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T HE cave men made pictures on the walls and ceilings of their caves. The old Egyptians didn’t live in caves. They lived in houses, where they didn’t draw pictures on the walls or ceilings. Their houses were usually mud huts, not much better than the caves that the cave men lived in, but the Egyptians were not interested in the houses they lived in. They were interested only in the houses they were dead in (tombs, we call them) or in the houses they made for their gods (temples,we call them).
Most dead people are buried in the ground nowadays,but the Egyptians thought the ground was no place for the dead. Besides, much of the ground of Egypt was under water for almost half of each year, for the River Nile flooded the country regularly every summer, and that would have been bad for graves.
The Egyptians believed their bodies would come to life again after thousands of years, and so kings and rich people,who could afford it, built tombs to be buried in. And they built them to last — never out of wood or anything like that,but of solid stone or brick. They wanted to put their bodies in a safe place, something like a safe-deposit vault. When they died, their bodies were preserved in a way we call embalming, so as not to decay.
These embalmed bodies were called mummies and the mummies were put in coffins that were shaped something like the bodies. On the coffins, or mummy cases, and on the plaster walls of their tombs and temples, the Egyptians drew and painted pictures — thousands of them, to cover every bit of space. And these pictures were made while the people were still alive.
These pictures that the Egyptians made on the mummy cases and on the walls of tombs and temples were not pictures of wild animals such as the cave men made. Some were of animals, though not the kind of animals the cave men drew. Most of the pictures were of people — men and women, kings and queens, gods and goddesses.
There is a way of finding out how old boys and girls are,without asking their age. We show them drawings of three faces from each of which something has been left out. The first face has no eyes, the second face has no mouth, the third face has no nose. Then we ask who can tell what is left out. Now,you might think any one could tell what was wrong with these pictures, but until boys and girls are about six years old , they can’t see that anything at all is left out, so if they can’t see what is wrong, we know they are not six years old.
Here is an Egyptian picture that has something wrong with it. It’s the picture of a seated man making a lance — a lance maker. I wonder if you are old enough to see what’s wrong with this picture.
See if you can find out what’s wrong, before I tell you. If you can’t see what’s wrong, you may be even sixty years old,for some quite old people can’t see what it is. It’s a sort of puzzle. See if you’ve guessed right.
NO.2-1 EGYPTIANS
It’s this : the eye is the shape an eye has when we see it from the front, but the face is a side face. So it is a front eye in a side face.
Another peculiar thing about this picture is that the body is twisted. The shoulders are full front, but the hips, legs, and foot are sideways.
In old Egyptian times all the artists drew certain things in a certain way. The artists were taught to draw that way, and they had to draw that way such things as I have mentioned — the front eye in the side face, the front shoulders with a side view of legs and feet.
Have you ever noticed the pictures on magazine covers?Some are just pictures of pretty women or pretty flowers. But some of the pictures tell a story or part of a story. Some of these story-telling pictures have words underneath to tell what the picture means, but some don’t need any words underneath. The picture tells the story without any words. We call such pictures that tell a story illustrations.
NO.2-2
Egyptian pictures are chiefly illustrations. They tell a story either with or without words — a story of the life of some dead king or queen, their battles,their hunting parties, their parades. And above, below, or at the side, there are often words, in Egyptian writing, that describe the pictures. These words look very much like pictures, themselves, for the Egyptian writing is a kind of picture writing. It is called hieroglyphics.
When Egyptian artists drew a king with common people around him, they made the king very large and the other people very small. The king was made to be a giant — two or three times as large as the common people —just to show he was really a great man.
When the Egyptian artists drew pictures of crowds, they didn’t know how to show men farther back in the picture, as we should do, by drawing them smaller and raising them a little bit. They made those farther back the same size as those in front, and to show that they were farther back they put those in the back above those in front.
NO.2-3 AN EGYPTIAN PICTURE WITH
We have hundreds of colors and shades nowadays, but the Egyptians had only four bright colors — red, yellow, green,blue. Besides these they had black, white, and brown. And their colors lasted. You know how hard it is to find any color nowadays that doesn’t fade. Window curtains, couch covers,even the colors of dresses, fade unless they are sunfast. But these pictures the Egyptians made are almost as fresh and bright as when first done, thousands of years ago. That’s because the colors used were “fast”, and also because the pictures were hidden away in the dark where the sun could not fade them. They were drawn and painted on the plaster walls and the colors were very bright — not like nature. It didn’t matter whether something really had any color, or what the particular color should be. They painted it the way they thought looked well. They might paint a man’s face bright red or even green!
When you think of all these old pictures that were not meant to be seen by the eye of any man, you may wonder:Why did the Egyptians make them? What was the idea? And yet to-day when we build a great building such as a church, a house of God, a Christian temple, we put into a hollow stone in the foundation — a corner-stone, we call it — the daily paper, photographs of people alive at the time, and so on.Why? The building is expected to last for ages and the cornerstone will never be opened until the building comes down.Why? Our idea may be something like the old Egyptians’idea, after all!