DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4670#0116
CHAPTER V.
SYMBOLICAL DECORATION.
^HE Egyptian who expressed all his
thoughts by a symbolical writing,
full of determinatives, was naturally much
given to symbolism in his decoration.
Not, however, that all his decoration was
symbolic in a recondite sense; the ever-
present lotus ornament was merely a thing
of beauty ; the lotus was not a sacred
plant, it is not associated with any divinity
in particular, and only in one unusual in-
stance does it ever occur in the hiero-
glyphs. The fanciful habit of Europe, in
seeing a hidden sense in every flower, was
106
SYMBOLICAL DECORATION.
^HE Egyptian who expressed all his
thoughts by a symbolical writing,
full of determinatives, was naturally much
given to symbolism in his decoration.
Not, however, that all his decoration was
symbolic in a recondite sense; the ever-
present lotus ornament was merely a thing
of beauty ; the lotus was not a sacred
plant, it is not associated with any divinity
in particular, and only in one unusual in-
stance does it ever occur in the hiero-
glyphs. The fanciful habit of Europe, in
seeing a hidden sense in every flower, was
106