I can imagine readily that in the chambers of the dead, the plain form shadowed out in a simple colour, and lighted by the glare of torches, may have had an awful and ghostly character; and if these figures were of the size of life, or larger, and further aided by the varying tints afforded by a low relief, as the torches glared upon them, a describer could hardly be charged with exaggeration, whatever effects he might impute to them. Still these are not pictures, though the artists approached nearly to picturesque design in many of the chiselled figures on the walls of the temples and tombs of Thebes, where the attacking and defending towns, the triumphs of a victorious king, the punishment of rebels, and other historical facts, are rendered with considerable spirit, and convey a notion that their authors might have become painters, had they not been restrained by custom from change or progress. These could not, however, be the beginnings of art. They mark already a very advanced state of society, since such great works of ornament could be required and executed; and they, it seems, were ancient when Herodotus visited Egypt 450 years before our era[17]. But we have more authentic documents in favour of the antiquity of the arts in Egypt, even than those afforded by the father of Greek history. Fifteen centuries before Herodotus travelled into Egypt, Abraham had been entertained there by a powerful king, who gave him gifts, such as only the head of a people already conversant with many arts could bestow. The whole history of Joseph’s life in Egypt[18] bears witness to the progress already made there in civility and the arts of polished life. Could we read the inscription freely, which covers the obelisk of Mataryah, the only remains of the stately Heliopolis, the On of Scripture, perhaps we might find some record of that high priest who gave his daughter in marriage to the Hebrew governor. Both sacred[19] and profane history[20] fix upon the two centuries between 1600 and 1400 before Christ, as the period when a prodigious movement took place in Egypt, and when great works were undertaken by the kings, and important colonies led forth into the western parts of Asia, and into Greece.