Introductory material
Reading edition
ON THE ARTS OF MEROE.
Affluence would introduce a Taste for the Arts. — The Heat of the Climate favourable to Sedentary Pursuits. — Private Emulation would afford farther Encouragement. — Desire of distinguishing themselves by Intellectual Pursuits. — Testimony of Diodorus that Knowledge was very generally diffused in Ethiopia. — The Pyramids of Meroe the oldest Specimens of Ethiopian Art. — Civilisation of the Ethiopians proved by their monumental Edifices. — The Ethiopians Inventors of the Arch. — Egyptian Arches. — Ethiopian Sculpture. — Probable Cause of their peculiar Style. — Reasons for preserving it. — Deference of the Ptolemies and Romans for the Superstitions of the Egyptians. — Pleasing Effect of the Egyptian and Ethiopian Sculpture. — Admirable Manner of drawing Animals, Hieroglyphics, and their Taste in Ornaments. — Colouring on Ethiopian Sculpture. — The Knowledge of the Arts descended from Ethiopia. — Complexion of the ancient and present Inhabitants. — Accuracy of Diodorus’s Account proved by the Monuments. — Taste for the Arts in a Nation inseparable from other Intellectual Pursuits. — Works of the Ethiopian King Tirhaka. — Review of the Antiquities in Ethiopia. — Folly of comparing the present with the ancient Inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile 346