Art: Bridge from Antiquity

The Egyptian civilization that was greater, for nearly two thousand years, than anything before it, was almost spent by the first millennium B.C. The empire was shattered. The legacy of cultural greatness from the days of Ramses II was running out. Egypt was slowly overcome by an ennui that made her powerless to stop the conquering hordes of Libyans, Ethiopians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans, who swept into the Nile Valley like a rampaging flood. But foreign domination for a time pumped new vigor into Egypt's tired blood. Sculptors gradually began to escape from the sterility of pyramid sculpture and, subjected...

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