DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12249#0063
CONCEPTIONS OF TIIEBAN LIFE INDISTINCT. 33
may actually have borne them to the foot of the
Diospolitan throne in a military triumph; funeral and
other religious processions, as they may have wound
their-way to the Necropolis, or marched through the
avenues of the stately temples. A recent Avriter * has
strung together these various episodes as rendered iu
the mural decorations, with the view of constructing
a Theban scene of the time of the great Eighteenth
Dynasty. But although he has used his materials
with considerable boldness, and strained some of them,
as was almost inevitable, into rather dubious points of
contact, the result wants the cohesion of natural con-
nexion, and the individual subjects, being such as I
have just mentioned, merely stand as a few of the
active incidents of Egyptian civilization.
The integral character of life in the great city,
fails to come before us from these and the other
sources as yet at command. The specialties of trade,
the powers of production, the fountains of supply, the
relation of classes, the ordinary occupations of those
not engaged in handicraft, the channels of mental
culture, the administration of law, the relation which
religion in its ceremonial and director influences bore
to daily cares and duties, the springs of common intc-
* Feydeau, in his Histoirc des Usages Funebres, pp. 136, seq.
the finish of whose plates is remarkable even in these days of skilful
illustration. His attempt referred to above has been popularised or
paraphrased — and, as regards accuracy, not, it may be supposed, im-
proved— in a fantastic novelette entitled Roman de la Momie, by
Th. Gautier.
D
may actually have borne them to the foot of the
Diospolitan throne in a military triumph; funeral and
other religious processions, as they may have wound
their-way to the Necropolis, or marched through the
avenues of the stately temples. A recent Avriter * has
strung together these various episodes as rendered iu
the mural decorations, with the view of constructing
a Theban scene of the time of the great Eighteenth
Dynasty. But although he has used his materials
with considerable boldness, and strained some of them,
as was almost inevitable, into rather dubious points of
contact, the result wants the cohesion of natural con-
nexion, and the individual subjects, being such as I
have just mentioned, merely stand as a few of the
active incidents of Egyptian civilization.
The integral character of life in the great city,
fails to come before us from these and the other
sources as yet at command. The specialties of trade,
the powers of production, the fountains of supply, the
relation of classes, the ordinary occupations of those
not engaged in handicraft, the channels of mental
culture, the administration of law, the relation which
religion in its ceremonial and director influences bore
to daily cares and duties, the springs of common intc-
* Feydeau, in his Histoirc des Usages Funebres, pp. 136, seq.
the finish of whose plates is remarkable even in these days of skilful
illustration. His attempt referred to above has been popularised or
paraphrased — and, as regards accuracy, not, it may be supposed, im-
proved— in a fantastic novelette entitled Roman de la Momie, by
Th. Gautier.
D