ARTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19760, 10 April 1926, Page 12

ARTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

TUTANKHAMEN TOMB WONDERS.

“Most newspaper readers have, * imagine been inclined to doubt whether the ° wonders of the TutanKhamen toma have not been a little exaggerated by enthusiastic archaeologists and descriptive writers,” writes Mr J- A. Spender m tne Westminster Gazette. *‘ Afbcf seeing iJaem I am tempted to say that the half has not been told. No verbal descriptions, no photographs can do justice to the miracles of art and craft that are now on view m the Cairo Museum. Whetfler for broad effects covering large spaces, or tor tn< minute intricacies of the l eTr ® s |®/® , enameller’s art needing a magnifying g ■ to reveal their beauties these objects »f» incomparable. There is no age in the history of craftsmanship in wnich they b* been surpassed, and very few in which thev have been equalled. They have, addition, the peculiar realism of thing* untouched bv time and climate, and oom*nsf straight from the 3000-year-old tomb as it they had been deposited there “This, Lom the artistic point of view, mav be a fictitious advantage, and one ought perhaps to say that they are neither better ncr worse because of . this fascinat ing newness, which makes them not battered relics, but, the actual P»> ciselv as they saw and handled them, at men'who lived before Monon, or before Greece and Ro “* H d d ef* Christian era were dreamt of. xet I oeiy anvone of ordinary susceptibilities, to stand fn front of them and not feel a certain awe and wonder at this thought mofcl lowing it a certain humility at the prooi offerer! that human skill and craftema - ship had reached this superb level m ttie thirteenth century before Christ. , “It is surely .time that arteb. cnffUmen, and art critics, as well asarcffiffloio gists, should visit Egypt and make a «*iou» attempt to appraise the contnb "£° n id Kffvnt to the art of he world. ine mca that Egyptian art. was ■ thing of stale repetitions, without to the historians. of art, could never base survived any serious examination of ttie low-relief sculpture of the tombs, but i becomes sheer nonsense in vie-w of the proofs now coming to light of the great artistic period which followed the reforms of Akenathon and lasted on into the P eno of reaction.”