DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14563#0303
ANTIQUITY OF ART AND SCIENCE.
265
agility are introduced; also, hunting scenes. Agriculture,
working in glass, in gold, in clay, and in flax — all the com-
mon trades, and the arts of painting and statuary, are here
depicted. The principal failure of the artist, is in the
representation of trees and flowers, and in the perspective
of landscapes.
Who made these tombs ? Barbarians ? Infants ? Or men
of genius in a golden age of art ? Who paid for such works?
These were not the tombs of kings, but of private persons —
the inhabitants of the city of Nus, that once stood upon the
opposite bank of the river. Was not that a golden age, in
which wealth flowed in such channels? Did not Egypt
teach Greece and Rome ? Diodorus acknowledges that the
Greeks derived from the Egyptians much of their mythology
respecting Hades and the future state. We have already
seen that the idea of Charon and his boat was suggested by
the practice of ferrying the dead across the Nile, and by
the sacred lake, to their tombs in the mountains. Greek
poetry was Egyptian fact. The Greeks borrowed in art as
well as in theology. The golden ages of Greece and Koine
derived much of their splendor from the prior golden age
Of Egypt.
Though the tradition of the foundation of Attica by an
Egyptian colony, led by Cecrops, is not confirmed by au-
thentic history, yet the fact that before the conquests of
Alexander, Egypt had become the resort of the scholars of
Greece, that her poets, her historians, her philosophers, her
astronomers, and her mathematicians resorted to lieliopolis,
as the scholars of our time resort to Oxford and to Berlin,
and the fact that after the foundation of Alexandria, the
treasures of classic Greece herself, found in Egypt an asy-
lum from the decay of luxury and the desolation of war,
are proof of the intimate relations between the two coun-
tries, and of the influence of Egyptian civilization upon the
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265
agility are introduced; also, hunting scenes. Agriculture,
working in glass, in gold, in clay, and in flax — all the com-
mon trades, and the arts of painting and statuary, are here
depicted. The principal failure of the artist, is in the
representation of trees and flowers, and in the perspective
of landscapes.
Who made these tombs ? Barbarians ? Infants ? Or men
of genius in a golden age of art ? Who paid for such works?
These were not the tombs of kings, but of private persons —
the inhabitants of the city of Nus, that once stood upon the
opposite bank of the river. Was not that a golden age, in
which wealth flowed in such channels? Did not Egypt
teach Greece and Rome ? Diodorus acknowledges that the
Greeks derived from the Egyptians much of their mythology
respecting Hades and the future state. We have already
seen that the idea of Charon and his boat was suggested by
the practice of ferrying the dead across the Nile, and by
the sacred lake, to their tombs in the mountains. Greek
poetry was Egyptian fact. The Greeks borrowed in art as
well as in theology. The golden ages of Greece and Koine
derived much of their splendor from the prior golden age
Of Egypt.
Though the tradition of the foundation of Attica by an
Egyptian colony, led by Cecrops, is not confirmed by au-
thentic history, yet the fact that before the conquests of
Alexander, Egypt had become the resort of the scholars of
Greece, that her poets, her historians, her philosophers, her
astronomers, and her mathematicians resorted to lieliopolis,
as the scholars of our time resort to Oxford and to Berlin,
and the fact that after the foundation of Alexandria, the
treasures of classic Greece herself, found in Egypt an asy-
lum from the decay of luxury and the desolation of war,
are proof of the intimate relations between the two coun-
tries, and of the influence of Egyptian civilization upon the
23