EGYPTIAN ART. 
235 
Art of the Egyptians .—From the specimens of the architecture and 
sculpture of the Egyptians which remain to us, we see that their art was 
of a peculiar character, remarkable for its colossal proportions and mag¬ 
nificence. The earliest known architecture, the pyramids of the 4th dy¬ 
nasty, exhibits simple forms of vast magnitude, and of the minutest finish. 
In the more complicated structure of the tombs of Benyhassan, under 
the 12th dynasty, the elements of Doric architecture may be traced in 
the columns and triglyphs. Under the 18th dynasty, the columns 
have capitals, representing lotus buds and flowers of the lotus, papyrus, 
and other plants. The temples are rectangular, with heavy advanced 
gateways tapering to their summits, and doors of the same kind. The 
courts are hypsethral, the walls externally and internally covered with 
sculptures, and the approach generally by a dromos, or avenue of 
sphinxes or divinities. There is seldom any statue in the adytum, 
a living animal being in place of this. Other temples were hewn 
into the solid rock, and the tombs consist of galleries cut in the 
same material, having their sides covered with paintings and sculp¬ 
tures, referring to religious, historical, or domestic events. (See 
Specimens, Nos. 169-181.) In sculpture, they worked in full relief, 
bas-relief very slightly raised, the projecting parts being kept as much 
as possible in one plane, and in a peculiar relief cut below the original 
surface, called cavo-rilievo, or intaglio rilievato ; in the full relief 
of stone, composition, and porcelain, the standing figures have the 
mass between the legs reserved to support the figure, and the arms 
were not detached, but pendent at the sides, or raised to the breast; a 
plinth, resembling the side of an obelisk, was often placed behind, des¬ 
tined to contain the inscriptions. In metal and wood the arms and 
legs were detached. The hair is disposed in very regular masses of 
vertical curls, falling from the crown of the head; the eyes, eyelashes, 
and brows were represented prolonged to the ears, with shelly or acute 
lids; the hole of the ear was on a level with the pupil, the lips 
strongly marked, but expanding like the Nubian, the expression 
smiling, as in the early art of iEgina ; the beard not spread along the 
cheek, but platted into a narrow mass of square or recurved form, 
with ribands passing to the cap. In bas-relief and cavo-rilievo, 
profile was generally used as more distinct and simple, the eyes were 
elongated with a full pupil, a peculiarity also of the earliest Greek art. 
The form is on the whole slender, the features calm and smiling, 
not betraying emotion ; the inner markings of the figure were not. 
given, and indications of muscular movement never fully developed. 
Great regularity, squareness, and repose, well adapted for architecture, 
characterize their art, which occasionally exhibits the delicacy of a 
cameo. Portraiture was early known, and a conventional character 
of feature assigned to different divinities, who, however, are often 
made to resemble the reigning monarch. Three canons of Egyptian 
proportions are known : I. The canon of the time of the Pyramids ; 
the height was reckoned at six feet from the sole of the foot to the 
crown of the head, and subdivisions obtain by one-half or one-third 
of a foot. 2. The canon from the 12th to the 22nd dynasty is only 
an extension of the first. The whole figure was contained in a num¬ 
ber of squares of half a foot; and the whole height divided into 
eighteen parts. In these two canons the height above the sixth foot 
