Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/316

 226 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. surface with varied colour was quite in accordance with Egyptian taste. They loved polychromatic ornaments ; they covered every available surface with the gayest hues ; they delighted in the juxtaposition of the most brilliant tones. They could hardly think of covering such an immense surface with paint, and as it was necessary, in any case, to cover it with a smooth casing, it would be no more difficult to employ many kinds of stone than one. They would thus obtain a kind of gigantic mosaic which may perhaps have been heightened in effect by the use of gold. We know that the pyramidion of an obelisk was frequently gilded, and it is probable enough that similar means were sometimes taken, in the case of the more magnificent and carefully finished pyramids, to draw the eye to their topmost stone and thus to add to the impression made by their height. No more fitting adorn- ment could be imagined for the sharp peak of a pyramid rising nearly five hundred feet into the pure blue of an Egyptian sky. But this is a conjecture which can never be verified. Even if the topmost stone were still in place upon any of the pyramids it would, after all these ages, have lost all traces of gilding ; but the whole of those edifices have their apex more or less truncated. Even before our era, Diodorus found the Great Pyramid crowned by a plateau six cubits square. It has sometimes been supposed that the pyramids, when complete, were terminated by such a plateau as that described by Diodorus, and that it bore a statue of the king whose mummy rested below. This hypothesis is founded upon the passage of Herodotus which treats of the Lake Mceris. " There are," he says, " in the middle of the lake, two pyramids, each fifty fathoms high {309 feet) each of them is .'surmounted by a colossal stone statue seated upon a throne."^ Herodotus insists so often upon having seen the Labyrinth and Lake Mceris with his own eyes, that we cannot affect to doubt his assertions ; we shall therefore confine ourselves to a few observations upon them. In the descriptions which he gives of the three great pyramids, and among his comments upon the methods employed in their construction, Herodotus does not say a word which can be construed into the most distant allusion to statues upon their summits. If he had seen colossi perched upon those lofty 1 Diodorus, i. 63, 64. - Herodotus, ii. 49.