< Egyptian Ornament (continued from page 3-188) >
All Egyptian ornament is symbolical or emblematical. The priesthood laid down certain laws and rules regarding art. Living objects were not allowed to be painted naturally. Hence we have their conventionalism. We see figures, flowers, and animals in their decoration and sculpture, but all alike conventionalized.
Two plants were used in their ornament, the lotus, a species of water-lily; and the papyrus, a reed; both of which were held sacred. After the yearly inundation of the Nile—only through which was the soil made fertile—the lotus was the first plant that sprung up. This was a sign of the coming vegetation, and it symbolized the approach of the harvest. The papyrus, from which their paper was made, was used in their architecture, the columns being architectural representations of bundles of papyri tied together and a lotus springing out of the top for the capitol; at the base of the column was a representation, in color, of the sheath out of which the papyrus grows. Some of the rooms in their palaces having these columns looking not unlike groves of papyri.
The sphenix, so often seen represented in Egyptian art, both in sculpture and in painting, has a man's head and a lion’s body, symbolizing intellect and physical force united. Cats, dogs, and serpents were sacred animals. The winged globe, which is a globe with wings spread horizontally on each side of it, is the emblem of divinity. This is painted over all the doors and some of the windows in the houses and palaces; it symbolized protection to the room in which it was painted.
Although Greek, Roman, Assyrian, and Byzantine, and later, Arabian and Moresque have all sprung from Egyptian ornament, none of them have the power and spirit of the parent stem. The Egyptians were a stern, inflexible, morose, and determined people, hence their ornament—which is so entirely original with themselves—is fully characteristic of its producers, To conventionalize a dower, they tock the sentiment of the natural dower and reproduced it poetically; or, in other words, they added art to nature by the impress of a man’s mind.
The Greeks received their first knowledge of art from the Egyptians—who were a prosperous people when Greece was in its infancy—and conventionalized the honey-suckle, which is very beautiful. They aimed more for refinement than for power, and looked more to detail than to general effect. The Assyrians had no originality whatever, but copied Egyptian ornament, and only altered it so far as the different customs of their country required them. When we go further we find in the Arabian or Moresque not the slightest trace of natural objects conventionalized, no decided plant portrayed, as the lotus or honey-suckle. The forms employed by the Moors in their ornament are purely ideal forms, beautifully drawn, and always truthfully expressed, the law of radiation in nature being strictly adhered to.
All Egyptian architecture is polychromatic. Their palaces were construbted of stone, then painted and decorated in distemper. The ceilings of their rooms were generally painted blue, with white stars sprinkled about, at unequal intervals, to give the idea of the heaven above.
In the first attempts at color by any people we always find the primary colors. Blue, red and yellow predominate, and usually with great success. These were the principal colors used on the Egyptians, with green, and, in their worst periods of art, purple brown and pink. All the painted decoration in their palaces, houses, and tombs, were painted in distemper.
As far as we know their ornament is absolutely original with themselves, and in all the styles and epochs, or period of ornamental art, which hare followed, none is so thoroughly adapted to the purpose for which it was designed as the pure and truthful ornament of the Egyptians.
An Abortive Seance
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Editor's notes
- ↑ An Abortive Seance by Olcott, H. S.