Imagine a museum, some thousands of years hence, ostensibly representing the art of France from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth; and suppose this crammed with the off-scourings of the Salon school and the autotypes and _bric-à-brac_ of the Rue de Rivoli, with only here and there a Clouet, a Boucher, or a Lancret, only here and there a Clodion, a Dalou, or a Rodin. Would not visitors to such a collection be certain to conclude that the French were anything but artistic? Conditions such as those indicated above obtain in nearly every Egyptian collection of the present day. The point of view of those in charge of museums and exhibits seems to be that anything of Egyptian origin should be treasured, however lacking it may be in artistic merit, and small wonder if the average visitor of taste has not the patience to search through such heterogeneous collections in which the few vital articles are buried. The great mass of Egyptian remains are far inferior to those of Greek origin, wrought in the time of Phidias and Apelles; the master works of Egypt, on the other hand, are equal to the artistic products of any age, and it is with these master works, and only with these, that we must concern ourselves here. Egyptian Colour-harmonies The Egyptian painter seldom or never sought to blend his different shades into each other, he seldom or never dealt in gradations; instead he painted in large patches, each patch clearly demarked from its neighbour. But with this system he achieved some of the grandest colour-harmonies, as witness the papyrus of Ani,[3] wherein the prominent notes are brown and yellow, green, white and black. Even more beautiful is the papyrus of Queen Mat-ka-ré, slightly higher in pitch than the last-named, and dominated by an exquisite reddish yellow; while, turning to polychromatic sculpture, surely there was never a lovelier piece of colouring than the statue of Princess Neferet, with its rich greens and reds, its browns and whites. Scarcely inferior to this is the coffin of Khnumu-Hotep, painted with gold, black, and brown, and with stripes of peacock-blue decorated with patterns in gold. If the Egyptian was a divine colourist, he was still more surely a master of composition. The artist striving after harmony in design may arrange a host of figures upon a canvas, or he may take for his purpose only a very few objects. The former, the usual practice of the European school, is infinitely the easier of the two; but the Egyptian commonly chose the latter, and on his piece of papyrus or on his plaque of stone he placed his few objects so happily and in such perfect æsthetic relationship to each other that the whole space used appears to be decorated. His draughtsmanship, besides, is usually of high excellence; here, too, he faces a difficulty, giving a bold impression rather than a detailed drawing, yet so expressive are his lines that the work possesses abundantly the illusion of life.