in the Temple of Abydos.  It is the work of the great Sesostris, and the inscription on it is a record of his predecessors in the kingly office:  hence it has been long an attractive object to chronologists.  Also, before glancing at the few paintings, and closing the examination of this interesting saloon, the visitor should inspect the Rosetta stone (24), inscribed in three characters (of which one is Greek), by order of the high priests, recording the services of the fifth Ptolemy.  And now, with a glance at the

Egyptian frescoes,

the visitor should rapidly close his survey of this chamber.  These are rude performances enough, and, as the visitor will see, bear a close resemblance to those we introduced to him in the Egyptian rooms up stairs.  Mr. Long, while on the subject of Egyptian art, thus mentions their paintings:—­“Sculpture and painting were closely allied, both among the Egyptians and in the old schools of Greece; and both arts were intimately associated with architecture.  Sculptured and coloured figures formed in ancient Egyptian edifices the decoration and the finish of the larger masses of the architecture which served as a framework within which they were placed.  The edifices, from their massy forms and the magnitude of their component parts, were well calculated to produce a general impression of grandeur; and this was not destroyed by the smaller decorated parts, which were always strictly subordinate to the general design, and were not, like it, comprehended at a glance, but required to be studied in detail.

“Painting, in the proper sense of the term, that of the representations of objects by colours on the flat surface, appears to be an art of less antiquity than that of sculpture.  The Egyptians probably first coloured their reliefs and statues before they attempted to represent objects with colours on a flat ground.  But, however this may be, paint was most extensively used by them, not only in making pictures, properly so called, but in painting the surfaces of tablets and temples, as well as colossal statues and sculptured figures of all kinds and sizes.  Indeed, an Egyptian temple, in its complete state, bedizened with so many bright unmixed colours, must have been rather a curious object, and would hardly, perhaps, have pleased the taste of modern times; though, it must be admitted, that the effect of these colours under a brilliant sun would be very different from their appearance in such a climate as this.  The pureness, permanence, and brilliancy of Egyptian colouring are the only qualities that we can admire; for they never, apparently, compounded colours so as to produce a greater variety from the simple colours.  It has also been frequently remarked that they did not soften them off so as to form various degrees of intensity, or to make any attempt at contrasts of light and shade.  This is probably true as to the representation of human figures, which are coloured pretty much in the same style that a child paints uncoloured engravings, making one part all red, another all blue, and so on, without any softening of the colours at their common boundary.  But in the representation of animals, as we shall afterwards observe, more care was taken in softening and blenching the colours, so as to produce a better representation of nature.