ping or pyramidal line constantly predominates; the
columns in the oldest Greek order are almost purely Egyptian, in the
proportions of the shaft, and in the form of its shallow flutes
without fillets; and it is a remarkable fact that the oldest Egyptian
columns are those which bear the closest resemblance to the Greek
Doric.

Though great variety was permitted in objects of luxury, as furniture,
vases, and other things depending on caprice, the Egyptians were
forbidden to introduce any material innovations into the human figure,
such as would alter its general character, and all subjects connected
with religion retained to the last the same conventional type. A god
in the latest temple was of the same form as when represented on
monuments of the earliest date; and King Menes would have recognized
Amun, or Osiris, in a Ptolemaic or a Roman sanctuary. In sacred
subjects the law was inflexible, and religion, which has frequently
done so much for the development and direction of taste in sculpture,
had the effect of fettering the genius of Egyptian artists. No
improvements, resulting from experience and observation, were admitted
in the mode of drawing the human figure; to copy nature was not
allowed; it was therefore useless to study it, and no attempt was made
to give the proper action to the limbs. Certain rules, certain models,
had been established by the priesthood, and the faulty conceptions of
ignorant times were copied and perpetuated by every successive artist.
For, as Plato and Synesius say, the Egyptian sculptors were not
suffered to attempt anything contrary to the regulations laid down
regarding the figures of the gods; they were forbidden to introduce
any change, or to invent new subjects and habits, and thus the art,
and the rules which bound it, always remained the same.

Egyptian bas-relief appears to have been, in its origin, a mere copy
of painting, its predecessor. The first attempt to represent the
figures of gods, sacred emblems, and other subjects, consisted in
drawing or painting simple outlines of them on a flat surface, the
details being afterwards put in with color; but in process of time
these forms were traced on stone with a tool, and the intermediate
space between the various figures being afterwards cut away, the once
level surface assumed the appearance of a bas-relief. It was, in fact,
a pictorial representation on stone, which is evidently the character
of all the bas-reliefs on Egyptia