The center of the Egyptian system was the monarch and his supposed relatives, the gods. They arrogated to themselves the chief thought of life and the aim of the great bulk of the art was to glorify or deity.
Almost everything about the public buildings in painting and sculpture was symbolic illustrations, picture written history – written with a chisel and brush, written large that all might read.
There were no books; the papyrus sheet, used extensively, was frail, and the Egyptians evidently wished their buildings, carvings and paintings to last into eternity.
So they wrought in and upon stone. The same hieroglyphic character of their papyrus writings appeared cut and colored on the palace walls, and above then and beside them the pictures ran as vignettes explanatory of the text.
In one form or another it was all record of Egyptian life, but this was not the only motive of their painting, The temples and places, designed to shut out light and heat, were long squares of heavy stone, gloomy as the cave from which their plan may have originated.
Carving and color were used to brighten and enliven the interior.
The battles, the judgment scenes the Pharaoh playing at draughts with his wives, the religious rites and ceremonies, were all given with brilliant arbitrary color, surrounded oftentimes by bordering bands of greens, yellow and blue.
Color showed everywhere from floor to ceiling.
Even the explanatory hieroglyphics texts ran in colors, lining the walls and winding around the cylinders of stone.
All this shows a decorative motive in Egyptian painting, and how constantly this was kept in view may be seem at times in the arrangement of the different scenes the large ones being places in the middle of the wall and the smaller ones going at the top and bottom, to act as a frieze and dado.
There were then, two leading motives for Egyptian painting
- History, monarchial, religious or domestic
- Decoration
The Egyptian Art 
