Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/144

 advanced free-standing pillars of the same order, and is interesting as showing how the suggestion arose. It is by no means improbable that at an earlier epoch the square prisms of the pyramid age were so adorned in painting. In the new kingdom of the 12th dynasty they were probably first so treated in relief. This done, the suggestion was obvious, where wood could be used, to cut away the masses, leaving only the stems. This again came to be reproduced in stone, which after a while lost all trace of its wooden original.

These are meagre records, it must be confessed, of so great a kingdom; but when we come to consider the remoteness of the period, and that the dynasty was overthrown by the Shepherds, whose rule was of considerable duration, it is perhaps in vain to expect that much can remain to be disinterred which would enable us to realize more fully the architectural art of this age.

SHEPHERDS.

Till very recently our knowledge of the Shepherd kings was almost entirely derived from what was said of them by Manetho, in the extracts from his writings so fortunately preserved by Josephus, in his answer to Apion. Recent explorations have, however, raised a hope that even their monuments may be so far recovered as to enable us to realize to some extent at least, who they were and what their aspirations.

Manetho tells us they came from the East, but fearing the then rising power of the Assyrians, they fortified Avaris as a bulwark against them, and used it during their sojourn in Egypt to keep up their communications with their original seat. Recent explorations have enabled M. Mariette to identify San, Zoan, or Tanis, a well-known site on the Bubastite branch of the Nile, with this Avaris. And already he has disinterred a sphinx and two seated statues which certainly belong to the reign of the Shepherd King Apophis.

The character of these differs widely from anything hitherto found in Egypt. They present a physiognomy strongly marked with an Asiatic type—an arched nose, rude bushy hair, and great muscular development; altogether something wholly different from everything else found in Egypt either before or afterwards.

This is not much, but it is an earnest that more remains to be discovered, and adds another to the proofs that are daily accumulating, how implicitly Manetho may be relied upon when we only read him correctly, and how satisfactory it is to find that every discovery that is made confirms the conclusions we had hesitatingly been adopting.

It appears from such fragmentary evidence as has hitherto been