July 4th, 2010 traveler
Egypt This Winter Art Print
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SUPREME FOR SUNSHINE SPORT AND GAIETY
The fundamental motive of the pyramid is the funeral mound. A small upheaval above the natural level of the ground results of itself from the earth displaced by the bulk of the buried body. Our present practice of interment clearly illustrates this. Increased dimensions elevate the mound to an independent monument. Many nations, some of a high degree of civilization, have contented themselves with such imposing hills of earth over the grave,–tumuli, which, from the manner of their construction, assumed a conical form. Others placed the mound upon a low cylinder, thus better marking its distinction from accidental natural elevations. The Egyptians and the Mesopotamians rejected the cone entirely, and formed, with plane surfaces upon a square plan, the highly mon- umental pyramid. Peculiar to the former people are the inclined sides which give to the pyramid its absolute geometrical form, as opposed to the terraced structures of Chaldaea. The sand of the desert ebbed and flowed fifty centuries ago as constantly as in our time, when the sphinx, after being uncovered to its base, has been quickly hidden again to the neck. Rulers, unwilling that their gigantic tombs should be thus submerged, were obliged to secure to them great height, with inclined and unbroken sides, upon which the sand could not lodge.
Spend This Winter in Egypt Where a Perfect Climate is to be Obtained Art Print
Tamplough, M.
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July 4th, 2010 traveler
Cairo by Air Art Print
James, Brian
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The true age of the monuments of Lower Egypt has not long been known. When Napoleon I. fired the spirits of his troops before the Battle of the Pyramids by the well-known words “Forty centuries look down upon you from the heights of these pyramids,” he must have been aware that, according to the conceptions of the archaeological science of the time, he was exaggerating. In fact, however, he was far behind the truth. The pyramids of Abousere, possibly also those of Dashour, are of the third dynasty ( 3338 to 3124 B.C., according to Lepsius), those of Gizeh of the fourth dynasty of Manetho ( 3124 to 2840 B.C.). These are structures which have stood for five thousand years. The pyramids of Cochome, referred to the first dynasty of Manetho, are still older, dating from a time nearly coincident, according to Biblical authority, with the creation of the world itself ( 3761 B.C.).
It is true we are still so far from chronological certainty that dates often differ astonishingly. Osburn, for instance, places the fourth and fifth dynasties as late as the period between 2228 and 2108 B.C., and notably the two kings of the fourth dynasty, Shofo and Nu-Shofo, about 2170 B.C. The first twelve dynasties of Memphis, dated by Lepsius about 3892 to 2167, and by Osburn as late as 1959 B.C., are now known principally by their monumental tombs. Among these, the sepulchres of the kings are prominent in like manner as the ruler in an absolute and theocratic monarchy is elevated above his subjects.
Imperial Airways, England – Egypt – India Art Print
Erickson, Kerne
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July 4th, 2010 traveler
Egypt for Winter Sunshine Poster
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The changeless blue of the Egyptian sky, the strictly regular return of all the natural phenomena connected with the Nile, that wonderful stream of the land’s life, are entirely in accord with the fixedness of Egyptian civilization in all its branches. Though the high state of advance which we first find in Egyptian art, three thousand years before the Christian era, must necessarily have been preceded by less perfected degrees, it is wholly impossible to perceive such stages of development in any of the monuments known. After Egypt had attained a certain height of civilization, its history, during the thousands of years known to us, shows none of those phases of advance or decline, of development in short, to be observed in Europe during every century, if not during every decade.
The Egyptian completed buildings and statues begun by his remote ancestors without the slightest striving for individual peculiarity. He commenced new works in the same spirit, leaving them for similar execution by his great-grandchildren. Numberless generations thus dragged on without bequeathing a trace of any peculiar character and ability. It is only by the cartouches of the kings in the hieroglyphic inscriptions that it is possible to separate the dynasties, and to group into periods of a thousand years or more, works of art which seem from their style to belong to one and the same age. What gigantic revolutions have affected the civilization of Europe during the fourteen centuries elapsed since the overthrow of the Roman Empire, and how slight are the appreciable changes during the nearly equal number of years of the ancient dynasties of Memphis–the period of the pyramids, or again of the Theban kingdom–from the seventeenth dynasty to the rule of the Ptolemies!
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