The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1890-03-01

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VIEW OF TEMPLE.
was ola singularly comfortable character.
The ancient Egyptian loved his home,
and his wife occupied position far SUI
perior to that of Greek or Roman
matron. The beds were of rare wood,
carved with consummate art to repre-
sent some form, a lion, bull, sphinx,
or wolf GackaD. The head of the
animal served to raise the pillows of the
occupant, from which circumstance we
know that the Egyptians liked to sleep
with their beads high-a symptom that
they drank hard both of wine and beer.
The sides of the bed were inlaid with
gold and enamel colors according to the
shape of it, and the legs were pre-
Raphaelite;in exactitude and strength of
realization. On these beds were mat
tresses filled with feathers of the goose.
Besides beds there were sofas with backs
and without. covered with embroidered
stufs of fine wool or linen with which
gold threads were mingled. Then there
wereb ureaus with drawers hidden by
folding doors, and there were splendid
sideboards covered with gold vases and
and vessels of every description. The
forms are certainly Greek, and yet they
may have been from that part of Egypt
in which there had been Greek colonists
from very early times. There were
splendid tables, generally round and
carved, Of rare woods, and there were
chairs of many varieties. One kind is
strikingly like the handsome heavy
chairs OF a modern dining-room.
There is fresco in the British
Museum, brought from Memphis
tomb, which represents row of ladies
seated in these chairs. Some are SMELL
ing their lotus bouquets, others are re-
ceiving glasses of wine from female at
PENDANTS and nodding kindly to them.
1t might be 5 o'clock tea fight in mo-
dern times from the expression of the
faces. But the glasses were very much
more beautiful, for we have no more
their secrets of glass than we have of
the bronze knives with which the SER
wants carved the geese and poultry and
the joints of beef, mutton and pork they
never touched.
The men are always represented in
the frescoes as of dark red color, but
the women invariably of a bright yellow.
The men shaved their heads closely, so
that we can not tell whether the hair
was or was not woolly, and they wore
artificial boards who's length and shape
indicated precisely the rank OF the
wearer. Some of the ladies wore long
wigs of false hair, but this was dis
covered not from the frescoes, but from
various female mummies who went
down to the tomb in their wigs. Yet
they were young, for they had lost no
teeth, 50 that it is possible that the
Egyptian ladies had their heads shaved
as well as their husbands. Writer'S who
have considered this difference of color
have come to the conclusion that the
Egyptian women. took great care o
their complexion and not going into the
glare of the tropical sun, became
blanched, while the men retained their
original swarthiness. This is the case in
India, where the Hindoo women have
very white skins, while their lords are
often so dark as to be absolutely
black. But others have supposed that
the Egyptians wished to signify that the
men had intermarried with lighter,
perhaps white race. It is to be OBJ
served that the difference in color is ex-
hibited in the very earliest tomb paint
ings in the vicinity of Memphis which are
to belong to the fifth and sixth
dynasties, Rameses the Great was of
the nineteenth dynasty, and more than
thousand years elapsed between the two
epochs, but all the paintings are in the
same style, as if under the discipline of
some priestly law. We are in the habit
of thinking ourselves good engineers,
certainly Americans can hold their own
with any race now living. Bnt we do
not know and we can not imagine in
what way these wonderful men moved
the enormous stones used in their ar
chitecture. Every time European
Nation stole an obelisk from Egypt to
adorn modern city, the world held it's
breath at the marvellous achievement of
putting it in position. When Gorringe
placed the obelisk in the Central Park of
New York the feat cost small fortune.
But the Egyptians seemed to have made
nothing of such matter. With their
bronze chise]s they carved hierogly phlcs
IN the hard syenite rock as If it was SIM
plv cheese, but we can hardly do any
hing with our best steel tools. The man
ner in which these hierog!yphics were ar