A history of art in ancient Egypt (1883) (14585949108)

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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of writtentexts with figured monuments. In the first period of his intellectual development, man is unableto comprehend any life but that which he experiences in his ownperson. He is as yet unable to observe, to analyse or to generalize.He does not perceive the characteristics which distinguish himfrom things about him, and he sees nothing in nature but arepetition of himself. He is therefore incapable of distinguishingbetween life such as he leads it and mere existence. He dreamsof no other way of being than his own. As such is the tendencyof his intellect, nothing could be more natural or more logical thanthe conception to which it leads him in presence of the problemoffered to him every time that a corpse descends into the grave.M. Maspero has so thoroughly understood the originality of thesolution adopted by the Egyptians that we cannot do better, inattempting to explain the hypothesis, at once gross and subtle, towhich they had recourse for consolation, than borrow his rendering
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iraiiiiii:iiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiir,Miaiiiiiiiiiiiiiin;:uiiiiiiiiiiiiiiir,.i iiii,i!;ii!;,iiini\!iiiliiliiiii.!;iillllinKmiiiMi.i;iiilli;,liiilillliiii!;i?; J.Sulpis del cL sc- ±iAS-KELlh,lAT AHYDOS Sepulchral Architecture. 127 of the texts which throw Hght upon this subject, together with someof the reflections which those texts suggested to him.^ Were we to affirm that during thousands of years no changetook place in the ideas of the Egyptians upon a future life, weshould not be believed, and, as a fact, those ideas underwent acontinual process of refinement. Under the eighteenth andnineteenth dynasties, during those centuries when the limits ofEgyptian empire and Egyptian thought were carried farthest afield,we find traces of doctrines which offer notable variations, and even,when closely examined, actual contradictions. These are successiveanswers made during a lonor course of time to the eternal andnever-changing enigma. As they became more capable of philo-sophic speculation the Eg