Identifier: historyofartinan01perruoft (find matches)
Title: A history of art in ancient Egypt
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Perrot, Georges, 1832-1914 Chipiez, Charles, 1835-1901 Armstrong, Walter, Sir, 1850-1918
Subjects: Art -- Egypt History Egypt -- Antiquities
Publisher: London : Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
are not numbered,we can only refer to them generally. The Constitution of Egyptian Society, 27 from another province, and all who had not succumbed to the hardand continuous work, returned to their own places. Those whodied were buried in hasty graves dug in the sands of the desert bythe natives of their own village. The massive grandeur of some of the Egyptian monuments isonly to be explained by this levy en masse of every available pairof hands. The kings of the ancient empire, at least, wereunable to dispose of those prisoners of war captured in myriads,in whole races, by the Assyrian kings, and apparently employedby them in the construction of Nineveh. Now, it is impossiblethat such works as the Pyramids could have been begun andfinished in the course of a single reign by free and remuneratedlabour, even if it had the help of numerous slaves. Certainarrangements in their design and the marvellously exact executionof the more important details of the masonry, prove that architects
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 16.—Construction of a Temjile at Thebes, (From Prisse.) of great ability and skilful workmen were, indeed, employed uponthose gigantic works ; but the great bulk of the task must haverequired the collective effort of a whole population ; of a popu-lation devoting themselves night and day to complete the workwhen once begun, like ants over their subterranean city or beesover their comb. Even supposing that history had been silent upon this subject,the architect could easily divine, from these monuments them-selves, how they had been constructed. Cast your eyes uponthe ruins of the Athenian Acropolis ; their dimensions will seemto you small in the extreme if you compare them with thebuildings of Egypt and Assyria ; on the other hand theirworkmanship is equally careful throughout ; it is as exact andperfect in the concealed parts of the structure as in those which 28 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. were to be visible, in the structural details as in the ornamentalpainting and s

Note About Images