their use handed on unchanged from generation to generation.  Now and then it happened that a painter more daring than his contemporaries ventured to break with tradition.  In the Sixth Dynasty tombs at Deir el Gebrawi, there are instances where the flesh tint of the women is that conventionally devoted to the depiction of men.  At Sakkarah, under the Fifth Dynasty, and at Abu Simbel, under the Nineteenth Dynasty, we find men with skins as yellow as those of the women; while in the tombs of Thebes and Abydos, about the time of Thothmes IV. and Horemheb, there occur figures with flesh-tints of rose-colour.[41]

It must not, however, be supposed that the effect produced by this artificial system was grating or discordant.  Even in works of small size, such as illuminated MSS. of The Book of the Dead, or the decoration of mummy-cases and funerary coffers, there is both sweetness and harmony of colour.  The most brilliant hues are boldly placed side by side, yet with full knowledge of the relations subsisting between these hues, and of the phenomena which must necessarily result from such relations.  They neither jar together, nor war with each other, nor extinguish each other.  On the contrary, each maintains its own value, and all, by mere juxtaposition, give rise to the half-tones which harmonise them.

Turning from small things to large ones, from the page of papyrus, or the panel of sycamore wood, to the walls of tombs and temples, we find the skilful employment of flat tints equally soothing and agreeable to the eye.  Each wall is treated as a whole, the harmony of colour being carried out from bottom to top throughout the various superimposed stages into which the surface was divided.  Sometimes the colours are distributed according to a scale of rhythm, or symmetry, balancing and counterbalancing each other.  Sometimes one special tint predominates, thus determining the general tone and subordinating every other hue.  The vividness of the final effect is always calculated according to the quality and quantity of light by which the picture is destined to be seen.  In very dark halls the force of colour is carried as far as it will go, because it would not otherwise have been visible by the flickering light of lamps and torches.  On outer wall-surfaces and on pylon-fronts, it was as vivid as in the darkest depths of excavated catacombs; and this because, no matter how extreme it might be, the sun would subdue its splendour.  But in half-lighted places, such as the porticoes of temples and the ante-chambers of tombs, colour is so dealt with as to be soft and discreet.  In a word, painting was in Egypt the mere humble servant of architecture and sculpture.  We must not dream of comparing it with our own, or even with that of the Greeks; but if we take it simply for what it is, accepting it in the secondary place assigned to it, we cannot fail to recognise its unusual merits.  Egyptian painting excelled in the sense of monumental decoration, and if we ever revert to the fashion of colouring the facades of our houses and our public edifices, we shall lose nothing by studying Egyptian methods or reproducing Egyptian processes.