Egyptian decorative art

In dealing with the subject of decorative art in Egypt, it is needful to begin by setting some bounds to a study which might be made to embrace almost every example of ancient work known to us in that land. The Egyptian treatment of everything great and small was so strongly decorative that it is hard to exclude an overwhelming variety of considerations. But here it is proposed to limit our view to the historical development of the various motives or elements of decoration. The larger questions of the æsthetic scheme of design, of the meaning of ornament—symbolic or religious, of the value and effect of colour, of the relations of parts, we can but glance at occasionally in passing; in another branch, the historical connection of Egyptian design with that of other countries, the prospect is so tempting and so valuable, that we may linger a little at each of these bye-ways to note where the turning occurs and to what it leads. As I have said, all Egyptian design was strongly decorative. The love of form and of drawing was perhaps a greater force with the Egyptians than with any other people. The early Babylonians and the Chinese had, like the Egyptians, a pictorial writing; but step by step they soon dropped the picture altogether in favour of the easier abbreviation of it. The Egyptian, on the contrary, never lost sight of his original picture; and however much his current hand altered, yet for four or five thousand years he still maintained his true hieroglyphic pictures. They were modified by taste and fashion, even in some cases their origin was forgotten, yet the artistic form was there to the very end.