Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/441

 The Gexekal CnAkACTEKisrics of Egyptian" Art. 405 the early dynasties, artists who raised and decorated the Great Hall of Karnak, one of the wonders of architecture. It is not only by its originality and age that the art of Egypt deserves the attention of the historian and the artist ; it is conspicuous for power, and, we may say, for beauty. In study- ing each of the great branches of art separately we have endeavoured to make clear the various qualities displayed by the Egyptian artist, either in the decoration of the national monuments or in the interpretation of living form by sculpture and painting. We have also endeavoured to show how closely allied the handicrafts of Egypt were to its arts. Our aim has been to embrace Egyptian art as a whole and to form a judgment upon it, but, by force of circumstances, architecture has received the lion's share of our attention. Some of our readers may ask why an equilibrium was not better kept between that art whose secrets are the most difficult to penetrate and whose beauties are least attractive, not only to the crowd but even to cultivated intellects, and its rivals. The apparent disproportion is justified by the place held by architecture in the Egyptian social system. We have proved that the architect was socially superior to the painter and even to the sculptor. His uncontested pre-eminence is to be explained by the secondary role which sculpture and painting had to fill. Those arts were cultivated in Egypt with sustained persistence ; rare abilities were lavished upon them, and we may even say that masterpieces were produced. But plastic images were less admired -in themselves, their intrinsic beauty was less keenly appreciated, in consequence of the practical religious or funerary office which they had to fulfil. Statues and pictures were always means to an end ; neither of them ever became ends in them- selves, as they were in Greece, — works whose final object was to elevate the mind and to afford to the intellectual side of man that peculiar enjoyment which we call aesthetic pleasure. Such conditions being given, it is easy to understand how painters and sculptors were subordinated to architects. It was to the latter that the most pious and, at the same time, the most magnificent of kings, confided all his resources, and his example was followed by his wealthy subjects ; it was to him that every one employed had to look as the final disposer ; the other artists