Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/178

 CHAPTER II. PRINCIPLES AND GENERAL CHARACTERLSTICS OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. § I. — Method to be Employed by iis in our Stiidy of this Architecture. In the enterprise which we have undertaken the study of oriental art is but an introduction to that of Greece. Without an attentive examination of its remains we should be unable to distinguish the original elements in the work of the Greek genius from those which it borrowed from other nations. We must pass in review the whole artistic production of several great nations who occupied a vast surface of the globe, and whose fertility was prolonged through a long course of centuries, but we shall not attem[)t to describe singly the great buildings of Egypt and Assyria, of Persia and Phoenicia, as such an attempt would perhaps cause us to lose sight of the main object of our work. Our task is no easy one. While limiting our study in the fashion which has been described, we must not fail to extend our purview to every fact which may help to justify the comparison which we propose to institute between the arts of Greece and those of the nations by whose teachings she profited. There is but one road to success in this double task. We must devote the greatest possible care to our study of the details in question, and then give the general results of that study ; we must make our- selves thoroughly acquainted with all the phenomena, but must confine our exposition to the general laws which governed them, such as our minute inquiries have presented them to us. No circumstantial description need, therefore, be looked for in these pages even in the case of the most important and famous buildings of Egypt. No monograph upon any tomb or temple will be found, but we shall ourselves have examined many tombs and