Identifier: historyofartinan01perruoft (find matches)
Title: A history of art in ancient Egypt
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Perrot, Georges, 1832-1914 Chipiez, Charles, 1835-1901 Armstrong, Walter, Sir, 1850-1918
Subjects: Art -- Egypt History Egypt -- Antiquities
Publisher: London : Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ed upon them. Most of their manuscripts which have come down to us treat of religious matters, and even in those which are ostensibly concerned only with profane subjects, mythological names and allusions occur on every page, almost at every line. ^ An examination into the primitive religious beliefs of the Egyptians is full of difficulty. In discovering new papyri, in The saying of one of the characters of Petronius might be applied to Egypt: This country is so thickly peopled with divinities that it is easier to find a god than a man. The place held by religious observances in the daily life of Egypt is clearly indicated by Herodotus (ii. 37): The Egyptians, he says, are very religious;they surpass all other nations in the adoration with which they regard their deities. 2 Maspero, Hisioire ancienne, pp. 26, 27. The Egyptian Religion and the Plastic Arts. 45 determining the signification of signs which have been puzzling aegyptologists, the inquirer will undoubtedly do good work, and s : =■ N
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Fig. 33.—Anienhotep or Amenophis III. presented by Phre to Amen-Ra ; Thebes. (Champollion, pi. 344.) will establish facts which are sure not to lack interest and even importance; but even when documents abound and when every [46 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt.] separate word they contain is understood, even then it is very difficult to penetrate to the root of their meaning. A glimpse will be caught of it, I admit, by one of those efforts of inductive divination which distinguish modern research; but even then it will remain to explain the primitive and only half-understood notions of five or six thousand years ago in the philosophical vocabularies of to-day. It is here that the most difficult and irksome part of the task begins. We who represent the old age, or, perhaps, the prime, of humanity, think of these matters and speak of them as abstractions, while the Egyptians, who were children compared to us, thought of them under concrete forms. Their very ideals were material, more or less v

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