A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (of 2)

A HISTORY OF ART IN ANCIENT EGYPT
FROM THE FRENCH OF GEORGES PERROT, PROFESSOR IN THE FACULTY OF LETTERS, PARIS; MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE AND CHARLES CHIPIEZ.
ILLUSTRATED WITH FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT ENGRAVINGS IN THE TEXT, AND FOURTEEN STEEL AND COLOURED PLATES.
IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOL. II.
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY WALTER ARMSTRONG, B. A., Oxon., AUTHOR OF ALFRED STEVENS, ETC.
London: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited. New York: A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON. 1883.
London: R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, BREAD STREET HILL.


CIVIL AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE.
We have seen that sepulchral and religious architecture are represented in Egypt by numerous and well preserved monuments. It is not so in the case of civil and military architecture. Of these, time has spared but very few remains and all that the ancient historians tell us on the subject amounts to very little. Our best aids in the endeavour to fill up this lacuna are the pictures and bas-reliefs of the tombs, in which store-houses, granaries, houses and villas of the Pharaonic period are often figured.
It is not always easy, however, to trace the actual conformation and arrangement of those buildings through the conventionalities employed by the artists, and we must therefore begin by attempting to understand the ideas with which the Egyptians made the representations in question. Their idea was to show all at a single glance; to combine in one view matters which could only be seen in reality from many successive points, such as all the façades of a building, with its external aspect and internal arrangements. This notion may be compared to that which recommends itself to a young child when, in drawing a profile, he insists upon giving it two ears, because when he looks at a front face he sees two ears standing out beyond either cheek.