Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/252

 1 62 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. be deep enough and properly closed. Art makes no attempt to illumine its darkness. She leaves to workmen the task of excavation and of buildino- its walls and confines herself to the visible parts of the tomb. The dead within furnishes the pretext for her activity, but it is the admiration of the living that is her real incentive. The ideas of the ancients on this matter were, as we have seen, very different. They looked upon the tomb as an inhabited house ; as a house in which the dead was to lead some kind of existence. Rich men wished their tombs to look well outside, even to the distant spectator, but it was to the inside that their chief attention was turned. They washed to find there all the necessaries, the comforts, the luxuries, to which they had been accustomed during life. So we find that the Egyptians, the Greeks or the Etruscans, were willing enough, when they built their own tombs or those of their relations, to throw a tumulus of earth above it, or, later, a constructed building which was con- spicuous at a distance. In those sepulchres which were cut out of the side of a mountain, the fronts were carved with frieze, pediment and columns into the shape of a regularly constructed portico ; but the chief object of solicitude to the proud possessor of such a tomb, was its internal furnishing and disposition. For him there was no removal should he be discontented with his lodging. When a man is condemned by illness or accident to keep his room, he takes care to surround himself with everything that he may want. He gathers immediately about him all the comforts and luxuries which he can afford ; and death is an illness from which there is no recovery. Impelled by such ideas as these, the ancients filled their tombs with precious objects and decorated them with sumptuous art, all the more that they seemed well guarded against intrusion for the sake of gain. Thus the Achseans of Mycenae (if that be the proper name of those mysterious people) buried, in the sepulchres discovered by Dr. Schliemann, the innumerable objects of gold and silver which now fill the museum of Athens ; thus the tombs of Boeotia were filled with those marvels of crrace and delicate workmanship, the terra cottas of Tanagra ; and those of Etruria and Campania with the most beautiful painted vases ever produced by Greek taste. Identity of religious conception thus led, from end to end of