ABSTRACT
The interest that attaches to Egyptian art is from its great antiquity. We see in it the first attempts to represent what in after times, and in some other countries, gradually arrived, under better auspices, at the greatest perfection ; and we even trace in it the germ of much that was improved upon by those, who had a higher appreciation of, and feeling for, the beautiful. For, both in ornamental art, as well as m architecture, Egypt exercised in early times considerable influence over other people less advanced than itself, or only just emerging from barbarism: and the various conventional devices, the lotus flowers, the sphinxes, and
other fabulous animals, as well as the early Medusa's head, with a protruding tongue, of the oldest Greek pottery and sculptures, and the ibex, leopard, and above all the (Nile) " goose and sun," on the vases, show them to be connected with, and frequently directly borrowed from, Egyptian fancy. It was, as it still is, the custom of people to borrow from those who have attained to a greater degree of refinement and civilization than themselves; the nation most advanced in art led the taste; and though some had sufficient invention to alter what they adopted, and to render it their own, the original idea may still be traced whenever it has been derived from a foreign source. Egypt was long the dominant nation, and the intercourse established at a very remote period with other countries, through commerce or war, carried abroad the taste of this the most advanced people of the time; and so general seems to have been the fashion of their ornaments, that even the Nineveh marbles present the winged globe, and other well-known Egyptian emblems, as established elements of Assyrian decorative art. This fact would suffice to disprove the early date of the marbles hitherto discovered, which are in fact of a period comparatively modern in the history of Egypt; and recent discoveries have fully justified the opinion I ventured to express, when they were first brought to this country : 1°, that they are not of archaic style, and that ori^nal Assyrian art is still to be looked for; 2°, that they give evidences of the decadence, not the rise, of art; and 3°, that they have borrowed much from Egypt, long the dominant country in power and art, and will be found to date within 1000 b.c. This, however, is far from lessening their importance; for the periods they chiefly illustrate-those of Shalmaneser and Sennacherib, so closely connected with Hebrew history-give an interest to them, which the oldest monuments of Assyria would fail to possess.
