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)

28 ARCHITECTURE OF EGVPT. PART I.

1 st and 2nd Psamaticus, and Amasis, made an at-
tempt to revive the style of the best periods. The
elegant low relievos of former times then took the
place of the ordinary intaglios, and the greatest care
was bestowed on the chiselling, and colouring of
sculptures; but taste had gone; character was
wanting in the figures; and their excellence con-
sisted, rather, in the minuteness, and mechanical
management of detail, than in freedom of design.
They were also mostly confined to a small scale;
and that excellence of drawing, for which the ar-
tists of the best periods were so remarkable, may
be looked for in vain among the outlines of that
age. For though the Egyptians never understood the
true method of art, to which other people of un-
fettered genius attained, the drawing of large
figures, in the time of the eighteenth, and nineteenth,
dynasties, is such as to command admiration, for the
beauty of their outlines, showing the freedom of the
hand that executed them. The best instance of this
is in the unfinished chamber of Belzoni's tomb,
where the lines, frequently extending down more
than half the length of the arm of a colossal figure,
are drawn at a single stroke of the pencil; and
any one might now profit, by studying the mecha-
nical skill there displayed; and learn to practise
his hand, by imitating the decision of those mas-
terly outlines.

The Persian invasion put an end to this effort, to
arrest the downfall of art; and the later Egyptian
sculptors were satisfied, with merely iraitatiug the
productions of former times. But, on the accession