TO THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. 59 



prentices, by practising before them the methods of operation, 

 could not be reduced to didactic rules, nor described in lan- 

 guage practically intelligible. Hence, the political system of 

 the country provided for a succession of hereditary artists ; and 

 hence, also, when that system was destroyed, by the successive 

 conquests of Egypt by the Persians, the Greeks, and the Ro- 

 mans, the peculiar arts of the Egyptians were entirely lost. 

 The recovery of some of the processes they adopted, is due, 

 entirely, to the application of modern science to their existing 

 results. 



The late Mr. Flaxman, in his Lectures on that branch of 

 the Fine Arts, which he cultivated with so much success, has 

 attributed the want of anatomical details in the Egyptian 

 Sculpture, together with its total deficiency in the grace of 

 motion, to the imperfect skill of the Egyptians in Geometry. 

 Regarding this statement to imply rather their imperfect appli- 

 cation of that science, in agreement with some further infer- 

 ences of Mr. Flaxman, to be mentioned presently, I am much 

 gratified to find this confirmation of the views I have just stated, 

 in the opinions of a Sculptor so profoundly versed in the his- 

 tory, as well as in the philosophy, of his own art. The want of 

 application of Geometry to the arts, is correlative with the 

 absence of Physical science, which has advanced, in every 

 age, in direct proportion to the application of abstract mathe- 

 matical knowledge, to the objects of nature and the pursuits 

 of civilization. In the basso-relievos and paintings of the 

 Egyptians, Mr. Flaxman observes, there is no perspective; 

 and figures intended to be in violent action are equally desti- 

 tute of joints and other anatomical forms, of the balance and 

 spring of motion, the force of a blow, and the just variety of 

 line in the turning figure. The cause of these defects he states 

 to have been, want of the anatomical, mechanical, and geome- 

 trical science, relating to the arts of Painting and Sculpture. 



These opinions are in exact agreement with the views I 

 have offered. The manner in which the more perfect mum- 

 mies have been eviscerated, shows, that the Egyptians must 

 have been excellent manipulative anatomists, skilful and ac- 

 curate dissectors; their stupendous pyramids and temples 

 evince their ability as practical mechanics, and we have seen 

 that they were profound Geometers ; but there was no Philo- 

 sophy in their cultivation of the arts, and therefore no syste- 

 matic combination of their separate knowledge of various na- 

 tural objects, which could tend to refine the different arts they 

 practised. Hence the art of Sculpture, as well as others, re- 

 mained unimproved among them, until the Greeks, under the 

 Ptolemies, introduced the study of the natural sciences, pro- 



