Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/48

26 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. hardly correspond with the account of Strabo and with what we learn from other antique sources as to the magnificence of the Labyrinth and the vast bulk of the materials of which it was composed. We shall, therefore, reproduce neither the plan of Lepsius nor the text of the Greek geographer. The latter gives no measurements either of height or length, and under such circumstances any attempt to restore the building, from an architectural point of view would be futile. § 3. — The Egyptian House. The palace in Egypt was but a house larger and richer in its decorations than the others. The observations which we have made upon it may be applied to the dwelling-places of private individuals, who enjoyed, In proportion to their resources, the same comforts and conveniences as the sovereign or the hereditary princes of the nomes. The house was a palace in small. Its arrangements and construction w^ere Inspired by the same wants, by the same national habits, by the same climatic and other natural conditions. Diodorus and Josephus tell us that the population of Egypt proper, from Alexandria to Philae, was 7,000,000 at the time of the Roman Empire, and there is reason to believe that it was still larger at the time of the nation's greatest prosperity under the princes of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.-^ A large pro- portion of the Egyptian people lived In small towns and open villages, besides which there were a few very large towns. That Sals, Memphis, and Thebes were great cities we know from the words of the ancient historians, from the vast spaces covered by their ruins, and from the extent of their cemeteries. Neither the Greek nor the Egyptian texts give us any infor- mation as to the appearance of an Egyptian town, the way in which its buildings were arranged, or their average size and height. The Greek travellers do not seem to have been sufficiently Impressed by anything of the kind to think It worthy of record. The sites of these ancient cities have hardly ever been examined from this point of view, and perhaps little would be discovered If such an examination were to take place. In every ^ Diodorus, i. 31, 6.— Josephus {The Jauish IVar, ii. 16, 4) speaks of a population of seven millions and a half, exclusive of the inhabitants of Alexandria.