CHAPTER III. AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. Egyptian art was old when Grecian art was young, and it remained crude when the art of Greece had reached its highest development. But not the less did it delight in caricature and burlesque. In the Egyptian collection belonging to the New York Historical Society there is a specimen of the Egyptians' favorite kind of burlesque picture which dates back three thousand years, but which stands out more clearly now upon its slab of limestone than we can engrave it here. [Illustration: An Egyptian Caricature.] Dr. Abbott, who brought this specimen from Thebes, interpreted it to be a representation of a lion seated upon a throne, as king, receiving from a fox, personating a high-priest, an offering of a goose and a fan. It is probably a burlesque of a well-known picture; for in one of the Egyptian papyri in the British Museum there is a drawing of a lion and unicorn playing chess, which is a manifest caricature of a picture frequently repeated upon the ancient monuments. It was from Egypt, then, that the classic nations caught this childish fancy of ridiculing the actions of men by picturing animals performing similar ones; and it is surprising to note how fond the Egyptian artists were of this simple device. On the same papyrus there are several other interesting specimens: a lion on his hind-legs engaged in laying out as a mummy the dead body of a hoofed animal; a tiger or wild cat driving a flock of geese to market; another tiger carrying a hoe on one shoulder and a bag of seed on the other; an animal playing on a double pipe, and driving before him a herd of small stags, like a shepherd; a hippopotamus washing his hands in a tall water-jar; an animal on a throne, with another behind him as a fan-bearer, and a third presenting him with a bouquet. No place was too sacred for such playful delineations. In one of the royal sepulchres at Thebes, as Kenrick relates, there is a picture of an ass and a lion singing, accompanying themselves on the phorminx and the harp. There is also an elaborate burlesque of a battle piece, in which a fortress is attacked by rats, and defended by cats, which are visible on the battlements. Some rats bring a ladder to the walls and prepare to scale them, while others, armed with spears, shields, and bows, protect the assailants. One rat of enormous size, in a chariot drawn by dogs, has pierced several cats with arrows, and is swinging round his battle-axe in exact imitation of Rameses, in a serious picture, dealing destruction on his enemies. On a papyrus at Turin there is a representation of a cat with a shepherd's crook watching a flock of geese, while a cynocephalus near by plays upon the flute. Of this class of burlesques the most interesting example, perhaps, is the one annexed, representing a Soul doomed to return to its earthly home in the form of a pig. [Illustration: A Condemned Soul, Egyptian Caricature.]