as known to the Egyptians, 103 



and painting, seemed to promise an improvement, if not the 

 revival of taste, and arrested for a time their downfall ; but 

 an unexpected event was destined to bring about their sudden 

 decadence, and the Persian conquest dealt a blow from which 

 they vainly strove to recover in the succeeding reigns of the 

 Macedonian dynasty ; for not only were the finest monuments 

 destroyed or mutilated, statues,* works of art, and all the 

 wealth t of the country carried off to Persia, but the artists 

 themselves were compelled to leave their homes to follow the 

 conquerors to their capital, and to commemorate the victories 

 obtained over Egypt, by the authors of their own captivity and 

 misfortunes. Thus deprived of the finest models, humbled by 

 the lengthened occupation of the country, and losing the only 

 persons capable of directing taste or encouraging art, Egypt, 

 already beginning to sink, vainly endeavoured to struggle with 

 the overwhelming current of events ; and while Persia was be- 

 nefited, Egyptian art received its death-blow from the invasion 

 of Cambyses. 



The Egyptians had long been renowned for mathematical 

 science ; but it was not till the power and wealth of the country 

 were at their zenith, that full scope was given for its display 

 in the grand style of public monuments ; a fact sufficiently in- 

 dicated by their increase of scale and vastness of size at that 

 period, — the buildings of olden time being generally of much 

 smaller dimensions than those of the advanced age of the 18th 

 dynasty. I particularly allude to the temples and to the co- 

 lossal statues erected at the latter epoch, which far exceed in 

 their scale, and the size of the blocks themselves, the ordinary 

 monuments of an earlier era, as may be observed in the in- 

 creased proportions of the grand hall of Karnak, added by 

 Remeses the Great, and the dimensions of the sitting colossi of 

 Amunoph in the plain of Thebes, or that of Remeses, at the 



* Ptolemy Euergetes is said to have brought back 2500 statues, when be 

 invaded the Persian dominions, which had been taken from Egjpt by Cam* 

 byses. 



t Conf. Diodor. i. 46. *' The silver and gold, the abundance of ivory and 

 precious stones carried away by the Persians," and i. 49. 



