IV. 
PYRAMIDS OF DJIZA. ' 207 
part of the history of the Arts in Egypt is a chap. 
circumstance truly lamentable. All the wrecks 
now remaining form only a mutilated body. 
« * * 
" Pliny has fallen into an unpardonable con- 
tradiction, when he maintains that the art of 
writing had been known from all eternity^, and 
denies, at the same time, that the Egyptians 
practised painting during six thousand years. 
Plato finds no difficulty in believing it to have 
been known to them for ten thousand years'. 
When Plato, in his Dialogues, makes an anony- 
mous interlocutor assert that ten thousand years 
had elapsed since some pictures then seen in Egypt 
were painted^ we should observe, that colours, 
applied in all their natural purity on the parti- 
tions of the Thehan grottoes, might really be 
capable of supporting so long a period. The 
fewer mixtures are admitted in colours termed 
native, and appertaining neither to the vegetable 
nor animal kingdom, the less they are subject 
(2) De Pauw is evidently here aiming at the introduction of his 
own sceptical notions with respeCt to chronology. We are to under- 
stand Plitiy's use of the word eternity only as referring to a period 
antecedent to existing records, or those of the uvTox^ont'- an obser- 
vation necessary to rescue many of the antient philosophers from the 
absurd notions imputed to them. 
(3) De Legibus, Dial. 2. 
