THE FESTAL DEVELOPMENT OF ART. 747 



solar god were ascribed the Selenii, deities of the woodlands, and 

 to the moon-goddess the Naiads of the flowing streams. And 

 there appear also satyrs, those happy genii whom the sculptor had 

 delighted to picture as the souls of the forest, unwitting of sorrow ; 

 of these human-eyed creatures the artist often chose representa- 

 tion in mask, with open look and parted lips, common feature of 

 Hellenic sculpture — an expression of unchecked animal sweetness, 

 no muscle drawn or compressed, and with all the unalarming hint 

 of furry ears and budding horns ! " 



Painting, except as pigments were applied to faces, masks, and 

 architectural adornments, had a relatively small place in the 

 primitive festivals, as indeed it had in all ancient as compared 

 with modern art. The whole theory of perspective was unknown, 

 without which painting limps and halts. Still, we may see how 

 it could contribute to the festival at a very early stage by the 

 practice of the Sioux in their mimetic elk dance. When the sa- 

 cred animal appears to a brave in a dream, a tent is placed with 

 an opening to the east, and decorated at the top with four bands 

 of blue, while across the entrance the figure of an elk is delineated 

 with red paint, so arranged that the visitors shall pass through 

 its body. Here is a crude contribution of painting to a very 

 primitive festival. Of course, the evidence concerning the extent 

 to which painting entered into the early festal performances can 

 be only indirect. But it is important to note that the art of writ- 

 ing is derived from that of drawing, and that all the earliest 

 forms of written language are pictographic. And they were also 

 the special possession of the priests who had charge of the reli- 

 gious festival. It is more than probable that writing originated 

 from the attempt to produce a series of pictures of early festivals, 

 either religious or triumphal, or both — for victory was always 

 celebrated with religious rites. Beginning thus as a series of rude 

 imitative drawings, writing passed into more and more symbolic 

 stages, among the Egyptians traversing the clearly marked phases 

 of hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic writing, supplying the Phoe- 

 nicians with the alphabet, whose crude characters were trans- 

 ported to Greece, and these — considerably modified — to Rome, 

 whence we derive those letters with which we print our books 

 and newspapers. Very early, then, was drawing known as a fine 

 art, although imperfectly developed. Color was used on the 

 earliest statuary. The independent statue, fashioned either in 

 stone or wood, appears in the oldest Egypt, and has about it a 

 good deal of that crude realism which marks the infancy of repre- 

 sentative art. The flesh is colored up to correspond with Nature, 

 the flesh of women being tinted a lighter hue than that of men ; 

 the eyes are represented often by some special material ; the dra- 

 pery is painted. The earliest statues of the gods of Greece were 



