CHAPTER VI. THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN ART. AND THE PLACE OF EGYPT IN ART HISTORY. In the study which we have now almost completed, we have made no attempt to reconstitute the history of Egypt. We are without the quahfications necessary for such a task. We do not read the hieroglyphs, and are therefore without the key to that great library in stone and wood, in canvas and papyrus — a library which could afford material for thousands of volumes — which has been left to the world by the ancient Egyptians. Our one object has been to make Egyptian art better known ; to place its incomparable age and its originality in a clear light, and to show the value of the example set by the first-born of civilization to the peoples who came after them and began to experience the wants and tastes which had long been completely satisfied in the "alley of the Nile. The importance and absolute originality of the national forms of art were hardly suspected before the days of Champollion ; he was something more than a philologist of genius ; his intellect was too penetrating and his taste too active, to leave him blind to any of the forms taken by the thoughts and sentiments of that Egypt which was so dear to him. " I shall write to our friend Dubois from Thebes," he says in one of his letters, " after having thoroughly explored Egypt and Nubia. I can say beforehand, that our Egyptians will cut a more important figure in the future, in the history of art, than in the past. I shall bring back with me a series of drawings from thino-s fine enoug-h to convert the most obstinate." ^ The forecasts of Champollion and Nestor L'Hote have been confirmed by the excavations of Lepsius and Mariette. The ^ Champollion. Lettres (T Egxpte et Jc Xubie, p. 113. VOL. 11. : F
