Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/86

 movements of its genius in the continual search for "the best." But in any case the commencement must be made with Egypt. It is Egypt that has preserved the earliest attempts of man towards outward expression; it is in Egypt that those monuments exist which contain the first permanent manifestation of thought by written characters or plastic forms; and it is in Egypt that the historian of antique art will find the earliest materials for study.

But, in the first place, we must give some account of the curious conditions under which the people lived who constructed and ornamented so many imposing monuments. We must begin, then, by describing the circumstances and the race characteristics under which this early civilization was developed.

§ 2. The Valley of the Nile and its Inhabitants.

The first traveller in Egypt of which we have any record is Herodotus; he sums up, in an often quoted phrase, the impression which that land of wonders made upon him: "Egypt," he says, "is a present from the Nile." The truth could not be better expressed. "Had the equatorial rains not been compelled to win for themselves a passage to the Mediterranean, a passage upon which they deposited the mud which they had accumulated on their long journey, Egypt would not have existed. Egypt began by being the bed of a torrent; the soil was raised by slow degrees... man appeared there when, by the slow accumulation of fertile earth, the country at last became equal to his support...

Other rivers do no more than afford humidity for their immediate borders, or, in very low-lying districts, for a certain narrow stretch of country on each hand. When they overflow their banks it is in a violent and irregular fashion, involving widespread ruin and destruction. Great floods are feared as public