Egyptian art by Jean Capart

Author:Jean Capart [Jean Capart, Elie Faure, Victoria Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781644618738
Publisher: Parkstone International

Thèbes Ouest. Vallée Des Rois. Tombe De Taousert (No 14). Les Déesses-Sœurs Isis Et Nephthys.

Ancient Egypt images on wall in Luxor Temple of Hatshepsut.

THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS, LUXOR, EGYPT -Wall painting and decoration of the tomb: ancient Egyptian gods and hieroglyphs in wall painting.

THE EGYPT THAT DOES NOT DIE

Egypt is the first of those undulations which civilized societies make on the surface of history — undulations that seem to be born of nothingness and to return to nothingness after having reached a summit.

She is the most distant of the defined forms which remain upon the horizon of the past. She is the true mother of men. But although her achievement resounded throughout the whole duration and extent of the ancient world, one might say that she has closed herself within the granite circle of a solitary destiny. It is like a motionless multitude, swelled with a silent clamor.

Egypt sinks without a cry into the sand, which has taken back, successively, her feet, her knees, her thighs and her flanks, with only her breast and brow projecting. The sphinx has still, in his crushed visage, his inexorable eyes, outlined by rigid lids, which look inward as well as outward into the distance, from elusive abstractions to the circular line where the curve of the globe sinks downward. To what depth do his foundations go, and how far around him and below him does history descend? He seems to have appeared with our first thoughts, to have followed our long effort with his mute meditation, to be destined to survive our last hope.

We shall prevent the sand from covering him entirely because he is a part of our earth, because he belongs to the appearances amid which we have lived, as far back as our memories go. Together with the artificial mountains with which we have sealed the desert near him, he is the only one of our works that seems as permanent as the circle of days, the alternation of the seasons, and the stupendous daily drama of the sky.

The immobility of this soil, of this people whose monotonous life makes up three quarters of the adventure of humanity, seems to have demanded lines of stone to bind it, and these lines define the soil and the people even before we know their history. Everything around the pyramids endures. The desire felt there to seek and give form to eternity, imposes itself on the mind — the more despotically since nature retards death itself in its necessary acts of transformation and recasting. The granite is unbroken.

Beneath the soil are petrified forests. In that dry air, wood that has been abandoned retains its living fibers for centuries, cadavers dry up without rotting. The inundation of the Nile, the master of the country, symbolizes, each year, perpetual resurrection. Its rise and fall are as regular as the apparent march of Osiris, the eternal sun, who arises each morning from the waters and disappears each evening in the sands. From the 10th of

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