Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/392

 35< A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. The ornamentist also borrowed motives from those robes and carpets of varied colour, which are preserved for us in the paintings (see Fig. 285). But with time and experience his hand became more skilful, his imagination more active, and he was no longer contented to convey his ideas wholesale, from nature on the one hand, and on the other from those humble arts which jBourish even in the earliest ages of every civilized society. He learnt to create designs for himself — designs which can certainly not be traced to the mats and tissues which formed his first models. Our Figure 286 will give some idea of the variety of motives to be found upon the panels and ceilings of the tombs and other buildings at Thebes. The chess-board pattern which was so much used during the Ancient Empire, is found here also ; but by its side ap- pear patterns composed of frets, meandering lines, and rosettes. Below these, again, are designs in which lines twist themselves into volutes and spirals, crossing each other and enclosing lotus flowers, rosettes, and forms like the shafts of columns. The flowers are in no way imitative ; their motives have been suggested, not sup- plied, by nature. The papyrus may have given the first idea for the sixth of these designs, while in the last we find a motive which afterwards played an important part in Greek and Roman ornament — namely, the skull of an ox. The two specimens of this last-named motive given by Prisse, are taken from tombs of the eighteenth and twentieth dynasties.' These tombs and the mummy cases they contain are often decorated with symbolic ornament, as well as with geometrical designs and those suggested by the national flora. The compart- ments of ceiling decorations have scarabs in their centres, and ' Prisse, Ilistoire de r Art Ei^xpiioi. text, p. 369. Fig. 2S5. — Carpet hung across a pavilion.