Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/331

 The Tomb under the Middle Empire. 241 to realize the power which must have been required to quarry- dress, carry, and fix such a number of colossal blocks, how many men must have been employed on the work, what machines they used, and how many years it must have taken ; and the less we are able to understand all these things, the greater is our admiration for the patience and power which overcame such obstacles." ^ § 3. The Tomb under the Middle Efnpire. We have shown how the mastaba, that is to say, the most ancient form of tomb in the necropolis of Memphis, was an expression, both in arrangement and in decoration, of the ideas of the Egyptians as to a future life. In literature and in art the works created by a people in its infancy, or at least in its youth, are the most interesting to the historian, because they are the results of the sincere and unfettered expansion of vital forces ; this Is especially the case when there is no possibility of a desire to Imitate forelofn models. The mastaba deserved therefore to be very carefully studied. No other race has given birth in Its funerary architecture, to a type so pure, a type which may be explained in every detail by a master-idea at once original and well defined. We therefore dwelt upon it at some length and described it with the care which It demanded. We found it again in the pyramids, the royal tombs of the Ancient Empire, which though sensibly modified by the great change in proportion, by the colossal dimensions which the pride of the Pharaohs gave to one part of their tomb, are yet penetrated by the same spirit. We have yet to follow the development of the same idea through the later years of Egyptian civilization, and in localities more or less removed from that in which she gave her first tokens of power. In one place we shall find it modified by the nature of the soil to which the corpse had to be committed, in another by the inevitable progress of ideas, by the development of art, and by the caprices of fashion, which was no more stationary in Egypt than elsewhere. The most important necropolis of the First Theban Empire was that of Abydos in Upper Egypt, upon the left bank of the ' Description de I'Egypte, Antiqtiiies, vol. v. j). 597. VOL. I. I I