Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/524

 428 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. tempted, however, to believe that the architects -of the Sait period must have introduced fresh beauties into the plans, proportions, and decorations of those temples which the princes of the twenty- sixth dynasty, in their desire that their capital and the other cities of the Delta should rival or excel the magnificence of Memphis and Thebes, confided to their skill. Both the statues and the royal tombs of the Sait period have characteristics which dis- tinguish them from those of earlier epochs. In all that we possess from this last period of artistic activity in Egypt, there is a new desire for elegance, for grace, carried sometimes to an extreme which is not free from weakness and affectation. It is probable that the same qualities existed in the religious architecture of Sais. Unhappily all the buildings constructed in Memphis and Lower Egypt during the Sait supremacy have disappeared leaving hardly a trace behind, and the Greek writers have left us nothing but vague accounts to supply their place. Herodotus goes into ecstasies over the propylsea, that is, the pylons and outer courts, which Amasis added to the temple of Neith at Sais, and over the enormous size of the stones employed. He describes in great detail a chapel carved out of a single block of Syene granite,, which Amasis transported from the quarries at great cost in order that it might be erected in the sanctuary of the said temple ; unhappily it was so much injured' on the journey that his intention had to be abandoned.^ All that we learn from the historian is that the Sait princes made use of colossal stones in theij* buildings without much regard to their appropriateness, but simply to impress their con- temporaries with an exaggerated idea of their wealth and power. The contractors of an earlier agfe were also in the habit of employing blocks which seem astonishing to us from their length and size, but they were never used except when they were required, to cover a void or some other purpose ; the earlier architects never made the mistake of seeking for difiiculties merely to show how cleverly they could overcome them. It is to be reofretted that we know so little of the monument attributed by Herodotus to Psemethek, and described by him in the followincr terms : — " Having- become master of the whole of ^ Herodotus, ii, 175.