red, mixed them with water containing a little gum
tragacanth. They laid them on by means of a reed, or a more or less fine
hair brush. When well prepared, these pigments are remarkably solid, and
have changed but little during the lapse of ages. The reds have darkened,
the greens have faded, the blues have turned somewhat green or grey; but
this is only on the surface. If that surface is scraped off, the colour
underneath is brilliant and unchanged. Before the Theban period, no
precautions were taken to protect the painter's work from the action of air
and light. About the time of the Twentieth Dynasty, however, it became
customary to coat painted surfaces with a transparent varnish which was
soluble in water, and which was probably made from the gum of some kind of
acacia. It was not always used in the same manner. Some painters varnished
the whole surface, while others merely glazed the ornaments and
accessories, without touching the flesh-tints or the clothing. This varnish
has cracked from the effects of age, or has become so dark as to spoil the
work it was intended to preserve. Doubtless, the Egyptians discovered the
bad effects produced by it, as we no longer meet with it after the close of
the Twentieth Dynasty.

Egyptian painters laid on broad, flat, uniform washes of colour; they did
not paint in our sense of the term; they illuminated. Just as in drawing
they reduced everything to lines, and almost wholly suppressed the internal
modelling, so in adding colour they still further simplified their subject
by merging all varieties of tone, and all play of light and shadow, in one
uniform tint. Egyptian painting is never quite true, and never quite false.
Without pretending to the faithful imitation of nature, it approaches
nature as nearly as it may; sometimes understating, sometimes exaggerating,
sometimes substituting ideal or conventional renderings for strict
realities. Water, for instance, is always represented by a flat tint of
blue, or by blue covered with zigzag lines in black. The buff and bluish
hues of the vulture are translated into bright red and vivid blue. The
flesh-tints of men are of a dark reddish brown, and the flesh-tints of
women are pale yellow. The colours conventionally assigned to each animate
and inanimate object were taught in the schools, and their use handed on
unchanged from generation to generation. Now and then it happened that a
painter more daring than his contemporaries ventured