Page:The Pharaohs and their people; scenes of old Egyptian life and history (IA pharaohstheirpeo00berkiala).pdf/235

 foreign criticism were, however, as yet in the distant future when the kings of the nineteenth dynasty were on the throne.

The growth of animal worship seems to speak of degradation in the national religion, and there are not wanting at the same time evidences both of a decay in the national morality and of a decline in art. When art is required to work by the acre its productions are not likely to be distinguished by high excellence or exquisite finish. In the drawings of the time of Rameses the heads indeed are still good and the portraits characteristic, but the figures are ill-drawn in the extreme, and often most hastily finished off. Egyptian art suffered severely under the influence of certain fixed rules concerning the drawing and the proportion of figures. Under the earlier dynasties there are

have an occult meaning, that renders them venerable.' Apollonius, however, is not convinced: he admits that the mind forms to itself an idea which it pictures better than any art can do, but he complains that the Egyptian custom takes from the gods the very power of appearing beautiful either to the eye or to the mind. Porphyry also regards the worship as symbolic; he says that 'under the semblance of animals the Egyptians worship the universal power which the gods have revealed in the various forms of living nature.' These quotations and those in the text are taken from Le Page Renouf's Hibbert Lectures.]
 * [Footnote: give any form to their deities, they only give them in symbols which