ggest, one above another on the field
of his relief. He trusted, in fact, to the intelligence of the spectator,
and took but little pains to help the latter in making sense of the images
put before him.

NOTES:

[415] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. chapter i. Sec. 1.

[416] M. J. HALEVY disputes this reading of the word. As we are unable to
discuss the question, we must refer our readers to his observations (_Les
Monuments Chaldeens et la Question de Sumir et d'Accad_) in the _Comptes
rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions_, 1882, p. 107. M. Halevy believes it
should be read as the name of the prince Nabou or Nebo. The question is
only of secondary importance, but M. Halevy enlarges its scope by reopening
the whole matter of debate between himself and M. Oppert as to the true
character of what Assyriologists call the Sumerian language and written
character. The _Comptes rendus_ only gives a summary of the paper. The same
volume contains a _resume_ of M. Oppert's reply (1882, p. 123:
_Inscriptions de Gudea_, et seq).

[417] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 341.

[418] The same disproportion between men and buildings is to be found in
many other reliefs (see figs. 39, 43, and 60).

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III.

FUNERARY ARCHITECTURE.

Sec. 1.--_Chaldaean and Assyrian Notions as to a Future Life._

Of the remains that have come down to us from ancient Egypt the oldest, the
most important in some respects, and beyond dispute the most numerous, are
the sepulchres. Of the two lives of the Egyptian, that of which we know the
most is his posthumous life--the life he led in the shadows of that
carefully-hidden subterranean dwelling that he called his "good abode."
While in every other country bodies after a few years are nothing but a few
handfuls of dust, in Egypt they creep out in thousands to the light of day,
from grottoes in the flanks of the mountains, from pits sunk through the
desert sand and from hollows in the sand itself. They rise accompanied by
long inscriptions that speak for them, and make us sharers in their joys
and sorrows, in their religious beliefs and in the promises in which they
placed their hopes when their eyes were about to close for ever. A
peculiarity of which Egypt offers the only instance is thus explained. The
house of the Memphite citizen and the palace of the king himself, can only
now be restored by hints culled from the reliefs and inscriptions--hints
which sometimes lend themse