63. Bulls in marshes
64. Bearers of offerings
CHAPTER V
THE PAINTING AND DRAWING
Painting is certainly the earliest art of Egypt; but, being more perishable than sculpture, many periods of it are hardly represented at present. A very early prehistoric vase, painted with white slip on the red ground, shows the crude figures of two men fighting ([fig. 65]). Other such vases have plants and other objects painted. From the middle of the prehistoric age, belonging to the second civilisation, are the light-brown vases painted in red, with figures of ships and people ([fig. 66]), plants, and imitations of stone and wicker patterns. The joints are fairly correct in the men and animals, though deficient in the woman with raised arms. But the whole air is very crude as compared with the roughest efforts of the dynastic race. Another painting rather later in the prehistoric age is the ship from a tomb fresco ([fig. 67]). The arms of the woman are more correctly drawn as straight, but the men are worse posed than in the earlier work. The idea of the figures seen above the ships, but entirely detached from them, may be that they are seen on the opposite bank of a narrow river, beyond the ships.
The advanced painting of the early pyramid times is shown by the geese ([fig. 68]), stalking along in a meadow amid tufts of herbage. The air of grave self-sufficiency is admirably caught, and this small piece of a great wall-scene at Medum is deservedly admired. Of the Middle Kingdom there is no fine example remaining.
EARLIEST PAINTING
65. First age of prehistoric painting