Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

162 NOTHING TAKEN FROM THE GREEKS. [Chap. III.

great merit of originality; nor can any one, how-
ever prepossessed against it, deny the imposing
grandeur of the Theban temples, or the admirable
style of drawing in the unfinished chamber of
Belzoni's tomb, and other monuments of the earlier
eras, where the freedom of the outlines evinces the
skill of no ordinary artist.

The character of the animals of their country,
whether quadrupeds, birds, or fish, will be allowed
by every one to be faithfully maintained; nor is
this a slender proof of the progress of the arts, or
of the talent of a draughtsman. And though the
employment of granite,* particularly for statues,
cannot be considered the result of refined taste, it
will at least be admitted that the perfection they
arrived at in engraving this stone intimates won-
derful ingenuity, and testifies the advanced state of
Egyptian sculpture at a most remote period.

That they borrowed nothing from the Greeks
will never be questioned by any one in the least
acquainted with Egyptian antiquities, though some
have imagined that the accession of the Ptolemies
introduced a change, and even an improvement, in
the style of Egyptian sculpture. A change had,
indeed, already commenced, and was making fatal
progress during the era of those monarchs, but
this was the prelude to the total decadence of

* They covered the granite with a thin coating of stucco, and
coloured the hieroglyphics generally red, green, or blue.