DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4670#0071
NATURAL DECORATION 61
We now reach the largest and most
complex growth of Egyptian ornament in
the lotus, so widely spread that some
have seen in it the source of all orna-
ment. Without going so far, we shall
nnd plenty in it to tax our reasoning and
imagination. If I prefer, in dealing with
this, to ignore the developments of it
seen outside of Egypt as aids to under-
standing it, this is only because those
foreign examples are so much later that
they are a reflex of various Egyptian
periods, and cat) not show anything cer-
tainly as to the long anterior course of
development in Egypt itself.
The debated question of lotus and papy-
rus disappears at. once when we look at
the feathery head of minute flowers which
the papyrus bears. That some flower,
We now reach the largest and most
complex growth of Egyptian ornament in
the lotus, so widely spread that some
have seen in it the source of all orna-
ment. Without going so far, we shall
nnd plenty in it to tax our reasoning and
imagination. If I prefer, in dealing with
this, to ignore the developments of it
seen outside of Egypt as aids to under-
standing it, this is only because those
foreign examples are so much later that
they are a reflex of various Egyptian
periods, and cat) not show anything cer-
tainly as to the long anterior course of
development in Egypt itself.
The debated question of lotus and papy-
rus disappears at. once when we look at
the feathery head of minute flowers which
the papyrus bears. That some flower,