Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/114

 very poor and mean. The infinite foresight and self-respect, the passionate love for perfection for its own sake, which is characteristic of Greek work at its best time, is not here to be found.

—Colossi of Amenophis III. (statues of Memnon) at Thebes.

But this defect was inseparable from the system under which the Egyptian buildings were erected.

The absolute and dreaded master whose gesture, whose single word, was sufficient to depopulate a province and to fill quarries