IV. they were inscribed in black paint upon the CHAP. red surface of the statue. The author bestowed all possible care and attention in making the following copy of them, as a fac-simile. CHAP. Above these, and closer under the ear, were IV. written, very conspicuously, these curious monograms, Custom of probably also Arabic, but in their appearance somewhat resembling the kind of writing preserved among the Inscriptiones Sinaïca, as published by Kircher and by Pococke'. According to Pococke, this was not engraven, but painted, or stained, upon the rock where he saw it. Whatsoever may be the age of these characters, the specimen of painting exhibited by the superficies of the stone is of still higher antiquity; not merely because the inscription appears upon the painted surface, but from the (1) See Plate LV. Inscript. 86. Descr. of the East, vol. I. p. 149. Lond. 1743. "The Greeks," says Pococke, "call this inscription Θεοῦ χάρακτα γράμματα, The words of God engraved." inscription may also be found in KIRCHER'S Prodromus Copticus. The same IV. resemblance which the style of colouring bears CHAP. to other examples which may be mentioned. The statues of the Parthenon at Athens were originally painted and gilded'; and however contrary the practice may seem to our notions of taste, a custom of painting statues, and of gilding the hair of images representing celestial beings, has continued, without intermission, from the age of Pericles and the golden-haired Apollos of Greece, down to the æra of those Italian artists who filled our old English churches with alabaster monuments, where, besides the painted effigies of our ancestors', may be seen the figures of angels with gilded wings and gilded hair. But these are subjects which, to a writer (2) Avant que ce marbre précieux eût été nettoyé, il conservoit des traces, non-seulement de la couleur encaustique dont, suivant l'usage des Grecs, on enduisoit la sculpture, mais encore d'une véritable peinture dont quelques parties étoient couvertes; usage qui tient aux procédés de l'enfance de l'art, dont il ne s'etoit pas encore débarrassé. Le fond étoit bleu; les cheveux et quelques parties du corps ETOIEnt dorés." Voy. Monumens Antiques inédits. Description d'un Bas-Relief du Parthenon, par A. L. Millin. Traces of gilding are still to be perceived on the hair of the VENUS de Medicis. (3) A splendid monument of this kind, erected over the bodies of Lord SURREY the Poet and his family, may be seen in Framlingham Church, Suffolk. Shakspeare has finely availed himself of this practice, in the image of Hermione (Winter's Tale): CHAP. fond of pursuing the mazes of antient history, -IV. offer such alluring deviations from the main Extract from PAUW. route, as might lead both him and his reader into almost endless digression: the vestiges of antient art, and the remains of antient customs, visible in our daily walks and in every haunt of society, so frequently suggest themselves to philosophical reflection, that, if due attention were paid to them, whole volumes would be inadequate to the dissertations that might be written. A few observations only, selected from the pages of an author who has expressed a similar observation; and who, most learnedly illustrating the arts of painting and writing among the antient Egyptians', has concentrated within a small compass whatever might have been added upon these topics; may terminate this chapter. The number of things to be spoken of here will not permit us to treat of each in particular; for it is necessary sometimes to neglect details, and confine ourselves to essentials only, that a chapter may contain what might otherwise require a whole book. The loss of the greater (1) Philosophical Dissertation on the Egyptians and Chinese, by De Pauw, vol. I. pp. 187, 128, 189, 190, 202, 203. Lond. 1795. IV. 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. 66 Pliny has fallen into an unpardonable contradiction, 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 anonymous 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 partitions of the Theban 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 understand Pliny's use of the word eternity only as referring to a period antecedent to existing records, or those of the airóxloves: an observation necessary to rescue many of the antient philosophers from the absurd notions imputed to them. (3) De Legibus, Dial. 2. |