and their dwellings that neat and smiling aspect which .so charmed foreisfn visitors. Herodotus tells us that one of the features which most strongly warned the traveller that he was in the presence of a very ancient and refined civilization, was the national passion for a cleanliness that was almost too fastidious, for fine linen constantly renewed, for frequent ablutions, for the continual use of the razor. A nation dressed in spotless white, shaved, circumcised and continually washed, afforded a curious contrast to shaggy barbarians clothed in wool that was dirty with longf usao^e. Even in the time of Herodotus more than one tribe of Greek mountaineers was still in existence, that hardly differed in habits and costume from those early ancestors of the Hellenes w^ho, as Homer tells us, " slept upon the bare ground and never washed their feet." § 3. Metal-work and Jewelry. Egypt had, perhaps, her age of stone. MM. Hamy and Francois Lenormant have called attention to the cut and polished flints which have been found in Egypt, and INIariette brought a whole series of them to the Universal Exhibition of 1878. Mariette, however, was careful to remark that some of these flint implements, exactly similar in appearance to those found in the open air, were discovered in the tombs, among the mummies.^ ^ Mariette, De la Galerie de F Egypte Ancieiine a F Exposition Retrospective du Trocadero, 1878, pp. in, 112. Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Andent Egyptians, etc. vol. ii. p. 261. VOL. ir. ^ C