ABSTRACT
The ancient Egyptians, like some oftheir descendants, tended to do nothing in a hurry. They must, for instance, have been long aware that their New Year star was out of step with the seasons, rising a day later every four years, but instead of adopting a Leap Year, they were content to wait until the error went fuH circle and the calendar corrected itseIf; this took 1,460 years. They were equaHy conservative in their artistic conventions, which went unchanged for about 3,000 years. For aIl that time, the basic rule in drawing was that aIl the essentials ofthe subject, whether actuaHy visible at the same time or not, ought ifpossible to be shown because they were there. Not only was the Egyptian artist unaware of, or at least indifferent to the transitory appearances of things; he would not even have in mind an actual, particular object, but a symbol. He did not draw a cat, he drew cat. Drawing was as much akin to writing as to picture-making. Clarity of meaning mattered more than visual truth. Without being Egyptologists, we can still read his pictures far more readily than he could read ours-or than we can read some by our contemporaries.
