A mete knowledge of drawing must have been exceed ingly prevalent in a country where every writer was ne cessarily a draughtsman, but a draughtsman, in the most limited sense of the word. Forming part of the 'hierar chy, they were not permitted, if they had had the genius to do so, to attempt the slightest improvement or variety, or to depart in any thing from ancient practice. One generation of artists succeeded another, as wave follows wave, and might have rolled on in the same narrow tract to the present time, had the revolutions of the world, as in.China, left their progress undisturbed. Any attempt at high finishing was quite superfluous to their purpose, and also at light and shade, which would ac cordingly receive no attention in their performances; nor is there any reason to suppose that they possessed the slightest idea of it. They seldom departed from the sim plicity of profile, they painted the portraits of their dead upon the linen that enveloped the bodies of the mummy, and seems to have succeeded in producing a wonderful resemblance, considering the imperfection of their art, as the likeness is in general exceedingly close to the expression and countenances of their descendants of the present day. These pictures are curious, as being the most ancient specimens of portrait, and even of painting, that have reached our time ; the colouring is the part most attended to, and, considering the changeable nature of white lead, which was the pigment in use among them for the ground of their pictures, it argues an uncommon aridity of climate, to find it unaltered after so great a lapse of time. And as permanency was the great prin ciple of their labours in the arts, this circumstance has singularly seconded their views in so perishable a means of record as painting. The esteem it was held in, was on account of its perishable nature, quite secondary to sculp ture, upon which we see that they bestowed most extraor dinary labour and perseverance; adhering, at the same time, with the most servile and scrupulous attention to the es tablished practice, as marked by a frozen rigidity, and ponderous character, by stiffness of contour, formality of disposition, and total want of any idea of elegance or grouping. Design, which cannot fail to'accompany the practice of statuary, naturally assumed a similar character, but was not susceptible of that air of grandeur, which the extraordinary bulk of their sculptured works threw over them ; and it is a circumstance worthy of remark in the nature of Egyptain design,. that, notwithstanding the in flexible rigidity of their figures, they seldom fail to ex hibit an uncommon accuracy of proportion, even in sub jects the most preposterous in form. We find their gi gantic monsters, and mixtures of the brute and human creations in every possible combination, possessing, never theless, uncommonly accurate proportions of limb. And this is a merit to which few nations, either ancient or mo dern, can lay claim. The magnitude of their works is the only particular in which we find the Egyptians striving to shake off time fetters of ancient practice ; but it is a clumsy attempt to excel, when the end is not the excellence of workmanship, but the magnitude ; it is indicative of great poverty of invention, and a low state of the arts, though, at the same time, it stimulated to effbrts which were pro ductive of the most extraordinary examples of human la bour.
The skill displayed in the execution of the coins of an ancient people, is one of the best criterions to enable us to judge of the state of the arts among them, in so far as they prove their own dates, at the same time that they exhibit the existing knowledge of design. Hence we find the masterly works of the Greek coinage bearing an exact parallel with the very great excellence recorded of their taste and execution in painting ; and in sculpture there is enough still extant to speak for itself. In like manner the barbarous coinage of other countries, as correctly quad rates with their probable ignorance in the other branches of the fine arts. In this particular, we have little to say in favour of Egypt; we shall therefore close our remarks with some account of their mode of painting.
We should be disposed to attribute the perfect state of preservation, in which many of the painted shrouds of Egyptian mummies are found, retaining not only the sharpness of .outline, and minuteness of writing, but the
vivacity of colour as strong as if they had been painted but yesterday, to the favourable circumstances under which they have been preserved. Shut up in the double, often treble, case of a mummy, inclosed like fossil re mains in the dry cavity of a rock, protected from the air, and external injury of every kind, they could not fail to be preserved through any number of ages. But when brought to light, exposed openly to the air, and subjected to the rough usage of long journeys, both by sea and land, we find them still reaching these northern climates as fresh as ever, and continuing to withstand all the vicissi tudes of our atmosphere unaltered and untarnished. The cause commonly assigned for this uncommon degree of durability is, that the asphaltum, with which the linen was probably impregnated, may have been sufficiently power ful to counteract the destructive effects of time. Even the asphaltum, however, will scarcely enable us to ac count for the phenomenon of some ancient painted walls to be seen at Dendera ; which, although exposed for so many ages to the open air, without any covering or pro tection whatever, still possess a perfect brilliancy, and preservation of colour as vivid as when first painted, per haps 2000 years ago. Habituated, as we inhabitants of the moist and stormy north are, to the keen tooth of time, in every thing that is exposed to its operation, even al though sheltered under the cover of our dwellings : we are tempted to regard such extraordinary preservative powers in the arid climate of Egypt as an exception to the common laws of nature.
The Egyptains mixed their colours with some gummy substance, and applied them detached from each other, without any blending or mixture': they appear to have used six colours, viz. white, black, blue, red, yellow, and green. They first covered the canvas entirely with white, upon which they traced the design in black, leaving out the lights of the ground colour : They used minium for red, and generally of a dark tinge. Many of their paint ings are described by travellers, who have seen them at Thebes, and in the sepulchral grottos of Upper Egypt. Bruce mentions his having seen some complete frescos. In point of subject, there is, as might be expected, a very great uniformity, and generally with reference to our fu ture state : they represent the body of the deceased as swathed in linen, painted, and covered with hieroglyphi cal writing, laid out on the sacred boat, and preceded by a figure of Anubis. A small winged genius seems escap ing from the body of the corpse, and a train of figures follow, wearing the mask of the sacred bird, as indicative, most likely, of their sacred office. It is not easy to recon cile the anxious care with which the mummies were cased up, and secured in caverns, as if for the purpose of be ing for ever hid from sight, with the most scrupulous at tention and labour bestowed on the painting and decorat ing of the mummy itself, and the interior of the cases, which seemed intended never again to be seen by human eye. Yet the portrait of the deceased was there, accom panied with the genealogy, and other circumstances con nected with the family, although so industriously hid from view, that it is difficult to conceive a motive for the seeming inconsistency. The scrupulous care, however, attending the performance of this religious observance, seems to indicate some purpose connected with an idea of the future resurrection of the body ; for the further ance of which, they may have bad the presumptive igno rance to suppose the feeble aid of man as in some Mea sure available. Mr. Salt, British consul at Alexandria, had an opportunity lately of opening one of these cases, on which the hieroglyphist had the discretion to be his, own interpreter, by accompanying the inscription with translations in various languages; as one of them happen ed fortunately to be in the Greek, the purport admitted of being decyphered. It bore the name of the deceased —from whence the body had been brought—a note of the expense attending the embalming and transport—and the name of the person who bore the expense.