ANTIQUE: EGYPT, NINEVEH, AND GREECE.
Considering the perishable nature of the material, we cannot expect
to meet with many existing specimens of the woodwork or furniture of
ancient Egypt. There are to be found, however, abundant illustrations
of these objects in the paintings and sculptures of monuments. The
most complete are on the walls of the tombs, where we see detailed
pictures of domestic life, and the interiors of houses are shown, with
entertainments of parties of ladies and gentlemen talking, listening
to music, eating and drinking. The guests are seated on chairs of
wood, framed up with sloping backs, of which specimens are in the
British museum; others are on stools or chairs of greater splendour,
stuffed and covered on the seat and back with costly textiles, having
the wooden framework carved and gilt, generally in the form of the
fore and hind legs of tigers, panthers, and other animals of the
chace, sometimes supported, as in the accompanying woodcut, on figures
representing captives.
[Illustration]
The British museum contains six Egyptian chairs. One of these is made
of ebony, turned in the lathe and inlaid with collars and dies of
ivory. It is low, the legs joined by light rails of cane, the back
straight, with two cross-bars and light rails between. The seat is
slightly hollowed, and is of plaited cane as in modern chairs. Another
is square, also with straight back, but with pieces of wood sloped
into the seat to make it comfortable for a sitter. Small workmen's
stools of blocks of wood hollowed out and with three or four legs
fastened into them may also be referred to, and a table on four legs
tied by four bars near the lower ends.
The Egyptians used couches straight, like ottomans; with head boards
curving over as in our modern sofas, sometimes with the head and
tail of an animal carved on the ends, and the legs and feet carved
to correspond. These were stuffed and covered with rich material.
The Egyptians did not recline at meals. Their double seats, [Greek:
diphroi], or bisellia, were such as were used by the Greeks and
Romans. They had shelves and recesses, chests and coffers, made
of pine or cedar wood, and of a material still used in Egypt, the
_cafass_--palm sticks formed into planks by thin pegs or rods of
harder wood passing through a series of these sticks laid together.
"Of their bedroom furniture," says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, "we know but
little." They used (he tells us) their day couches probably, or lay
on mats, and on low wooden pallets made of palm sticks. These last had
curved blocks, which served for a pillow, forming a hollow to receive
the head. Examples in alabaster and wood are in the Louvre and in the
British museum.
Their materials for dress were of the most delicate and costly
description. The robes of the ladies were often transparent, and the
gold and silver tissues, muslins, and gossamer fabrics made in India
and Asia were probably also used in Egypt. All these, as well as their
jewels and valuables, imply corresponding chests and smaller
coffers. Small toilet boxes elegantly carved into the form or with
representations of leaves and animals, are preserved in the Louvre and
in the British museum and other collections. They were generally
of sycamore wood, sometimes of tamarisk or sont (acacia), and
occasionally the more costly ivory or inlaid work was substituted for
wood. Larger boxes may also be seen in the Louvre, some large enough
to contain dresses. They are square, with flat, curved, or gable tops,
painted on the surface, and generally lifted from the ground by four
short legs or prolongations of the rails that form the framework.
These boxes are dovetailed, and secured by glue and nails.
Their chariots and the harness of their horses were rich in
proportion, the former painted, inlaid with ivory and gold, or with
surface gilding, containing cases for their bows and arms, and made of
wood filled in with the lightest materials, perhaps canvas stiffened
with preparations of lac in the Japanese manner, and put together with
a skill that made the carriage-makers of Egypt famous in their day.
It will be sufficient to add that the great Jewish kings had their
chariots supplied from Egypt. Solomon paid about £75 of our money for
a chariot, and of these he kept (for war purposes alone) a force of
fourteen hundred, with forty thousand horses.
Mummy cases of cedar, a material readily procured and valued for
its preservative qualities, are to be seen in many collections,
and examples can be examined in the British museum. They are richly
decorated with hieroglyphic paintings executed in tempera, and
varnished with gum mastic.
The furniture of Nineveh is not so elaborately or completely
represented as that of Egypt, where the preservation of sculpture and
painting was helped out by a climate of extraordinary dryness. But
the discoveries of Mr. Layard have thrown on the details of Ninevite
domestic life light enough to give us the means of forming a judgment
on their furniture.
"Ornaments," says Mr. Layard, "in the form of the heads of animals,
chiefly the lion, bull, and ram, were very generally introduced,
even in parts of the chariot, the harness of the horses, and domestic
furniture." In this respect the Assyrians resembled the Egyptians.
"Their tables, thrones, and couches were made both of metal and wood,
and probably inlaid with ivory. We learn from Herodotus that those in
the temple of Belus in Babylon were of solid gold."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
According to Mr. Layard, the chair represented in the earliest
monuments is without a back, and the legs tastefully carved. This
form occurs in the palace of Nimrúd, and is sculptured on one of the
bas-reliefs now in the British museum. Often the legs ended in the
feet of a lion or the hoofs of a bull, and were made of gold, silver,
or bronze. "On the monuments of Khorsabad and by the rock tablets of
Malthaiyah we find representations of chairs supported by animals
and by human figures, sometimes prisoners, like the Caryatides of the
Greeks. In this they resemble the arm-chairs of Egypt, but appear to
have been more massive. This mode of ornamenting the throne of the
king was adopted by the Persians, and is seen in the sculpture of
Persepolis." The woodcut represents such a chair, from a bas-relief
at Khorsabad. The lion head and lion foot were used by other oriental
nations. The throne of king Solomon was supported by lions for arms,
probably in the same position as the horses in the Khorsabad chair;
and lions of gold or chryselephantine work stood six on each side on
the six steps before the throne.
The forms of furniture of a later date in the sculptures of Nineveh
at Khorsabad are of an inferior style. "The chairs have generally more
than one cross-bar, and are somewhat heavy and ill-proportioned, the
feet resting upon large inverted cones, resembling pine-apples."
All these seats, like the [Greek: diphroi] and _sellæ_ of important
personages in Greece and Rome, were high enough to require a
footstool. "On the earlier monuments of Assyria footstools are very
beautifully carved or modelled. The feet were ornamented, like those
of the chair, with the feet of lions or the hoofs of bulls."
The tables seem in general to have been of similar form and decoration
to the thrones or seats, the ends of the frame projecting and carved
as in the woodcut above, only on a larger scale. The couches were of
similar form, but made of gold and silver, stuffed and covered on the
surface with the richest materials. The tables and the chairs were
often made in the shape also found in Greece and Rome, with folding
supports that open on a central rivet like our camp-stools, and like
the curule chairs which were common not only in Rome but throughout
Italy during the renaissance.
A large piece of wood of pine or cedar is in the British museum. It is
of a full red colour, the effect of time. Cedar was probably most in
use; but both in Egypt and Nineveh, as also in Judæa under Solomon
and his successors, woods were imported from Europe and India; ebony
certainly, perhaps rosewood, teak, and Indian walnut. Ebony and
ivory were continually used for inlaying furniture. Of their bedroom
furniture we can say little, nor do we know of what kind were the
cabinets or chests made to preserve their dresses and valuables. It is
probable, however, that these were occasionally as rich and elaborate
as any of their show or state furniture.
Of Hebrew furniture we can give few details. It is probable that
the Jews differed but little from the Assyrians in this respect. The
throne of Solomon has been already noticed. In the story of Judith the
canopy and curtains of the bed of Holofernes may have been taken
by the chronicler from familiar examples at home, or may have been
strictly drawn from traditional details. In the figurative language of
the Canticles, the bed of Solomon is of cedar of Lebanon, the pillars
of silver, the bottom of gold. Ordinary bedroom furniture is spoken of
in the Chronicles, when the Shunamite woman, a person of great wealth,
built for the prophet Elias "a little chamber on the wall, and set
therein a bed, a table, a stool, and a candlestick." Ivory wardrobes
are mentioned in the 45th psalm, but of what size or form we cannot
determine. In the book of Esther allusions are made to Persian
furniture decorations, white, green, and blue hangings fastened with
fine linen to silver rings and pillars of marble. The beds were of
gold and silver, &c. The bed of Og, king of Bashan, was nine cubits
long by four, and was of iron: it was preserved as a trophy.
As the chariots of Solomon were made in Egypt, and the artists
employed on the Temple came from Tyre, it is not unreasonable to
suppose that furniture was either made by foreign workmen, or that
the Hebrews borrowed freely the forms and decorations of surrounding
Asiatic nations. Though specially and purposely jealous of any
innovation or interference with religious rites and observances, we
have no cause to think that they objected to the use of furniture or
utensils such as they found first during the long sojourn in Egypt,
and afterwards in other countries. They are said in earlier times to
have spoiled the Egyptians with reference to the ornaments and jewels
carried away at the migration. We know that Moses was "learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians;" and two particular artists, and
two only, are named in the book of Exodus as qualified to execute the
sacred vessels and utensils. Whatever their technical qualifications
were, these had been acquired in Egypt.
In any attempt to picture to ourselves the kind of furniture and
objects of daily use apart from chariots, arms, &c., that surrounded
the Greeks in early ages, it will be necessary to bear in mind the
close connection which that people must have had with the Asiatic
races, and the splendour and refinement that surrounded the wealthy
civilisation of the oriental monarchies.
They were so continually the allies or the rivals of the various
states in Asia Minor, and pushed out into that fertile region so many
vigorous colonies, that it cannot be doubted that the splendid stuffs,
beds, couches, thrones, chariots, &c., used by Greeks on the Asiatic
continent or in Europe, had much of eastern character in form and
method of execution; perhaps, at first, in decoration also. This
woodcut represents a chair of Assyrian character on a bas-relief from
Xanthus, in the British museum.
[Illustration]
Much that is oriental figures in poetic accounts of the arms,
furniture, and equipments of the Greek heroic ages. The chiefs take
the field in chariots. These could have been used but in small numbers
on ground so uneven as the rocky territories of the Morea. The
beds described by Homer, the coverlids of dyed wool, tapestries, or
carpets, and other instances of coloured and showy furniture, were
genuine descriptions of objects known and seen, though not common.
Generally the furniture of the heroic age was simple. Two beds of
bronze of Tartessus, one Dorian and one Ionian, the smallest weighing
fifty talents, of uncertain date, were kept in the treasury at Altis,
and seen there by Pausanias towards the end of the second century. The
chariots differed little except in the ornamental carving, modelling,
or chasing, from those of Egypt.
The oldest remaining models of Greek furniture to which we can point
are the chairs in which the antique figures in the Syrian room at
the British museum are seated. These are dated six, or nearly six,
centuries before Christ. They represent chairs with backs, quite
perpendicular in front and behind. The frame-pieces of the seats are
morticed into the legs, and the mortices and tenons are accurately
marked in the marble, the horizontal passing right through the upright
bars. These early pieces of furniture were probably executed in wood,
not metal, which was at first but rarely used. The woodcuts show the
different forms taken from antique bas-reliefs.
[Illustration]
The chest or coffer in which Cypselus of Corinth had been concealed
was seen by Pausanias in the temple of Olympia. It was made about the
middle of the sixth century B.C. The chest was of cedar, carved and
decorated with figures and bas-reliefs, some in ivory, some in gold or
ivory partly gilt, which were inlaid on the four sides and on the top.
The subjects of the sculpture were old Greek myths and local legends,
and traditions connected with the country. This coffer is supposed to
have been executed by Eumelos of Corinth.
The great period of Greek art began in the fifth century B.C.; but
those were not days favourable to the development of personal luxury
among the citizens. An extreme simplicity in private manners balanced
the continual publicity and political excitement of Greek life. The
rich classes, moreover, had little inducement to make any display
of their possessions. The state enjoyed an indefinite right to the
property of its members; the lawgiver in Plato declared "ye are
not your own, still less is your property your own." In Sparta the
exclusive training for war admitted of no manner of earning money by
business. In Athens the poorer class had so exclusively the upper
hand of the rich that the latter had to provide the public with
entertainments of sacrificial solemnities, largesses of corn, and
banquets. "The demos," says the author of the "Gentile and the Jew,"
"understood the squeezing of the rich like sponges." Greece was the
paradise of the poor.
It is therefore to be expected that the sculpture of the day, though
employed sometimes upon the decoration of thrones or state seats,
chariots, chests, looking-glasses, tripods, as the painting was
on walls, vases, and movable pictures on panels, should have been
employed mostly in temples and, with occasional exceptions, on objects
of some public use. The chest described above was kept as a relic,
and the elaborately carved thrones in the temples were those of the
statues of gods and heroes. Ivory and gold laid over a substructure
of olive wood were the materials quite as frequently used by great
sculptors as marble or bronze for statues which did not form parts
of the actual decorations of their architecture. In later times these
materials were used in sumptuous furniture.
The Greeks used couches for sleeping and resting upon, but not for
reclining on at meals, till the Macedonian period. We give two or
three examples, from marbles: one of which resembles the modern sofa.
Women sat always, as in Rome, sometimes on the couch at the head or
foot, on which the master of the house or a guest reclined, generally
on chairs. Besides chairs like the one represented here, the Greeks
made arm-chairs; and folding chairs of metal. In the Parthenon frieze
Jupiter is seated in a square seat on thick turned legs, with a round
bar for a back, resting on short turned posts fitted into the seat.
The arms are less high than the back; they are formed by slight bars
framed into the uprights at the back, and resting on winged sphinxes.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Mirrors of mixed metal alloys, silver, tin, and copper, have come down
to our times in great numbers. They were made occasionally in pure
silver, and in gold probably among the Greeks as they were in later
times among the Romans. The cases are of bronze, and engraved with
figure designs of the highest character. There is, however, no proof
that these were used as furniture in houses, as in Rome. They are hand
mirrors, and the description of them, as works of art, belongs rather
to that of antique bronzes. The woodcut shows the usual type, with the
richly ornamented handle.
[Illustration]
Designs of the Greek couch, whether for sleeping or for reclining
at meals, are abundant on tomb paintings, and sculptures, and on the
paintings of vases. In the British museum we may see a large vase in
the second vase room, on which a couch for two persons is arranged
with a long mattress covered with rich material, lying within what
appears to be a border of short turned rails with a cushion on
each end, also covered with rich striped material. A long low stool
decorated with ivory lies below the couch as a kind of step. The
legs, as in many vase representations, are thick turned supports with
lighter parts below, and a turned knob at the foot. On another vase
Dionysus reclines on a thick round cushion at the head of the couch,
while Ariadne sits on it. Figures feasting or stretched in death
on similar couches can be seen in two beautiful and perfect funeral
chests in the Ægina room. All these pieces of furniture seem made
of or decorated with ivory, and furnished with coloured cushions or
coverings of an oriental character. Tripods were made of bronze in
great number for sacred use, and probably also as the supports of
brasiers, tables, &c., in private houses. The tables were of wood,
marble, and metal; the supports being either lion or leopard legs
and heads, or sphinxes with lifted wings, a favourite form in Greek
ornamentation.
With regard to Greek houses generally, their arrangements differed
very little from the earlier houses of the Romans. The bas-relief in
the British museum--Bacchus received as a guest by Icarus--represents
a couch with turned legs, the feet of which are decorated with leaf
work; a plain square stool, perhaps the top of a box, on which
masks are laid, and a tripod table with lion legs. The houses in the
background are tiled. The windows are divided into two lights by an
upright mullion or column, and a bas-relief of a charioteer driving
two horses ornaments a portion of the wall, and may be intended for
a picture hung up or fixed against the wall. The whole shows us
an Athenian house, decked for a festive occasion, and garlands and
hangings are festooned round its outer walls.
The Greek chariot was of wood, probably similar to that of the
Egyptians. It had sometimes wheels with four strong spokes only, as in
the woodcut. The chariot wheel of the car of Mausolus, in the British
museum, has six. The Ninevite wheels have sometimes as many as twelve,
as may be seen in the sculptured bas-reliefs of the narrow Assyrian
gallery of the British museum.
[Illustration]
The woods used by the Greeks for sculpture were ebony, cypress, cedar,
oak, _smilax_, yew, willow, _lotus_, and citron. These materials were
rarely left without enrichments of ivory, gold, and colour. The faces
of statues were painted vermilion, the dresses, crowns, or other
ornaments were gilt or made in wrought gold.