A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 1 (of 2)

A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 1 (of 2)

The successful interpretation of the ancient writings of Egypt, Chalda, and Persia, which has distinguished our times, makes it necessary that the history of antiquity should be rewritten. Documents that for thousands of years lay hidden beneath the soil, and inscriptions which, like those of Egypt and Persia, long offered themselves to the gaze of man merely to excite his impotent curiosity, have now been deciphered and made to render up their secrets for the guidance of the historian. By the help of those strings of hieroglyphs and of cuneiform characters, illustrated by paintings and sculptured reliefs, we are enabled to separate the truth from the falsehood, the chaff from the wheat, in the narratives of the Greek writers who busied themselves with those nations of Africa and Asia which preceded their own in the ways of civilization. Day by day, as new monuments have been discovered and more certain methods of reading their inscriptions elaborated, we have added to the knowledge left us by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, to our acquaintance with those empires on the Euphrates and the Nile which were already in old age when the Greeks were yet struggling to emerge from their primitive barbarism. Even in the cases of Greece and Rome, whose histories are supplied in their main lines by their classic writers, the study of hitherto neglected writings discloses many new and curiousii details. The energetic search for ancient inscriptions, and the scrupulous and ingenious interpretation of their meaning, which we have witnessed and are witnessing, have revealed to us many interesting facts of which no trace is to be found in Thucydides or Xenophon, in Livy or Tacitus; enabling us to enrich with more than one feature the picture of private and public life which they have handed down to us. In the effort to embrace the life of ancient times as a whole, many attempts have been made to fix the exact place in it occupied by art, but those attempts have never been absolutely successful, because the comprehension of works of art, of plastic creations in the widest significance of that word, demands an amount of special knowledge which the great majority of historians are without; art has a method and language of its own, which obliges those who wish to learn it thoroughly to cultivate their taste by frequenting the principal museums of Europe, by visiting distant regions at the cost of considerable trouble and expense, by perpetual reference to the great collections of engravings, photographs, and other reproductions which considerations of space and cost prevent the savant from possessing at home. More than one learned author has never visited Italy or Greece, or has found no time to examine their museums, each of which contains but a small portion of the accumulated remains of antique art. Some connoisseurs do not even live in a capital, but dwell far from those public libraries, which often contain valuable collections, and sometimeswhen they are not packed away in cellars or at the binder'sallow them to be studied by the curious.[2] The study of art, difficult enough in itself, is thus rendered still more arduous by the obstacles which are thrown in its way. The difficulty of obtaining materials for self-improvement in this direction affords the true explanation of the absence, in modern histories of antiquity, of those laborious researches which have led to such great results since Winckelmann founded the science of archology as we know it. To take the case of Greece, many learned writers have in our time attempted to retrace its complete historyEngland, Germany, and France have each contributed works which, by various merits, have conquered the favour of Europe. But of all these works the only one which betrays any deep study of Greek art, and treats it with taste and iiicompetence, is that of M. Ernest Curtius; as for Mr. Grote, he has neither a theoretic knowledge of art, nor a feeling for it. Here and there, indeed, where he cannot avoid it, he alludes to the question, but in the fewest and driest phrases possible. And yet Greece, without its architects, its sculptors, and its painters, without in fact its passion for beautiful form, a passion as warm and prolific as its love for poetry, is hardly Greece at all. Much disappointment is thus prepared for those who, without the leisure to enter deeply into detail, wish to picture to themselves the various aspects of the ancient world. They are told of revolutions, of wars and conquests, of the succession of princes; the mechanism of political and civil institutions is explained to them; "literature," we are told, "is the expression of social life," and so the history of literature is written for us. All this is true enough, but there is another truth which seems to be always forgotten, that the art of a people is quite as clear an indication of their sentiments, tastes, and ideas, as their literature. But on this subject most historians say little, contenting themselves with the brief mention of certain works and proper names, and with the summary statement of a few general ideas which do not even possess the merit of precision. And where are we to find the information thus refused? Europe possesses several histories of Greek and Roman literature, written with great talent and eloquence, such as the work, unhappily left unfinished, of Ottfried Mller; there are, too, excellent manuals, rich in valuable facts, such as those of Bernhardy, Baehr, and Teuffel; but where is there, either in England, in France, or in Germany, a single work which retraces, in sufficient detail, the whole history of antique art, following it throughout its progress and into all its transformations, from its origin to its final decadence, down to the epoch when Christianity and the barbaric invasions put an end to the ancient forms of civilization and prepared for the birth of the modern world, for the evolution of a new society and of a new art? ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 40144
Author: Chipiez, Charles
Release Date: Jul 5, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Perrot, Georges, 1832-1914


Translator: Armstrong, Walter, Sir, 1850-1918