30 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



In the last ten thousand years, covering the neoHthic and 

 historic periods, Petrie finds evidence of eight cycles, of which 

 the first two were found in prehistoric Egypt; then four, 

 covering the whole dynastic period of Egypt; and, last, the 

 classic and western European cycles. Each cycle starts with 

 an archaic period characterized particularly by the careful 

 working of detail without treating it as an integral part of 

 the whole. The rise from archaism to inaturity is almost 

 always rapid, and, after a period of inaturity, decline sets in, 

 characterized by a tendency to stiffness and conventionality 

 and a slow worsening and degradation of the style. 



The most familiar cycle is, of course, that of the classical 

 period. We have the archaic Greek statues of the sixth cen- 

 tury B.C., followed by the great classical period of maturity 

 in the late fifth and fourth centuries, and then the transfor- 

 mation into the Hellenistic period, followed by the long 

 decay through Roinan times. To some extent, perhaps, this 

 cycle is complicated by a revival in the Roman period, accom- 

 panied by a copying of the Greek classical works by the 

 Roman sculptors. 



If the classical period alone w-ere known to us, we should 

 dismiss the whole matter as being peculiar to the historical 

 events of that period; and this is generally done by historians 

 trained primarily in classical history. But the Egyptian evi- 

 dence for the existence of parallel cycles in sculpture is over- 

 whelming. The same type of cycle can be traced, for in- 

 stance, in Petrie's fourth period— that of the pyramid build- 

 ers—in the rise of the archaic sculpture, the freedom of the 

 sculpture and architecture of the Fourth Dynasty, the slow 

 decline through the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, and the col- 

 lapse of the sculpture as the feudal system displaced the cen- 

 tralized government of the Old Kingdom. A new archaic 

 sculpture then came into evidence, rising to the maturity of 

 Petrie's fifth period in the Twelfth Dynasty, and then deteri- 

 orated, disappearing with the invasion of the Hyksos. The 

 sixth period cycle is that of tlie Ne^v Kingdom, ^vhere the 

 period of decline was very prolonged and ^\ as marked by the 



