=Temples.=—­The gods also required eternal and splendid habitations.  Their temples include a magnificent sanctuary, the dwelling of the god, surrounded with courts, gardens, chambers where the priests lodge, wardrobes for his jewels, utensils, and vestments.  This combination of edifices, the work of many generations, is encircled with a wall.  The temple of Ammon at Thebes had the labors of the kings of all the dynasties from the twelfth to the last.  Ordinarily in front of the temple a great gate-way is erected, with inclined faces—­the pylone.  On either side of the entrance is an obelisk, a needle of rock with gilded point, or perhaps a colossus in stone representing a sitting giant.  Often the approach to the temple is by a long avenue rimmed with sphinxes.

Pyramids, pylones, colossi, sphinxes, and obelisks characterize this architecture.  Everything is massive, compact, and, above all, immense.  Hence these monuments appear clumsy but indestructible.

=Sculpture.=—­Egyptian sculptors began with imitating nature.  The oldest statues are impressive for their life and freshness, and are doubtless portraits of the dead.  Of this sort is the famous squatting scribe of the Louvre.[14] But beginning with the eleventh dynasty the sculptor is no longer free to represent the human body as he sees it, but must follow conventional rules fixed by religion.  And so all the statues resemble one another—­parallel legs, the feet joined, arms crossed on the breast, the figure motionless; the statues are often majestic, but always stiff and monotonous.  Art has ceased to reproduce nature and is become a conventional symbol.

=Painting.=—­The Egyptians used very solid colors; after 5,000 years they are still fresh and bright.  But they were ignorant of coloring designs; they knew neither tints, shadows, nor perspective.  Painting, like sculpture, was subject to religious rules and was therefore monotonous.  If fifty persons were to be represented, the artist made them all alike.

=Literature.=—­The literature of the Egyptians is found in the tombs—­not only books of medicine, of magic and of piety, but also poems, letters, accounts of travels, and even romances.

=Destiny of the Egyptian Civilization.=—­The Egyptians conserved their customs, religion, and arts even after the fall of their empire.  Subjects of the Persians, then the Greeks, and at last of the Romans, they kept their old usages, their hieroglyphics, their mummies and sacred animals.  At last between the third and second centuries A.D., Egyptian civilization was slowly extinguished.

FOOTNOTES: 

[6] Following the curves of the stream.—­Ed.

[7] In some localities, e.g. Thebes, the flood is even higher.—­ED.

[8] An enclosing case.

[9] 525 B.C.—­ED.

[10] The chronology of early Egyptian history is uncertain.  Civilization existed in this land much earlier than was formerly supposed.—­ED.