or jarring. The most brilliant colours were
placed alongside each other with extreme audacity, but with a perfect
knowledge of their mutual relations and combined effect. They do not
jar with, or exaggerate, or kill each other: they enhance each other's
value, and by their contact give rise to half-shades which harmonize
with them. The sepulchral chapels, in cases where their decoration had
been completed, and where they have reached us intact, appear to us as
chambers hung with beautifully luminous and interesting tapestry, in
which rest ought to be pleasant during the heat of the day to the soul
which dwells within them, and to the friends who come there to hold
intercourse with the dead.

The decoration of palaces and houses was not less sumptuous than that of
the sepulchres, but it has been so completely destroyed that we should
find it difficult to form an idea of the furniture of the living if we
did not see it frequently depicted in the abode of the double. The great
armchairs, folding seats, footstools, and beds of carved wood, painted
and inlaid, the vases of hard stone, metal, or enamelled ware, the
necklaces, bracelets, and ornaments on the walls, even the common
pottery of which we find the remains in the neighbourhood of the
pyramids, are generally distinguished by an elegance and grace
reflecting credit on the workmanship and taste of the makers.* The
squares of ivory which they applied to their linen-chests and their
jewel-cases often contained actual bas-reliefs in miniature of as bold
workmanship and as skilful execution as the most beautiful pictures in
the tombs: on these, moreover, were scenes of private life--dancing or
processions bringing offerings and animals.**

* The study of the alabaster and diorite vases found near
the pyramids has furnished Petrie with very ingenious views
on the methods among the Egyptians of working hard stone.
Examples of stone toilet or sacrificial bottles are not
unfrequent in our museums: I may mention those in the Louvre
which bear the cartouches of Dadkeri Assi (No. 343), of Papi
I., and of Papi II., the son of Papi I.; not that they are
to be reckoned among the finest, but because the cartouches
fix the date of their manufacture. They came from the
pyramids of these sovereigns, opened by the Arabs at the
beginning of this century: the vase of the VIth dynasty,
which is in the Museum at Florence, was brou