link which divides these separate scenes, we shall do well to compare this
wall-subject with the mosaic at Palestrina (fig. 177), a monument of
Graeco-Roman time which represents almost the same scenes, grouped,
however, after a style more familiar to our ways of seeing and thinking.
The Nile occupies the immediate foreground of the picture, and extends as
far as the foot of the mountains in the distance. Towns rise from the
water's edge; and not only towns, but obelisks, farm-houses, and towers of
Graeco-Italian style, more like the buildings depicted in Pompeian
landscapes than the monuments of the Pharaohs. Of these buildings, only the
large temple in the middle distance to the right of the picture, with its
pylon gateway and its four Osirian colossi, recalls the general arrangement
of Egyptian architecture. To the left, a party of sportsmen in a large boat
are seen in the act of harpooning the hippopotamus and crocodile. To the
right, a group of legionaries, drawn up in front of a temple and preceded
by a priest, salute a passing galley. Towards the middle of the foreground,
in the shade of an arched trellis thrown across a small branch of the
Nile, some half-clad men and women are singing and carousing. Little
papyrus skiffs, each rowed by a single boatman, and other vessels fill the
vacant spaces of the composition. Behind the buildings we see the
commencement of the desert. The water forms large pools at the base of
overhanging hills, and various animals, real or imaginary, are pursued by
shaven-headed hunters in the upper part of the picture. Now, precisely
after the manner of the Roman mosaicist, the old Egyptian artist placed
himself, as it were, on the Nile, and reproduced all that lay between his
own standpoint and the horizon. In the wall-painting (fig. 176) the river
flows along the line next the floor, boats come and go, and boatmen fall to
blows with punting poles and gaffs. In the division next above, we see the
river bank and the adjoining flats, where a party of slaves, hidden in the
long grasses, trap and catch birds. Higher still, boat-making, rope-making,
and fish-curing are going on. Finally, in the highest register of all, next
the ceiling, are depicted the barren hills and undulating plains of the
desert, where greyhounds chase the gazelle, and hunters trammel big game
with the lasso. Each longitudinal section corresponds, in fact, with a
plane of the landscape; but the artist, instead of placing