Egypt, the first school of mankind, that ancient country, famous for its fertility under a brazen sky; the spot from which Sesostris once set out to conquer the world. Egypt became the mother of philosophy and the fine arts; soon she was conquered by Cambyses, and then successively by the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, and finally the Turks.
Take Greece, once peopled by heroes, who twice vanquished Asia. Letters, as yet in their infancy, had not corrupted the disposition of its inhabitants; but the progress of the sciences soon produced a dissoluteness of manners, and the imposition of the Macedonian yoke: from which time Greece, always learned, always voluptuous, and always a slave, has experienced amid all its revolutions no more than a change of masters….
It was not till the days of Ennius and Terence that Rome, founded by a shepherd, and made illustrious by peasants, began to degenerate. But after the appearance of an Ovid, a Catullus, a Martial, and the rest of those numerous obscene authors, whose very names are enough to put modesty to the blush, Rome, once the shrine of virtue, became the theatre of vice, a scorn among the nations, and an object of derision even to barbarians. […]
But wherefore should we seek, in past ages, for proofs of a truth, of which the present affords us ample evidence? There is in Asia a vast empire, where learning is held in honour, and leads to the highest dignities in the State. If the sciences improved our morals, if they inspired us with courage and taught us to lay down our lives for the good of our country, the Chinese should be wise, free, and invincible. But, if there be no vice they do not practise, no crime with which they are not familiar; if the sagacity of their ministers, the supposed wisdom of their laws, and the multitude of inhabitants who people that vast empire, have alike failed to preserve them from the yoke of the rude and ignorant Tartars, of what use were their men of science and literature?…
Contrast with these instances the morals of those few nations which, being preserved from the contagion of useless knowledge, have by their virtues become happy in themselves and afforded an example to the rest of the world. Such were the first inhabitants of Persia, a nation so singular that virtue was taught among them in the same manner as the sciences are with us … Such were the Scythians, of whom such wonderful eulogies have come down to us. Such were the Germans, whose simplicity, innocence, and virtue afforded a most delightful contrast to the pen of an historian, weary of describing the baseness and villainies of an enlightened, opulent, and voluptuous nation. Such had been even Rome in the days of its poverty and ignorance. And such has shown itself to be, even in our own times, that rustic nation, whose justly renowned courage not even adversity could conquer, and whose fidelity no example could corrupt.2
IIC3 Comte de Caylus (1692–1765) from A Collection of the Antiquities of Egypt
Anne‐Claude‐Philippe de Tubières, Comte de Caylus was a wealthy collector and antiquarian, as well as an accomplished printmaker and theorist of art. After a precocious military career during the War of the Spanish Succession, he travelled widely, visiting England and the Netherlands but also journeying eastwards, going first to Italy but also to Greece and the Levant, including Constantinople. In 1731 he was accepted into the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. In addition to his archaeological and antiquarian interests, he is known for a series of Oriental tales which he published in 1745. The Contes orientaux were in part translated from manuscripts originating in Constantinople then held in the King’s library in Paris, but they also included original works composed by Caylus himself. His principal work, however, was the multi‐volume Collection of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities which commenced publication in 1752 and continued after his death. The first volume included studies of all four of his chosen areas, the present extracts being taken from the ‘Premier partie. Des Egyptiens’. After an introductory text, from which the extracts are taken, the bulk of the work consists of a large number of illustrations of Egyptian antiquities on which Caylus composed detailed commentaries, this attention to the object being one of the distinguishing features of his work. It is worth noting that, in the case of Egypt, these included hieroglyphic and demotic inscriptions as well as objects: texts which to Caylus, as to everyone else at the time, remained unintelligible. In our extracts, Caylus draws attention to the extremely ancient nature of Egyptian civilization and argues for its exemplary status with respect to the later civilizations of classical Greece and Rome. The extracts are drawn from Recueil d’antiquités Egyptiennes, Etrusques, Grecques et Romaines, Paris 1752, pp. 1–7. They have been translated for the present volume by Chris Miller. (Further texts by Caylus on drawing, composition and the art of Watteau can be found in Art in Theory 1648–1815 IIA11, IIA12 and IIIC4 pp. 352–6, 356–63 and 569–73 respectively.)
The origins of the Egyptians are lost in the era of fable. History tells us nothing about the beginnings of this People, which from the first appears with the traits of wisdom and grandeur that characterise all its ideas. We see it surrounded by the Arts, which it explored in depth, acquainted as it was with their vast extent and their every subtlety and, since Egypt is the source whence the Ancients derived the principles of taste, we cannot do better than begin here the examination of monuments that have escaped the ravages of time.
The mysteries in which the Egyptians wrapped their religion, in order to induce a greater respect for it, have covered the history of their country in an impenetrable veil, while a people that worked, it would seem, for nothing other than posterity, did not foresee that, by employing the symbolic writing known by the name of hieroglyphs, it obstructed its own intention, so true is it that the purview of mankind is blinkered and profoundly imperfect.
It is not therefore the nature of Egyptian antiquities to permit of thorough illumination. For the most part, one must confine oneself to glimpsing certain thoughts, and such explanation as one is able to provide today cannot cast sufficient light on any point of their history. The knowledge that can be had of this people is limited to a small number of figures and characters. Alas, even the little that we know of them is blanketed in obscurity and savours of the mystery that prevailed in this country. This is why I must again set before the reader’s eyes some of the conjectures that have already been proposed and even to draw certain of them from modern authors. However, I shall attempt to eliminate as much repetition as I can and focus on those pieces that have not been published or whose explanation represents something new for me. I do not willingly confuse eras and, as I have often pointed out, I should like to be able to distinguish the furthest reaches of antiquity from the century of the Ptolemies. But, to be able to do this, one would need more elements of comparison. Above all, I have taken care to identify the era in which Roman domination makes itself felt; this was by no means difficult, since it is the period of inferior taste, whereas the Egyptians had, by the elevation and nobility of their thought, inspired in the Etruscans and Greeks a firm and decisive taste for the sciences and the arts. Indeed, their interaction with every other people served only to enhance their glory, since many came there to study whatever the Egyptians were willing to impart to foreigners. Though they made conquests and travelled, these facts are irrelevant to Europe, since it is evident that the Egyptians had no love for navigation. Moreover, what country could they have found, I do not say only on the coasts of the Mediterranean but in the other parts of the world by which they were surrounded, comparable to the land that they inhabited, in terms of its fertility, its cultivation or indeed its magnificence? What resource could they have discerned in the barbarity of Europe? What enlightenment could there be in countries endowed with no knowledge other than what they had glimpsed in Egypt itself? They were wise, moderate and humble and followed the profession of their parents. This same spirit of constancy prevailed in all their customs, to which they were strongly attached and it does indeed seem that they were happy. I shall say no more on this point, since I can add nothing to the elegant description of this country given by Monsieur Bossuet; it leaves nothing to be desired and I refer the reader to it. However, since the intention of this great man in writing a universal history did not allow of his entering into much detail about the arts, I shall set out in brief my reflections on the Egyptians, resulting from my reading of the ancient authors and modern travellers, and my examination of the monuments.
Architecture
