Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/377

 The Tomb under the New Empire. 287 threats. Thanks to the help of Osiris and of other soul- protecting gods, such as Anubis, it triumphed in the end over all obstacles, and, as the sun reappears each morning upon the eastern horizon, it arrived surely at last at those celestial dwellings where it became incorporated among the gods. The Egyptian imagination spared no effort to represent with the greatest possible precision those mysterious regions where the soul had to undergo its appointed tests. Such beliefs afforded a wide scope for the individual influence of the artist and the poet, and accordingly we find that they were modified with a rapidity ■AHrf Fig. 184. — The weighing of actions. (From an illustrated Ritual of the Dead in the British Museum. ) which is unique in Egyptian art. But the Egyptians were accustomed, from such early times, to give a concrete form to all their ideas, that they were sure to clothe the plastic expression of this theme in a richness and brilliancy of colour which we do not find to the same degree in any other people of antiquity. On the other hand, although they did not escape the operation of the eternal law of change, their temperament was sufficiently con- servative to give to each of their creations a peculiar fixity and consistency. Their Hades, if we may call it so, took on a very definite form, and features which varied but little throuorh a