DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12249#0064
31
THEBES.
rest or sectional action — these, the true peculiarities
of status, can be but imperfectly traced in their
elements. It is true that by proceeding deductively
the rough outlines might to some extent be predicated,
and by reasoning on theoretical principles it might be
assumed that a given series of conditions would prevail
in a society living under the general circumstances
which records and vestiges reveal. But such infe-
rential portraiture would, for purposes of inquiry,
amount to little, as it would want that realism which
could alone assure us that we had caught the features
of a special or national development. And while this
essential quality is too deficient for the actual depicting
of city life in ancient Egypt, it is curious to remark
how a very few touches might have supplied it
to a degree almost unequalled. Por, most significant
indications do abound, in the painted represen-
tations of so many facts in pursuits and in man-
ners ; and it is easy to perceive to what extent these
would have acquired unity and vitality, if supplemented
only by a little more of the scenic effect of art, or
by a little of the informing spirit exhaled from the
pages of .writers unconsciously embodying the cir-
cumstances which surrounded them. They are in
truth, as the dry bones in the prophet's vision, fit to
be thus clothed upon and animated—ready for the in-
vocation, " Come from the four winds, oh breath, and
breathe upon them that they may live." But the
breath we seek, is a breath bearing the echoes of a
contemporary social literature. And we have no
THEBES.
rest or sectional action — these, the true peculiarities
of status, can be but imperfectly traced in their
elements. It is true that by proceeding deductively
the rough outlines might to some extent be predicated,
and by reasoning on theoretical principles it might be
assumed that a given series of conditions would prevail
in a society living under the general circumstances
which records and vestiges reveal. But such infe-
rential portraiture would, for purposes of inquiry,
amount to little, as it would want that realism which
could alone assure us that we had caught the features
of a special or national development. And while this
essential quality is too deficient for the actual depicting
of city life in ancient Egypt, it is curious to remark
how a very few touches might have supplied it
to a degree almost unequalled. Por, most significant
indications do abound, in the painted represen-
tations of so many facts in pursuits and in man-
ners ; and it is easy to perceive to what extent these
would have acquired unity and vitality, if supplemented
only by a little more of the scenic effect of art, or
by a little of the informing spirit exhaled from the
pages of .writers unconsciously embodying the cir-
cumstances which surrounded them. They are in
truth, as the dry bones in the prophet's vision, fit to
be thus clothed upon and animated—ready for the in-
vocation, " Come from the four winds, oh breath, and
breathe upon them that they may live." But the
breath we seek, is a breath bearing the echoes of a
contemporary social literature. And we have no