Hieroglyphic writing, another form of Egyptian art, is itself in great part symbolic, since it makes ideas known by images borrowed from nature, and which have some analogy with those ideas. But a defect betrays itself, especially in the representations of the human form. In fact, though a mysterious and spiritual force is there revealed, it is not true personality. The internal principle fails; action and impulse come from without. Such are the statues of Memnon, which are animate, have a voice, and give forth a sound, only when struck by the rays of the sun. It is not the human voice which comes from within—an echo of the soul. This free principle which animates the human form, remains here concealed, wrapped up, mute, without proper spontaneity, and is only animated under the influence of nature. A superior form is that of the Myth of Osiris, the Egyptian god, _par excellence_—that god who is engendered, born, dies and is resuscitated. In this myth, which offers various significations, physical, historical, moral, and religious or metaphysical, is shown the superiority of these conceptions over those of Indian art. In general, in Egyptian art, there is revealed a profounder, more spiritual, and more moral character. The human form is no longer a simple, abstract personification. Religion and art attempt to spiritualize themselves; they do not attain their object, but they catch sight of it and aspire to it. From this imperfection arises the absence of freedom in the human form. The human figure still remains without expression, colossal, serious, rigid. Thus is explained those attitudes of the Egyptian statues, the arms stiff, pressed against the body, without grace, without movement, and without life, but absorbed in profound thought, and full of seriousness. Hence also the complication of the elements and symbols, which are intermingled and reflected the one in the other; a thing which indicates the freedom of spirit, but also an absence of clearness and definiteness. Hence the obscure, enigmatic character of those symbols, which always cause scholars to despair—enigmas to the Egyptians themselves. These emblems involve a multitude of profound meanings. They remain there as a testimony of fruitless efforts of spirit to comprehend itself, a symbolism full of mysteries, a vast enigma represented by a symbol which sums up all these enigmas—the sphinx. This enigma Egypt will propose to Greece, who herself will make of it the problems of religion and philosophy. The sense of this enigma, never solved, and yet always solving, is “Man, _know thyself_.”—Such is the maxim which Greece inscribed on the front of her temples, the problem which she presented to her sages as the very end of wisdom.