Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/55

 plastic arts, the historian of Greek art discovers survivals, forms and motives which had been employed in previous centuries and earlier civilizations, in exact proportion to the accuracy of his researches, and to the number of his elements for comparison. He also finds that the Greeks borrowed from the same instructors those industrial processes which, although not in themselves artistic, are among the antecedent conditions of art; namely, metallurgy, ceramics, smith's work, glass-making, weaving, embroidery, stone-working and carving, in a word all those trades which seem so simple when their secrets are known, but which, nevertheless, represent the accumulated efforts of countless unknown inventors.

It was not only the material outfit of civilization that the Greeks borrowed from their predecessors; they obtained, together with that alphabet which represents the principal sounds of the voice by a few special signs, another alphabet which has been happily named the alphabet of art, certain necessary conventions, combinations of line, ornaments, decorative forms, a crowd of plastic elements which they had employed in the expression of their own ideas and sentiments. Even after Greek art had reached perfection and was in the full enjoyment of her own individuality, we still find traces of these early borrowings. Sometimes it is a decorative motive, like the sphinx, the griffin, the palm-leaf, and many others, which, invented on the banks of the Nile or the Tigris, were transported to Greece and there preserved to be handed down to our modern ornamentist. The nearer we get to the fountain head of Greek art, the more we are struck with these resemblances, which are something beyond mere coincidences. The deeper we penetrate into what is called archaism, the more numerous do those features become which are common to oriental, especially Assyrian, art, and that of Greece. We find analogous methods of indicating the human skeleton, of accenting its articulations, of representing the drapery with which the forms are covered. Greek taste had not yet so transformed the details of ornamentation as to prevent us from recognizing the motives which commerce had brought for its use over the waves of the Ægean or the mountains of Asia Minor. The marks of their origin are continually visible, and yet a practised eye can perceive that the Greeks were never satisfied, like the Phœnicians, with merely combining in various proportions the materials furnished by the artisans of Egypt or Assyria; the facilities of such a soulless and indiscriminating eclecticism