What we see in the tombs of the priests and officials almost leads us to the conclusion that these representations had not, necessarily, a direct and special reference to what had once been the occupations of the inmates of the tomb, but were placed on the walls merely as pictures, precisely as we hang upon the walls of our houses such pictures as please us. There was nothing in the aspects of the country which could have led the old Egyptians to wish to depict scenery. There were no charming bits of Nature, no world of changeful cloud-scapes, no suggestive winter, spring, or summer scenes. Nor, again, was the turn of their minds dramatic, or such as might have led them to desire to reproduce in pictures those human scenes which would recall the workings of passion or the poetry of life; and, indeed, their style of art would hardly have enabled them to deal with such subjects. They thus appear to have been confined to hard literal matter of fact representations of the arts of ordinary life, of Egyptian objects, of funeral processions, and of what, according to their ideas, would take place in the next world. With these they decorated their walls. It was Hobson’s choice. They had nothing else for the purpose. They may have had a special inducement to represent the common arts of life, such as cabinet-making, glass-blowing, weaving, pottery, etc., because they took a very intelligible pride in contemplating their superiority to the rest of the world in these matters, which, at that time, when an acquaintance with them was regarded as a distinction, were thought much more of than was the case afterwards, when all the world had attained to proficiency in them.