which have pictures only, and are
entirely without hieroglyphics or writing characters; one such is more
than twenty yards long, and contains nothing but pictures of funeral
ceremonies.

The ancient Egyptians were so serious a people that it is a pleasant
surprise to find that some of these pictures are intended for jokes and
satires, somewhat like those of the comic papers of to-day; for example,
there is one in the British Museum, London, representing cats and rats
fighting, which is intended to ridicule the soldiers and heroes of the
Egyptian army.

One cannot study Egyptian painting without feeling sorry for the painters;
for in all the enormous amount of work done by them no one man was
recognized--no one is now remembered. We know some of the names of great
Egyptian architects which are written in the historical rolls; but no
painter's name has been thus preserved. The fact that no greater progress
was made is a proof of the discouraging influences that must have been
around these artists, for it is not possible that none of them had
imagination or originality: there must have been some whose souls were
filled with poetic visions, for some of the Egyptian writings show that
poetry existed in ancient Egypt. But of what use could imagination be to
artists who were governed by the laws of a narrow priesthood, and hedged
about by a superstitious religion which even laid down rules for art?

For these reasons we know something of Egyptian art and nothing of
Egyptian artists, and from all these influences it follows that Egyptian
painting is little more than an illuminated alphabet or a child's
picture-history. In the hieroglyphics, or writing characters of Egypt, it
often occurs that small pictures of certain animals or other objects stand
for whole words, and it appears that this idea was carried into Egyptian
painting, which by this means became simply a picture chronicle, and never
reached a point where it could be called truly artistic or a high art.

ASSYRIA.

The remains of Assyrian painting are so few that they scarcely serve any
other purpose than to prove that the Assyrians were accustomed to decorate
their walls with pictures. Sometimes the walls were prepared with plaster,
and the designs were painted on that; in other cases the painting was done
upon the brick itself. The paintings on plaster were usually on the inner
walls, and many of these which have been discovered during the excavations
have dis