In primitive communities, however, the individual is less apparent than the collective racial influence. The forms of art are typical and symbolical rather than imitative or graphic. The great Asiatic races of antiquity, to judge from the remains of their monuments, the palaces of their kings, and their temples and tombs, adopted certain typical methods of representation which, in the case of the ancient Egyptians, became, in association with a strictly ordered and carefully organized social existence under an elaborate religious system and ritual, actual forms of language and record in the hieroglyphic. These consisted of certain abstract representations of familiar forms and figures inclosed in a kind of cartouche, incised upon stone walls, or stamped upon plaster and filled with colour.
The lotus flower served as a symbol of the annual overflow of the Nile (at the summer solstice) so important to the Egyptians; the ram and the sun symbolized Amru-Ra, the king of all gods; other animals, with and without wings, the cat, the dog, the sparrow-hawk for the soul, the beetle (scarabæus) for creative energy, generation and perpetuation of life, the snake for continuity of time, etc.; and even differently arranged lines, the zigzag for water, the circle, square, waved line, spiral, labyrinth, etc., betokened the divine and secretly-working powers of nature.
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS. TOMB OF BENI HASAN. NINETEENTH DYNASTY.
Such forms inclosed in cartouches massed together, sometimes in horizontal lines, sometimes in vertical, formed a striking wall decoration in themselves. A wonderful pitch of abstract yet exact characterization of natural form was reached by very simple means in this picture-writing. The birds especially are remarkable for their truth. Every object had to be clearly defined so as to be recognized at once and easily deciphered. The profile view of an object is always the most characteristic and typical, and lends itself best to a system of representation where all objects are on the same plane. So the glyphic artist kept strictly to profile.
Love of typical form, definite outline and mass, flat and vivid coloration—these are always characteristic of ancient Egyptian art, even when, as during the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, a freer style and greater naturalism is apparent in their portrait sculpture and wall-paintings.
ALTAR WITH OFFERINGS. EGYPTIAN MURAL PAINTING, THEBES.
The love of clearness of statement and their conception of art, as in the nature of a decorative record, seems to be emphatically expressed in their ways of representation. For instance, in painting an altar piled with offerings they give the altar front in elevation, but the offerings, in order that each and all should be seen drawn in profile, are arranged in ground plan. Thus we may say that their statements were pictures, their pictures were statements.
