As we come down to later times, these tableaux are multiplied, and under the Greeks and Romans they become so numerous that the smallest wall contained not less than four (fig. 107), five, six, or even eight registers.  The principal figures are, as it were, compressed, so as to occupy less room, and all the intermediate space is crowded with thousands of tiny hieroglyphs.  The gods and kings are no longer portraits of the reigning sovereign, but mere conventional types without vigour or life.  As for the secondary figures and accessories, the sculptor’s only care is to crowd in as many as possible.  This was not due to a defect of taste, and to the prevalence of a religious idea which decided but enforced these changes.  The object of decoration was not merely the delight of the eye.  Applied to a piece of furniture, a coffin, a house, a temple, decoration possessed a certain magic property, of which the power and nature were determined by each being or action represented, by each word inscribed or spoken, at the moment of consecration.  Every subject was, therefore, an amulet as well as an ornament.  So long as it endured, it ensured to the god the continuance of homage rendered, or sacrifices offered, by the king.  To the king, whether living or dead, it confirmed the favours granted to him by the god in recompense for his piety.  It also preserved from destruction the very wall upon which it was depicted.  At the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty, it was thought that two or three such amulets sufficed to compass the desired effect; but at a later period it was believed that their number could not be too freely multiplied, and the walls were covered with as many as the surface would contain.  An average chamber of Edfu or Denderah yields more material for study than the hypostyle hall of Karnak; and the chapel of Antoninus Pius at Philae, had it been finished, would have contained more scenes than the sanctuary of Luxor and the passages by which it is surrounded.

Observing the variety of subjects treated on the walls of any one temple, one might at first be tempted to think that the decoration does not form a connected whole, and that, although many series of scenes must undoubtedly contain the development of an historic idea or a religious dogma, yet that others are merely strung together without any necessary link.  At Luxor, and again at the Ramesseum, each face of the pylon is a battle-field on which may be studied, almost day for day, the campaign of Rameses II. against the Kheta, which took place in the fifth year of his reign.  There we see the Egyptian camp attacked by night; the king’s bodyguard surprised during the march; the defeat of the enemy; their flight; the garrison of Kadesh sallying forth to the relief of the vanquished; and the disasters which befell the prince of the Kheta and his generals.  Elsewhere, it is not the war which is represented, but the human sacrifices which anciently celebrated the close of each campaign.