Identifier: historyofartinan01perruoft 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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Text Appearing Before Image: ordemand. It was one of the fundamental principles of Egyptian moralitythat those who were powerful should treat the poor and feeble withkindness and consideration. Their sepulchral inscriptions tell us The Constitution of Egyptian Society. 39 that their kings and princes of the blood, their feudal lords andfunctionaries of every grade, made it a point of honour to observethis rule. They were not content with strict justice, they practiseda bountiful charity which reminds us of that which is the chiefbeauty of the Christians morality. The Book of the Dead—that passport for Egyptians into the other world which is foundupon every mummy—gives us the most simple, and at the sametime the most complete description of this virtue. I have givenbread to the hungry, I have given water to the thirsty, I haveclothed the naked ... I have not calumniated the slave in theears of his master. The lengthy panegyrics of which someepitaphs consist, are, in reality no more than amplifications of this

Text Appearing After Image: iU^ -c Fig. 30.—Fi-orn the tomb of Menofre, at Sakkarah. (Champollion, pi. 408.) theme. As for me, I have been the staff of the old man, thenurse of the infant, the help of the distressed, a warm shelter forall who were cold in the Thebaid, the bread and sustenance of thedown-trodden, of whom there is no lack in Middle Egypt, and theirprotector against the barbarians.^ The prince Entef relates thathe has arrested the arm of the violent, used brute force to thosewho used brute force, showed hauteur to the haughty, and loweredthe shoulders of those who raised them up, that he himself on theother hand, was a man in a thousand, wise, learned, and of a soundand truthful judgment, knowing the fool from the wise man, paying ^ Louvre, c. i. Cf. Maspero, «« G&uverneur de Thebes au temps de la douziemcdynastie. 40 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. attention to the skilful and turning his back upon the ignorant,. . . the father of the miserable and the mother of the motherless,the terro

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