“The colours used in the painted relief, and on the stuccoes are black, blue, red, green, and yellow; these are always kept distinct and never blended.  Of blue, they used both a darker and a lighter shade.  Red was used to represent the human flesh, apparently from its being nearer the natural tint than any other simple colour; but many of their colours were evidently applied with a conventional meaning, for the representation of different races.  The conquered people represented in the great temple of Abonsambel, or Ipsambul, have yellow bodies and black beards.  In the grottoes of El Cab, the men are red, and the women yellow.  Black men also sometimes appear in the paintings.  The five colours above enumerated seldom occur all in one piece or picture; but in this matter there is perhaps no general rule.  The Nubian temples have often a very rich colouring, as in the case of one at Kalapsche, where yellow, green, red, and blue, have all been used in painting the reliefs in one of the inner chambers; and in some single figures in this temple we may observe all these four colours.

“The materials of which the colours were made would no doubt change with the improvements in the arts; and after the Macedonian occupation of the country, new colours, both vegetable and mineral, may have been introduced.  But the tombs of the kings at Thebes may undoubtedly be considered as containing specimens of ancient Egyptian colouring, as well as the painted reliefs in the oldest temples, and the colourings about the ancient mummies.  By a careful examination of these specimens, we may attain a very adequate knowledge of the materials used, and of the mode of applying them.”  The first of these frescoes (169-170-1) are from the walls of a tomb of the western Hills of Thebes.  The tomb is that of a scribe of the royal granaries and wardrobe, and the pictures represent the inspection of oxen by scribes, a scribe standing in a boat, the registration of the delivering of ducks and geese and their eggs.  The fragment marked 175 represents an entertainment, with female instrumental performers; here (176) an old man is leaning upon a staff near a cornfield; there (177) is the square fish-pond woefully deficient in prospective; there is a second entertainment (179), where the wine is freely circulating; dancing is going on to music—­the picture of a social evening enjoyed thousands of years ago; and here, at a third entertainment (181), servants are bringing in wine and necklaces—­a kind of hospitality to which, as regards the latter object, modern ladies would in no way object.  The ancient Egyptian ladies had their bouquets, their ornaments, and their couches, and exacted a plainness of costume from their servants, as in the present time.  On passing south from the Egyptian Saloon, between the two great lions, the visitor at once gains the central saloon, but without pausing here, or turning to the right into the tempting Phigalian and Elgin Saloons, he should proceed rapidly on his way to the south-western extremity of the building, at which point he will find himself at the entrance to the