Most people are interested in seeing others do something they are unable to do themselves, and when they can see it well done, in a manner, that is, suggesting a difficult feat accomplished with ease, they will even pay for the exhibition. That is the popular (with managers the extremely popular) side of the theatrical arts, of which dancing is one. When there arises the desire to see the exhibition repeated frequently, then must follow the special place with special facilities and accessories for the performance, and the theatre, or something like it, thus comes into existence as an institution sustained by popular support. There is first the thing done for pleasure--which is art; then the exploitation of it for profit--which is commerce; that is the brief epitaph of any art as a fruit of civilisation. The Egyptians did not reach the “theatre” stage. But dancing, essentially a popular art, received encouragement as an element in religious festivals and as an entertainment of the wealthy classes. Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the “religious” dances of Egypt. Enthusiastic historians of dancing seem rather too prone to expand the little store of fact we possess, and some go to the length of speaking of the religious and popular “ballets” of the Egyptians. But it is certain that they had no regular theatrical spectacles in which dancing was of prime importance; and their popular dances, to any such extent as they could be described as “_representations ingenieuses_,” were primitive in comparison with any of later times. Solo-dances and _pas de deux_ were general enough, but the dancing of massed groups, and the dramatic representation of a story, appear to have been unknown, or have passed unrecorded if they were known. The nearest approach to them, though not of course performed as a theatrical spectacle, would seem to have been an “astronomical dance,” which was done by or under the direction of the priests of Apis, and is said to have been--appropriately enough!--a representation of the movements of the stars. It is probable that it was employed mainly as a means of education. Holy Church in mediæval times took advantage of the popular craving for theatrical shows, and sought by the aid of “mystery plays,” and “moralities” to extend the knowledge of religious truths. It may be conjectured that the Egyptian hierarchy similarly had some such end in view, and that the priestly caste sought to utilise the popular taste for dancing as a means of influence, and that the actual performance of the dance served to fix more lastingly in the minds of novices the religious and astronomical truths it embodied. [Illustration: An Egyptian Male Dancer (_From a Theban Fresco_).] [Illustration: Egyptian Dancing Girls (_From a mural painting in the British Museum_).] [Illustration: A Greek Funeral Dance (_From a coloured plaque in the Louvre_).]