[5] The papyrus was the plant from which Egyptian paper was made. It was also the bulrush of the Scriptures, in which the infant Moses was found.
We have here an opportunity of noticing how the mode of building, however simple or primitive in character, first employed by a nation may become embodied in its ultimate architecture; for, undoubtedly, the rude houses first erected in Egypt were formed largely of bundles of the papyrus, which were gathered from the river-side--for wood was rare in Egypt--and, ultimately, when buildings were formed of stone, an attempt was made at imitating in the new material the form which the old reeds presented. But mark, the imitation was no gross copy of the original work, but a well-considered and perfectly idealised work, substituting for the bundle of reeds a work having the true architectural qualities of a noble-looking and useful column. We must now pass from the ornament of the Egyptians to that of the Greeks, and here we meet with decorative forms having a different object and different aim from those already considered.
Egyptian ornament was symbolical in character. Its individual forms had specific meanings--the purport of each shape being taught by the priests--but we find no such thing as symbolism in Greek decoration. The Greeks were a refined people, who sought not to express their power by their art-works so much as their refinement. Before the mental eye they always had a perfect ideal, and their most earnest efforts were made at the realisation of the perfections of the mental conception of absolute refinement. In one respect the Greeks resembled the Egyptians, for they rarely created new forms. When once a form became sacred to the Egyptians, it could not be altered; but with the Greeks, while bound by no such law, the love of old forms was great; yet the Greeks did not seek simply to reproduce what they had before created, but laboured hard to improve and refine what they had before done; and even through succeeding centuries they worked at the refinement of simple forms and ornamental compositions, which have become characteristic of them as a people.
The general expression of Greek art is that of refinement, and the manner in which the delicately cultivated taste of some of the Greeks is expressed by their ornaments is astonishing. One decorative device, which we term the Greek Anthemion, may be regarded as their principal ornament--(the original ornamental composition by one of my pupils, Fig. 6, consists primarily of three anthemions)--and the variety of refined forms in which it appears is most interesting.