As a symbol of universal import to indicate the point of view where we now stand, we may perhaps first and foremost fix before our eyes the image of the Phoenix, which is its own funeral pile, yet ever is rejuvenated out of the flames of its death and rises from the ashes. Herodotus informs us (II, 73) that at least in representations he saw this bird in Egypt, and, in fact, it is the _Egyptian_ people who also supply us with a focus for the type of symbolical art. Before, however, we proceed to the closer consideration of Egyptian art we will mention several other myths, which form, as it were, the passage to that national symbolism which we find most elaborate, no matter from what direction we approach it. Such are the myths of Adonis, that of his death, and the lament of Aphrodite over him, the funeral festivals, etc., conceptions and rites which find their original home on the Syrian coast. The service of Cybele among the Phrygians possesses the same significance, which also finds its echo in the myths of Castor and Pollux, Ceres and Proserpina.
As the essence of such significance we find in the above quoted examples, before everything else, that phasal condition of negation we have already alluded to, the death, that is, of the natural regarded as a basic and absolute condition of the Divine process, emphasized as such, and made visible in its independence. It is in this sense that we can explain the funeral festivals that celebrate the death of the god, the excessive lamentations over his loss, which is once more made good through his rediscovery, resurrection, and rejuvenescence, making it possible for the festivals of joy to follow. This universal significance contains further its more definite relation to Nature. In winter the sun loses his force, while in spring he returns once more, and with that Nature regains her youth, she dies and is reborn. In examples such as these the Divine, personified as a human event, discovers its significance in the life of Nature, which then from a further point of view becomes a symbol for the essential character of the negative condition generally, in spiritual things no less than natural.
It is in _Egypt_, however, that we have to look for the perfect example of symbolical representation in its systematic elaboration of characteristic content and form. Egypt is the land of symbol, which proposes to itself the spiritual problem of the self-interpretation of Spirit, without being able successfully to solve it. The problems remain without an answer; and such solution as we are able to supply consists therefore merely in this, that we grasp these riddles of Egyptian art and its symbolical productions as this very problem which Egypt propounds for herself but is unable to solve. For the reason that we find that Spirit here still endeavours in the external objects of sense, from which again it strains to free itself, and further labours with unwearied assiduity, to evolve from itself its essential substance by means of natural phenomena no less than to embody the same in the form of spirit for the _vision of the senses_, rather than as the pure content of mind, this Egyptian people may, in contrast to all the instances previously examined, be described as the nation Art claims for herself[59]. Its works of art, however, remain full of mystery and silence, without music or motion; and this is so because Spirit here has not yet truly found its own life, nor has learned how to utter the clear and luminous speech of mind. In the unsatisfied stress and impulse, to bring before the vision through her art, albeit in so voiceless a way, this wrestle of herself with herself, to give shape to the Inward of her life, but only to become conscious of her own Inward, no less than that which universally prevails[60], through external forms which are cognate with it--we have in a sentence the characterization of Egypt. The people of this wonderful land was not merely agricultural, but also constructive, a folk which tossed up the soil in every direction, delved lakes and canals, and exercised their artistic instincts not merely in giving visible shape to buildings of enormous solidity, but in carrying works themselves of vast dimension to a like extent into the bowels of the earth. To erect buildings of this kind was, as we have long ago learned from Herodotus, a principal occupation of this people, and one of the chief exploits of their kings. The buildings of the Hindoo race are also unquestionably of colossal size; we shall, however, find nowhere else a variety which can compare with that of Egypt.