The ornamentist also borrowed motives from those robes and carpets of varied colour, which are preserved for us in the paintings (see Fig. [285]). But with time and experience his hand became more skilful, his imagination more active, and he was no longer contented to convey his ideas wholesale, from nature on the one hand, and on the other from those humble arts which flourish even in the earliest ages of every civilized society. He learnt to create designs for himself—designs which can certainly not be traced to the mats and tissues which formed his first models. Our Figure [286] will give some idea of the variety of motives to be found upon the panels and ceilings of the tombs and other buildings at Thebes. The chess-board pattern which was so much used during the Ancient Empire, is found here also; but by its side appear patterns composed of frets, meandering lines, and rosettes. Below these, again, are designs in which lines twist themselves into volutes and spirals, crossing each other and enclosing lotus flowers, rosettes, and forms like the shafts of columns. The flowers are in no way imitative; their motives have been suggested, not supplied, by nature. The papyrus may have given the first idea for the sixth of these designs, while in the last we find a motive which afterwards played an important part in Greek and Roman ornament—namely, the skull of an ox. The two specimens of this last-named motive given by Prisse, are taken from tombs of the eighteenth and twentieth dynasties.[358]
Fig. 285.—Carpet hung across a pavilion.
These tombs and the mummy cases they contain are often decorated with symbolic ornament, as well as with geometrical designs and those suggested by the national flora. The compartments of ceiling decorations have scarabs in their centres, and upon the mummy cases it is occasionally substituted for the uræus-crowned disk in the centre of a huge pair of extended wings. Beneath it, figures of Isis or Nephthys, the guardians of the tomb, are found (Fig. [287]). The effect is similar to that of the winged globes which are found upon cornices. In the latter the disk which represents the sun is red, and stands boldly out from the green of the two wings. The latter, again, are relieved against a striped ground, on which bands of red, blue, and white are laid alternatively. Thanks to the happy choice of these colours, the result is excellent from a decorative point of view, and that in spite of its continual repetition and the simplicity of its lines.
Fig. 286.—Specimens of ceiling decorations. From Prisse.
TOMB OF PTAH-HOTEP
CEILING AND UPPER PART OF WESTERN WALL
Drawn in perspective to a scale of one fifth
Fig. 287.—Painting on a mummy case. Description, vol. ii. pl. 58.