Show STUDENT LIFE 122 From the very earliest times when man was just beginning to rise above the lower animals and by growth of intellect and perceptions had begun to be impressed terrified or awed by the elements and forces of nature around him we find him as a result of this beginning to conceive of a superior power a Deity and a future life We find him erecting huge columns and pillars of stone in honor of this God at first by placing huge boulders one above the other afterwards by roughly carving a single block with rude uncouth figures to embody in plastic form his mental conception of this unseen power by creating an image in wood or stone he has also built a wall of large rocks enclosing a certain area within the center of which is placed a crude table made of large slabs of stone which represent an altar at which he offers up sacrifices in order to gain the favor or appease the anger of this Deity In time these walls support a roof and architecture has begun From the belief in a power which could create and control his life there came also the belief that the life would be recreated or continued in a hereafter and so in that early age when the warrior died they buried him with his weapons of the chase and all his earthly belongings and erected over him as a protection for his body a tumulus of stone which later on in the history of man developed on a vastly enlarged scale into the pyramids of Egypt and the sarcophagi of Greece If we go on to the time of the Egyptian epoch we find these people with a firm and certain belief in a future life The Aalu-fielbeyond the Lybian desert were the Islands of the Blest afterwards adopted and believed in by the Greeks where the body renewed its life With this arose and became immorta the further belief that the soul remained in or near the body and that if any part ds of the body became marred or mutilated in any way those same parts of the new immortal body would bear like marks and scars So it was their first desire to preserve the latter intact and perfect until the day of resurrection To be denied the right of burial was the heaviest punishment which could be inflicted upon an Egyptian From this arose the embalmbiing of the dead with myrrh cassia or tumen baths the covering of the mummy with sheets of gold pitch and varnish the wrapping in bandages of linen and the sealing away in the depths of mountain sepulchres or in pyramids From their religion sprung the first art the art displayed in the tombs At first the Gods were symbolized by signs and figures This gave rise to a language whereby each thing material or immaterial was symbolized by a sign or figure or combination of them Upon the sides and lid of the mummy-cas- e and upon the walls of the sepulchre wherein it was laid were written in these s mbols the history of the mummy's life the account of the death and burial and scenes attending these rites They carved in wood the portrait of the dead gave it eyes of glass painted it to resemble life and placed it on the mummy case on the outer wrappings they painted the symbol of immortality figures of protecting gods and vignettes from the Book of the Dead They placed within the sepulchre busts and figures representing the dead made of wood stone and bronze Rude sculpture probably came into existence before painting and it was through the coloring of these busts that flat painting developed and was applied to the walls So we find that the first sculpture and painting were The first buildings erected were the temples designed as a secluded place where they might practice their re- air-tig- ht sep-ulchu- ral |