Wilkinson, John Gardner: The Architecture Of Ancient Egypt: In Which The Columns Are Arranged In Orders, And The Temples Classified; With Remarks On The Early Progress Of Architecture, Etc.; With A Large Volume Of Plates Ilustrative Of The Subject, And Containing The Various Columns And details, From Actual Measurement (Text) (London, 1850)

PART I. EARLY ART IN EGYPT. 15

gion, and various branches of knowledge; their
most celebrated lawgivers, philosophers, and ma-
thematicians, repaired thither, as to the fountain-
head of learning; and the vElians, who consulted
the Egyptians as the wisest of mankind, only fol-
lowed the long-established belief in the wisdom of
that people. The first notions of a mythological
system, the names of the Gods, the mode of ap-
proaching the Deity, and the ceremonies of reli-
gion, were derived by the Greeks from Egypt;*
and the visits made to that country by Solon, Plato,
Eudoxus, Archimedes, Pythagoras, and so many
other philosophers, and mathematicians, for the
purpose of studying there, show the reputation it
enjoyed. It was universally allowed to be the
cradle of civilization, during the earliest periods,
and if Plato's statement respecting the thousands
of years, that painting, and sculpture, had been
practised there, is exaggerated, it shows at least
the unquestioned opinion of the priority of Egyp-
tian art.

The architecture, painting, and sculpture of
Egypt are also, in every respect, original, and of
native growth; and whatever real, or fancied, re-
semblance may exist, in the works of other coun-
tries, it is certain that the Egyptians were not the
imitators; since all known monuments of art are
modern, compared to the oldest in Egypt,f and

* Herodotus, ii, 50.

t The old temple of Apollo at Delphi, of Neptune near Mantinea,
and others, were of wood, which continued to be employed for columns
to a much later period. Vide Canina, sect. 2, part ii, c. 3/