Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/238

194 discovered them. That they were not depicting nature, except in a designatory manner, will conclusively appear from this fact : they always colored Egyptian males pure vermilion and Egyptian females pure yellow, the latter pigment not being absolutely identified. The discoveries and expositions of Champollion le Jeune and his disciples being over forty years old, and published thirty-five years ago, the general world might be supposed to have settled upon the fact, that the ancient Egyptians, or primitive Copts, were high-featured Caucasians of the family of Ham. But—however some, preferring to believe the Copts, ages before Greece and Rome were dreamed of, wrote their phonetic hieroglyphics to be all symbolically rendered into Greek and Latin, thus siding with the puerilities of Kircher, against the consistent common sense renderings of Champollion—one point is certain, whether the original Copts were white or black—and they were Noachian, of the same general blood as ourselves—in no nation that ever existed, were all the men and boys bright red and all the women and girls bright yellow. These colors were arbitrary; and only given to the effigies of natives, in order that they might be known at sight.

Coeval with the earliest antiquity, the history of symbolic colors is most obscure. Yet we find that colors had much the same symbolical signification amongst all the primeval nations; although it does not follow that this original uniformity has continued. This, primary coincidence of meaning, points to a common origin in the earliest condition of the human race, the science being developed to the fullest extent in the religion of ancient Persia, wherein were the two principles of good and evil, or Ormuzd and Ahriman. These were typified respectively by white and black, which, according to the lore of the ancients, were the only two colors, whence all others were derived. Modern science does not allow either of these to be a color at all, making white the combined reflection, and black the combined absorption, of all the three primitive colors, red, yellow and blue.

The symbolism of colors, thus intimately connected with religion, passed into India, China, Egypt, Greece and Rome; and, after a prolonged lapse, reappeared through Western Europe in the middle ages; so that the gorgeous  windows of the Gothic cathedrals probably found their truest explanation in the Zendavesta, the Vedas; and the sacred books and paintings of the Egyptians. Contrary to the practice of most of the other priesthoods of antiquity, the Coptic hierarchy prohibited carvers, sculptors or metal-workers, from representing their divinities, lest they should depart from the symbolic rules.

It was death in ancient Rome, to sell or be clothed in a purple fabric. Similarly in China, now, the individual, who wears, or purchases, clothes bearing the prohibited symbol of the dragon, or of the phoenix, is liable to three hundred stripes, and banishment for three years.

Symbolism is responsible for this harshness of customs and laws. As a political, or a religious idea belonged to every pattern and every color, to alter or change it, was wantonly to cause confusion, besides committing the crime of rebellion, or of apostacy.

All, who have paid the slightest attention to the progress of pictorial art, are well aware, that East Indian, Egyptian and Etruscan paintings are composed of outlines simply filled in, flat, with brilliant unmixed tints. The pattern and the color had each an arbitrary, a necessary signification. Such art, symbolic art, was radically restrictive; and could not have aught to do with perspective, chiar-oscuro and demi-tints.

When medieval Christianity called to her aid this long-disused, but ever agreeable symbolism; and, in the stained glass of her churches and minsters, gave it a more gorgeous existence than ever