Ancient Empire, must have felt the necessity for some kind of seal.
The names and images engraved upon rings must have been used as
signatures even at that early date. We know that from that time
forward the impressions thus made upon wax and clay were employed in
business and other transactions. No engraved stones have come down to
us from the early dynasties, and yet their production must have been
easy enough to those who carved the diorite statue of Chephren. Under
the first Theban Empire, the Egyptians practised the cutting of
amethysts, cornelians, garnets, jasper, lapis-lazuli, green-spar and
white feldspar, obsidian, serpentine, steatite, rock crystal, red
quartz, sardonyx, &c.[282] We do not know whether those early workmen
employed the lapidary's wheel or not,[283] but we may safely say that
they produced some of the finest works of the kind which are known to
us. The annexed illustration of one of the rarest treasures of the
Egyptian collection in the Louvre, will bear out our words (Fig. 241).
[282] BIRCH, _Guide to (British) Museum_, pp. 70-74.--PIERRET,
_Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, Nos. 457, 559, _passim_.
[283] M. SOLDI remarks, in connection with the Mexicans, that
they managed to cut the hardest rocks and to engrave finely upon
the emerald with nothing but bronze tools. Prescott and Humboldt
bear witness to the same fact. The Peruvians also succeeded in
piercing emeralds without iron. Their instrument is said to have
been the pointed leaf of a wild plantain, used with fine sand
and water. With such a tool the one condition of success was
time (_Les Arts Méconnus_, pp. 352-359).
"A gold ring with a movable square stone, a sardonyx, upon which a
personage seated before an altar is engraved with extraordinary
finish. The altar bears the name _Ha-ro-bes_. The figure is clothed in
a _schenti_; a thick necklace is about his neck: his hair is in short
thick curls: his legs are largely and firmly drawn.
"We are helped to the date of this little work by the engraving on
the reverse, which represents a king wearing the red crown and armed
with a mace, with which he is about to strike an enemy whom he grasps
by the hair. The name of this king is engraved beside him: _Ra-en-ma_,
that is Amenemhat III. The workmanship of this face is, perhaps,
inferior to that of the obverse, the forms are comparatively meagre
and dry; it is however far from being bad."[284]
[284] PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, No. 457.
[Illustration: FIG. 241.--Intaglio upon sardonyx, obverse. Louvre
collection. Twice the actual size.]
[Illustration: FIG. 242.--Reverse of the same intaglio.]
The cornelian statuette of Ousourtesen I., which the Louvre has
unhappily lost, belonged to the same period. In the three days of
July, 1830, a terrible fire was directed upon the crowd by the Swiss
stationed in the colonnade of the Louvre. The assailants succeeded,
however, in penetrating into the palace and invading the galleries.
After their final retirement the only thing which was ascertained
beyond a doubt to be missing, was this little statuette, which has
never been heard of since. It was equally valuable for its rarity and
the beauty of its workmanship.[285]
[285] A description of it will be found in CHAMPOLLION, _Notice
Descriptive des Monuments Égyptiens du Musée Charles X._, 2nd
edition, 1827, D. No. 14, p. 55.
The artists of the Second Theban Empire do not seem to have excelled
those of the first, but their works have come down to us in much
greater numbers. The Louvre possesses a considerable number of rings
engraved with the names Thothmes, Amenophis, and others belonging to
the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Their character may be
divined from two examples.
[Illustration: FIG. 243.--Intaglio upon jasper. Louvre. Actual size.]
[Illustration: FIG. 244.--Reverse of the same intaglio.]
"In 1877 the Louvre obtained the stone of a ring finely engraved on
each side with representations of the Pharaoh Thothmes II. It is a
green jasper, quadrangular in shape. On one side the Pharaoh,
designated by his name _Aa-kheper-ra_, has seized a lion by the tail
and is about to strike it with his mace. This scene is emblematic of
the victorious and fearless strength of the sovereign. Its rarity is
extreme. Its significance is enforced by the word _kuen_ or valour
(Fig. 243). On the other side Thothmes is shown discharging his arrows
from the commanding height of his chariot against the enemies who face
him; one falls backwards, another is being trampled under the feet of
the king's horses (Fig. 244). Such a representation is common enough
upon the outsides of the temples, but it is not often found upon
little objects like these."[286]
[286] P. PIERRET, _Une Pierre Gravée au Nom du Roi d'Égypte
Thoutmès II._ (_Gazette Archéologique_, 1878, p. 41). This stone
is placed in Case P of the _Salle Historique_ in the Louvre. M.
Lenormant has kindly placed at our disposal the _clichés_ of the
double engraving which was made for M. Pierret's article.
[Illustration: FIG. 245.--Seal of Armais. Louvre. Actual size.]
Sometimes the ring is all of one material, characters and figures
being cut in the metal of which it consists. It is so in the case of
the most conspicuous object among the Egyptian jewels in the Louvre
(Fig. 245), an object which can never have been intended for the
finger; it is too large: it must have been made for use only as a
seal. It is thus described by M. Pierret: "Seal formed of a ring and
movable bezel, both of gold. Upon one face of the bezel the oval of
King Armais, the last prince of the eighteenth dynasty, is engraved.
Upon the other a lion _passant_, the emblem of royal power; it is
surmounted by the words _Nepkhopesch_, lord of valour. Upon the third
and fourth sides are a scorpion and a crocodile respectively. The
execution of this little work is admirable; the design and action of
the lion are especially fine."[287]
[287] PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, No. 481.
The ring given by Pharaoh to Joseph as a sign of the authority
delegated to him, may have been such as this.[288] The cheapest rings
had bezels of faience or schist covered with enamel. The scarabs were
cut as a rule from soft stone.
[288] Genesis xli. 42.
In gem-cutting the Egyptians made use both of the intaglio process and
of relief, but the greater fitness of the former for the work to be
done by a signet made it their especial favourite. They were ignorant
of the process we call cameo, in which the differently coloured layers
of the sardonyx are taken advantage of to produce contrast of tint
between the relief and its bed.
A few Egyptian cylinders, in earthenware or soft stone enamelled, are
known. They bear royal ovals; the British Museum has one which seems
to date from the twelfth dynasty. Their employment seems never to have
become very general.[289]
[289] BIRCH, _History of Ancient Pottery_, p. 72. PIERRET,
_Catalogue de la Salle Historique du Louvre_, Nos. 499, 500,
505.
§ 9. _The Principal Conventions in Egyptian Sculpture._
Whether it were employed upon wood, upon limestone, or upon the harder
rocks, whether it were cutting colossi in the flanks of the sandstone
hills, or carving the minute images of its gods and kings in the stone
of a signet ring, the art of Egypt never shook itself free from those
intellectual conceptions which were impressed upon its first
creations; it remained true to the tendencies of its infancy; it
preserved the same fundamental qualities and defects; it looked upon
nature with the same eyes, and interpreted her in the same fashion,
from the first moment to the last.
These methods and processes, and the conventionalities of artistic
interpretation which maintained themselves through all the changes of
taste, have still to be considered. They are the common features by
which works which differ greatly in execution are brought into
connection, and are to be found as clearly marked in a statue dating
from the time of Amasis and Nectanebo as in one from the Ancient
Empire.
Some of the conventions of Egyptian art are to be explained by the
constitution of the human mind and by the conditions under which it
works when it attempts plastic reproductions for the first time;
others appear to spring from certain habits of thought peculiar to
Egyptian civilization. There is yet a third class which must be
referred to purely technical causes, such as the capabilities of the
materials and tools employed. The influence which these exercised over
the artistic expression of thought has been too often underrated. We
shall endeavour to recognize their full importance.
When we glance at an Egyptian bas-relief, we perceive in it certain
imperfections of rendering which we may have often noticed before,
either in the early works of other races or in the formless designs
which quite young children scribble upon paper. The infancy of art and
the art of infancy have much in common.
We are accustomed to processes which are scientifically exact.
Profiting by the accumulated learning of so many centuries even the
school-boy, among us, understands perspective. We are, therefore, apt
to feel too much surprise at the awkwardness and inaccuracy which we
find in the works of primitive schools, in transcripts produced by man
in the presence of nature without any help from the experience of
older civilizations. If we wish to do justice to those early artists,
we must endeavour to realize the embarrassment which must have been
theirs, when they attempted to reproduce upon a flat surface those
bodies which offered themselves to their eyes with their three
dimensions of height, width, and depth, and with all the complications
arising from foreshortening and perspective, from play of light and
shade, and from varied colour. Other perplexities must have arisen
from the intersection and variety of lines, from the succession of
planes, from the necessity for rendering or at least suggesting the
thickness of objects!
When the desire to imitate natural objects began to make itself felt
in man he received his first drawing lesson from the sun. Morning and
evening its almost horizontal rays threw his silhouette sharply upon
the white rocks and walls, and nothing was easier than to fix the
outline of the image thus projected with a piece of charcoal or burnt
wood; after this beginning it was easy to imitate such a sun-picture
either in large or in small. Such figures were of necessity profiles,
as the silhouette given by a head viewed in front would be very
uncertain and indistinct.
The profiles of men and of the lower animals must, then, have played a
chief part in these early efforts towards design. In this there is
nothing at variance with our daily experience. The back view need
hardly be taken into account, and there are two lateral positions, the
right and left profiles, against one for the front face. Finally, the
fact that the front face consists of two parts which have to be kept
in absolute symmetry with one another, makes it much more difficult of
treatment by the novice. Even in the productions of skilful artists we
often find that this symmetry has been missed. It is the profile that
is first attacked by beginners in the art of drawing, and it is the
profile which always remains most comprehensible for simple
intelligences. The fellah who is present at the opening of one of
those tombs which were constructed by his remote ancestors, at once
recognizes the animals represented and the meaning of their attitudes
and grouping. Wilkinson noticed this on several occasions. But if an
European drawing be shown to the same man, he will be hopelessly
bewildered by the foreshortening, the perspective, and the play of
light and shade. He will no longer be able to distinguish a bull from
a horse or an ass.
In their bas-reliefs, and in their paintings, the Egyptian artists
made almost exclusive use of the profile,[290] but, by a singular
compromise, we sometimes find it combined with an attitude of body
which would strictly require a full, or at least a three-quarter face.
The silhouette in its integrity seems to have been thought
insufficient, and the desire to reproduce a more complete image led
them to invent the compromise in question.
[290] In turning over the leaves of Champollion we have found
but two exceptions to this rule. In the Temple of Seti, at
Gournah, that king is shown, in a bas-relief, in the act of
brandishing his mace over the heads of his prisoners. The group
is the usual one, but in this case two of the vanquished are
shown in full face (pl. 274). At the Ramesseum, also, one man in
a long row of prisoners is shown in a similar attitude (pl.
332).
In Egyptian profiles the eye is drawn as if for a full face. It has
been asserted that this is the result of profound calculation, that,
"in spite of facts, the Egyptian painter chose to give predominant
importance to that organ in the human visage which is the window of
the soul."[291] We believe that the true explanation is rather more
simple. While the lines of the nose and mouth are more clearly marked
in the profile than in the front face, it is in the latter only that
the eye is able to display its full beauty. When seen from the side it
is small, its lines are short and abrupt, and the slightest change in
the position of the head affects its contours in a fashion which is
very puzzling to the unlearned artist. When a child attempts to draw a
head it gives their true form to the lips and the nose, but in nine
cases out of ten it draws the eye as if seen in full face; and art in
its childhood did as children do still.
[291] CH. BLANC, _Grammaire des Arts du Dessin_, p. 469.
We find a similar want of concord between the trunk and the limbs.
Feet and legs are shown in profile while the body to which they belong
stands squarely facing us. Both the shoulders are seen in equal
fulness, and the attachment of the arms is often faulty (Fig. 246).
Sometimes they seem to be broken at the shoulder. Again, the hands are
nearly always in such a position as to exclude all doubt as to the
number of fingers they possess.
It appears, therefore, that the artist chose the aspect which seemed
to him the most natural for each part of the body. It was the
resulting contradiction that was against nature. The feeling from
which it sprang was identical with that which led Egyptian artists, to
make what we may call "projections" when they wished to represent
buildings. The fixed idea of the draughtsman was to show all the sides
of his object at a glance, to exhibit details which in reality were
partly hidden by each other. Thus we find that, in certain
bas-reliefs, both clothes and the nudity which those clothes were
intended to cover are carefully portrayed. In a bas-relief at
Tell-el-Amarna, a queen who is waiting on Amenophis IV. is dressed in
a long robe reaching to her feet, and yet all her forms are rendered
with as much care and detail as if there were no veil between their
beauty and the eye of the spectator (Fig. 247).
[Illustration: FIG. 246.--Bas-relief from Sakkarah. Fifth dynasty.]
An arbitrary combination of a similar character is employed by the
Egyptian artist when he wishes to show a number of persons behind one
another on a horizontal plane; he places them vertically one above the
other. The great battle pictures at Thebes are an instance of this
(Fig. 13, Vol. I.). Enemies still fighting are mingled with dead and
wounded into one confused heap in front of Pharaoh's car, and reach
from top to bottom of the relief. The same convention is to be found
in the ranks of prisoners, workmen, or soldiers, marching over a flat
surface; they are arranged in a kind of echelon upon the field of the
relief (Fig. 42).[292]
[292] For other conventional methods, of a similar though even
more remarkable kind but of less frequent occurrence, see
WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. ii. p. 295. The
same ruling idea is found in those groups in the funerary
bas-reliefs, which show husband and wife together. The wife's
arm, which is passed round the body of the husband, is absurdly
long (LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part 11, plates 13, 15, 91, 105,
etc.; and our Figs. 164 and 165, Vol. I.). This is because the
sculptor wished to preserve the loving gesture in question
without giving up the full view of both bodies to which his
notions committed him. One could not be allowed to cover any
part of the other, they could not even be brought too closely
together. They were placed, therefore, at such a distance apart
that the hand which appears round the husband's body is too far
from the shoulder with which it is supposed to be connected.
Faulty though these conventions seem to us, they did not disturb the
Egyptian spectator. He was familiar with them by long usage, and his
intellect easily re-established the true relation between the various
parts of objects so strangely distorted. Even as art matured and as,
in some respects, the skill of the Egyptian sculptor increased, he
never felt himself impelled to abandon these primitive methods of
interpretation. Graphic conventions are like those belonging to
written and spoken language; when once established, even those which
seem most absurd to the stranger are rendered acceptable by habit, and
the native does not even suspect the existence of anomalies which
bewilder the foreign visitor.
[Illustration: FIG. 247.--The Queen waiting on Amenophis IV.:
Tell-el-Amarna. From Prisse.]
Speaking generally, we may say that there is no perspective in
Egyptian paintings and reliefs. And yet we find sincere efforts to
render things in a less arbitrary fashion in certain works dating
from the Second Theban Empire. Look, for instance, at the attempt made
by an artist in the tomb of Chamhati to show five persons walking
almost in line. Instead of being one above another they are on one
level (Fig. 248). One of the five is rather behind the rest; the head
and most of his body are visible. The other four advance to their
front. In order that they may all be seen, the sculptor has shown them
as they would appear to one standing on their right and slightly in
front; the relief, therefore, has four planes. The three farther
figures are shown by the contours alone. This is perspective, although
it is hardly correct. The retreating line of polls sinks as it should,
but so do the elbows, and they ought to rise.
[Illustration: FIG. 248.--Bas-relief from the eighteenth dynasty. From
Prisse.]
This relief gives evidence of considerable progress and, supposing it
to be the first of its kind, the sculptor who made it would deserve
the credit of having breathed a new life into Egyptian art. But he was
not the first; others had made use of the same method, but always
within strictly defined limits. It was employed when a few persons
had to be brought in who were all in one attitude and making the same
gesture,[293] but it was never used as a starting-point for
modifications upon the traditional modes of rendering either isolated
figures or groups of figures. The Egyptians made use of these until
the last days of their civilization without ever appearing to suspect
their childish character.
[293] Our Fig. 217 gives another instance of the employment of
this method, and even in the time of the Ancient Empire the idea
had occurred to the Egyptian artists (Fig. 201).
In the case of animals, a firmly-drawn profile was enough to make them
easily recognizable. And yet, even in the time of the Ancient Empire,
we find distinct efforts to give some variety to these silhouettes.
Sometimes the oxen turn their heads towards the spectator, sometimes
they swing them round to their flanks, as if to chase away the flies:
but even then the heads are shown in profile.[294] At Beni-Hassan we
find an advance upon this. In a hunting scene, a lion, who has just
brought down an ibex, is shown full face,[295] but neither here or
anywhere else has an attempt been made to draw the body of the animal
otherwise than in profile.
[294] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part ii. pl. 47 and 61.
[295] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. ii. p. 88.
In his family groups the Egyptian sculptor marked the superiority of
the husband and father in a similarly naïve fashion. He made him much
taller than the persons about him. The same contrivance was employed
to mark the distinction between gods or kings and ordinary men, and
between the latter and animals (Fig. 57, Vol. I.). This solution of
the problem is universal in the infancy of art. It was adopted by the
Assyrians, the Persians, the primitive Greeks, and our own ancestors
of the middle ages. It is easier to give a figure double or threefold
its proper size than to add greatly to the dignity and nobility of its
character.
In their desire to evade difficulties, the Egyptians slurred over
distinctions upon which a more advanced art would have insisted. For
them every man was in the prime of life, every woman possessed of the
elegant contours of a marriageable virgin. In their work in the round
they proved themselves capable of bringing out individuality, but they
restricted their attentions to the face and hardly attempted to show
how the passage of years affects the contours and the firmness of
flesh in both sexes. In their bas-reliefs and pictures, they employed
outline only. The substance of their figures was modelled neither
materially nor in colour. With such feeble resources as these the
artist would have had great difficulty in suggesting all the
differences of age. He therefore took a middle course. To each sex he
gave that appearance which seemed best calculated to bring out its
peculiar beauties. The one he portrayed in the fulness of manhood, the
other as a young girl. When it was necessary to determine the age of
his subject with some precision he took refuge in such conventional
signs as the finger in the mouth and the long lock of infancy (Fig.
249).
[Illustration: FIG. 249.--Horus as a child, enamelled earthenware.
Actual size. Louvre.]
The sculptors of the Ancient Empire, who laid such stress upon exact
resemblance, seem to have now and then attempted to mark the advancing
age of their models. The head of the great statue of Chephren is that
of a man still young (Fig. 205); that of another statue of the same
king betrays the approach of old age. This example does not seem to
have been followed in later ages. We are tempted to think that each
sovereign on his accession to the throne employed some artist of note
to make his portrait. The latter would set himself to work; would
study his model at first hand, for Pharaoh would perhaps condescend to
sit to him; would bring out the peculiarities of visage which he saw,
and over the whole face and form of the king would spread that air of
flourishing vigour and youth which is common to nearly all the royal
statues. An image would be thus elaborated which should combine both
the truth of portraiture with the conventional semi-divine type. With
the passage of time, according to the talent of the artist, and
perhaps to the character of the royal features, one of these elements
would encroach upon the other. But once established this image would
become a kind of official and authentic standard of the royal
appearance, and would serve as a model for all who might be charged
during the rest of the reign with the reproduction of the king's
person.
There are many facts which support this hypothesis. Among the
countless images of Rameses II. for instance there are some which
according to their inscriptions must have been executed when he was at
least eighty years old; and yet they show him as a young man.
Almost the same thing takes place in our own times. In monarchical
states the sovereign appears upon the coinage as he was at his
accession. His features and the delicacy of his skin are unaffected by
the years, for the die made in his youth has to serve for his old age.
We may almost say the same of the statues and busts in which the royal
features are repeated in the public buildings and public places of the
capital. A single portrait which has once been moderately faithful is
repeated to infinity. We find it everywhere, upon paper, and canvas,
and plaster, and marble, multiplied by every process that science has
given to art. It keeps its official and accepted authenticity
long after age, care, and disease, have made its original
unrecognizable.[296]
[296] M. ÉMILE SOLDI (_La Sculpture Égyptienne_) tells us that
during the reign of Napoleon III. such representations of the
Emperor as were not taken from the portrait by Winterhalter were
forbidden to be recognized officially.
There is one convention peculiar to Egyptian art which is not to be
accounted for so easily as the last named. So far as we know, no
reason has ever yet been given for the almost invariable habit of
making such figures as are supposed to be walking thrust their left
legs forward. Almost the only exceptions are in the cases of those
figures in the bas-reliefs which are turned to the spectator's left.
The right leg is then thrust forward (Figs. 18, 24, &c., Vol. I.).
Among works in the round there is hardly an exception to the ordinary
rule. Are we to look upon it as the effects of caprice? of accident
confirmed into a habit? Or was it a result of a superstition
analogous, or, rather, contrary to that of the Romans? The latter
always took care to cross a threshold with the right foot foremost; in
Egypt they may have attached the same ideas to the left foot.
Egyptologists should be able to tell us whether there is anything in
the texts to suggest the existence of such a superstition.
Apart from its ethnic characteristics, the work of the Egyptian
sculptor is endowed with a peculiar physiognomy by a certain stiffness
and rigidity which it hardly ever succeeds in shaking off, even when
it represents figures in motion. A support in the shape of a column at
the back is nearly always introduced; the arms are held close to the
sides; a huge head-dress often enframes the head and hangs down upon
the shoulders in two equal masses; a long and narrow beard springs
from under the chin and lies upon the chest.
Freedom and variety of attitude is equally absent from the seated
statues. The knees are brought together and the hands supported upon
them. We never find an arm raised, a hand opened as if to give force
to speech, or a leg stretched out to relieve the stiffness of the
lines. There is no striving for that suppleness of limb and variety of
pose which the Greeks contrived to obtain even in their Iconic
figures. The face is often full of animation and individual vitality,
the modelling of the trunk and limbs marvellously true and broad, but
the body as a whole is too symmetrical in action and entirely without
_abandon_. The natural movements which spring from ease and liberty
are never employed. Forced and conventional attitudes are universal.
A reason for this has been sought in the supremacy of the sacerdotal
caste. The priests, we are told, must soon have adopted such a type,
or rather several varieties of such a type, as seemed to them
expressive of their own ideas of man when deified by death, of the
king as the son of the gods, of the gods themselves as the protectors
of the Egyptian race. They imposed the perpetuation and constant
reproduction of this type upon artists as a sacred duty, and thus the
Egyptian style was _hieratic_ in its origin and essence.
Such an assertion is easily made. _Hieratic_ is one of those
convenient adjectives whose vagueness discourages critical
examination. What evidence is there that ancient Egypt was ever a
theocracy, in the proper sense of the word? Only once, during so many
centuries, did the Egyptian priests attempt to encroach upon the
privileges of the king. Towards the close of the twentieth dynasty the
prophets of Amen, at Thebes, tried hard to substitute their own
authority for that of the last of the Rameses,[297] but the success of
their usurpation was very shortlived. In Ethiopia alone, among a
people much less highly civilized, sacerdotalism seems to have
acquired an uncontested pre-eminence. In Egypt the king was always the
first of the priests. With the help of an army of scribes and
officials he governed the country and made war; he initiated and
carried on great public works; he developed the industry and commerce
of his subjects. Trade and conquest brought him into relation with
surrounding peoples, and from them he recruited his armies and
obtained agents of every kind.
[297] MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p. 272.
The active and warlike heads of a great empire like this were never
the slaves of a despotic clergy. Such a society never allowed the
mechanical reproduction of orthodox types to be forced upon its
artists, until, indeed, its final decadence deprived it of all power
to invent new forms. We have seen how great was the variety of plan
and decoration in Egyptian religious architecture, from the marked
simplicity of the temple near the sphinx, to the sumptuous majesty of
the Theban buildings and the elegance of those of Sais. The style and
taste of Egyptian sculpture underwent a change at each renascence of
art. Why, then, did its practitioners remain faithful to certain
conventional methods of interpretation, whose falsity they must have
perceived, while they modified their work in so many other
particulars? No text has ever been put before us, I will not say from
a Greek, but from an Egyptian source, which suggests that their hands
were less free from religious prescription than those of the
architects.
We agree with M. Émile Soldi, who was the first to throw doubt upon
the accepted theories, that the explanation of the apparent anomaly is
to be sought elsewhere.[298] The tyranny from which the Egyptian
sculptor never succeeded in completely freeing himself was not that of
the priests but of the material in which he worked. Aided by his
personal experience M. Soldi has put this fact very clearly before us.
Being at once a sculptor, a medallist, and an engraver upon precious
stones, he is enabled to judge at first hand of the influence which
the material or tool employed may exercise over the style of a work of
art. The style of such a work is the complex product of numerous and
very different factors. To determine the part played by each of these
factors is not always easy; there are too many opportunities for
error. We believe, however, that certain of the most peculiar and
persistent characteristics of Egyptian sculpture are due to the
hardness of their material and the imperfection of the tools employed.
[298] ÉMILE SOLDI, _La Sculpture Égyptienne_, 1 vol. 8vo, 1876,
copiously illustrated. (Ernest Leroux.)
We know the connection between the funerary statues of the Egyptians
and their second life; while those statues endured, the existence of
the double was safe guarded. The more solid the statue, the better its
chance; if the former was indestructible the life dependent upon it
would be eternal. It was under the impulse of this idea that the
Egyptians of the Ancient Empire attacked such unkindly materials as
granite, diorite, and basalt. Such statues were beyond the reach of
private individuals. They were reserved for royalty. Of all the works
of the sculptor they were the most carefully and admirably wrought.
They set the fashion, and helped to create those habits which did not
lose their hold even when less rebellious substances came into use.
How did they contrive to cut such hard rocks? Even in our time it can
only be done by dint of long and painful labour and with the aid of
steel chisels of the finest temper. The workman is obliged to stop
every minute to renew the edge of his instrument. But it is agreed on
all hands that the contemporaries of Chephren had to do without steel
chisels. Egyptologists still discuss the question as to whether the
Egyptians made use of iron or not, but even those who believe that its
name occurs among the hieroglyphs admit that its introduction was late
and its employment very restricted.[299] The weapons and tools of the
early Egyptians were of bronze when they were not of stone or hardened
wood; and it has never been proved that either the Egyptians or any
other ancient people understood how to temper that metal in such a
fashion that its hardness approached that of steel. Modern science has
in vain searched for this secret.[300] In any case it is only in a few
rare instances, and upon remains from the New Empire, that the
peculiar markings left by the chisel have been discovered. Those
statues and sarcophagi which have been cut from igneous rocks still
bear traces which may be recognized by the eye of the connoisseur, of
the processes which were employed by their makers.
[299] See the note of M. CHABAS, "_Sur le nom du fer chez les
Anciens Égyptiens._" (_Comptes Rendus de L'Académie des
Inscriptions_, January 23, 1874.)
[300] Certain alloys, however, have recently been discovered
which give a hardness far above that of ordinary bronze. The
metal of the Uchatius gun, which has been adopted by Austria, is
mixed, for instance, with a certain quantity of phosphorus.
"Granite," says M. Soldi, "is most easily worked by hammering its
surface. To begin with, a heavy tool called a _point_ is brought into
play. This is driven into the material by repeated blows from the
hammer, starring the surface of the granite, and driving off pieces on
all sides. We believe that this _point_ was the habitual instrument of
the Egyptians, not only in roughing out their blocks, but even in
modelling a head-dress or sinking a hieroglyph. Such a tool could not
trace clear and firm contours like those of the chisel, and the
peculiar character of its workmanship is to be easily recognized in
the broken and irregular outline of many of the monuments in the
Louvre."
Another tool employed upon granite in these days is a kind of hammer,
the head of which consists of several _points_ symmetrically arranged.
We may judge of its effects by the appearance of our curb stones,
which are dressed by it; there is nothing to show that it was used by
the Egyptians. A kind of hatchet with two blades is also used for the
same work, and it appears to have been employed by the Egyptians, "who
used it hammer fashion, beating the surface of the material, and
driving off chips of various sizes according to the weight of the
instrument. By these means the desired form could be given with
sufficient rapidity and precision to make the chisel superfluous."
Most of the Egyptian statues in hard stone seem to have been modelled
by the help of an instrument of this kind.
"The surfaces produced by such tools as these had to be polished, the
sketchy roughness left by the _point_ had to be taken down; we find
therefore that the Egyptians always polished their statues."
The Egyptians do not seem to have known either the _file_ or the
_rasp_, a variety of file which is now greatly employed. The dry
markings left by those tools are nowhere to be seen. In the case of
broad surfaces it is probable that a polish was given by hand boards
sprinkled with powdered sandstone and wetted through a hole in the
middle. Flat stones may have sometimes replaced these wooden disks.
When a more brilliant polish was required, emery must have been used.
This substance was found in abundance in the islands of the
Archipelago, and must have been brought to Egypt by the Phœnicians.
Without it the Egyptian artists could not have produced their engraved
gems.
By dint of continually retempering the bronze and renewing its edge,
the sculptors of the New Empire succeeded in cutting hieroglyphs upon
a certain number of works in the harder rocks. Perhaps, too, iron may
by that time have come into more general use, and they may have learnt
how to give it extra hardness by tempering. But when granite and
kindred materials had to be cut, the work was commenced with point and
hammer as above described. In the case of some of those very large
figures which had been rather roughly blocked out in the first
instance, the final polishing has not quite obliterated the hollows
left by those rude instruments in the stone, especially where the
journeyman has struck a little too hard. An instance of this may be
seen on the red granite sphinx in the Louvre (Fig. 41, Vol. I.).
M. Soldi is inclined to think that at one period at least the
Egyptians used stone weapons rather than metal ones in their attacks
upon the harder rocks. He tells us that he himself has succeeded in
cutting granites of various hardness with a common flint from the
neighbourhood of Paris. He has done the same with diorite, both by
driving off small chips from it and by pulverizing its surface with
the help of jasper. "This method," he adds, "is excessively long and
tedious, and the jasper, though harder than the diorite, is greatly
damaged in the process. But yet it proves that a statue may be
produced in such fashion, by dint of a great consumption of time and
patience."[301] We must also remember that the hardest rocks are
easier to cut when they are first drawn from the quarry, than after
they have been exposed for a time to the air.
[301] SOLDI, _Les Arts Méconnus_, p. 492. (1 vol. 8vo, Leroux,
1881.)
The colours in the bas-reliefs are too much conventionalized to be of
any use in helping us to determine the material of which Egyptian
implements were made. But the forms of all the tools of which we have
been speaking are to be found there. A bas-relief in the tomb of Ti,
in which the manufacture of sepulchral statues is shown, is the oldest
monument which may be quoted in support of our remarks (Fig. 250). On
the left two journeymen are roughly blocking out a statue. Each holds
in his left hand[302] a long and slender tool which cannot be other
than a chisel; this he strikes with a hammer. Two more are at work
polishing another statue, upon which the chisel has finished its work.
It is impossible to say whether the egg-shaped tools which they use
are of stone or wood. As for the statues themselves they must be
limestone figures similar to those which were actually found in the
tomb of Ti (Fig. 183). In the tomb of Obai, at Gournah, we see a
sculptor modelling the fore-paws of a lion (Fig. 251). His blows are
vertical instead of horizontal, but his instruments are identical with
those shown in the tomb of Ti. From the fifth dynasty to the time of
the Rameses, the same bronze chisel and pear-shaped mallet had held
their own.[303]
[302] It has escaped M. Perrot's notice that one is
left-handed.--ED.
[303] Upon the different kinds of chisels used by the Egyptian
sculptors, see SOLDI, _La Sculpture Égyptienne_, pp. 53 and 111.
He includes the toothed chisel and the gouge.
[Illustration: FIG. 250.--Bas-relief from the tomb of Ti.]
Two paintings at Thebes show us the process of executing a royal
colossus in granite (Figs. 252 and 253). Standing upon the plinth and
upon the planks of a scaffold, several workmen do their best to hasten
the completion of the work, which is already far advanced. Seated upon
the topmost pole of the scaffold one workman is busy polishing the
front of the pschent; another stands behind the image, and, holding
his palette in one hand and his brush in the other, spreads his
colours upon its posterior support. It may be asked what the man is
doing who is engaged with both hands upon the chest of the statue. For
an answer to that question we must turn to the second picture, in
which we are shown a seated colossus under the hands of its makers.
The workman who kneels before its head is making use of two
implements. With his left hand he applies to the face of the statue a
pointed instrument, which he is about to strike with the object held
in his right. This action will cause splinters to fly from the
granite. These two instruments are the same as those wielded by the
workman who leans upon the chest of the standing colossus. The latter
seems, however, to pause for a moment's consideration before
proceeding with his work. One of these tools is the _point_ of stone
or metal, the other acts as mallet or hammer. The same tool is to be
recognised in the hand of the man who is at work upon the seat of the
statue; he, however, uses it without any hammer.[304] Leaning upon one
of the cross-pieces of the scaffolding he beats with all his force
upon the stone. The work was perhaps begun in this fashion. In the
same tomb the representation of a sphinx receiving the final touches
which is figured above occurs (Fig. 254). In this painting the
polishing tool is a disk, similar to that in use by one of the workmen
in Fig. 253. The figure on the left carries in a saucer the powder
used for polishing the granite. In his right hand he holds a kind of
brush which was used for spreading the powder upon the surfaces to be
rubbed.
[304] This man's attitude, the shape of the tool in question,
and the general significance of the composition, seem rather to
suggest that he is giving the final polish to the surface of the
statue. Compare him with the pschent-polisher in Fig. 252.--ED.
[Illustration: FIG. 251.--Bas-relief at Thebes (Champollion, pl.
180).]
Fig. 255 shows a workman fashioning a _tet_ with a kind of hatchet or
mattock, which he uses much as if it were a mallet.
[Illustration: FIG. 252.--From a painting at Thebes (Champollion, pl.
161).]
The only doubt that remains is as to the _material_ employed by the
Egyptian sculptors in their attacks upon the granite. Were their
mallets and _points_ of stone or of metal? They could only dispose of
instruments which, with the exception of the chisel, were incompatible
with really delicate workmanship. With the latter instrument the
skilful carver can obtain any effect he requires from a material
which is neither too hard nor too soft--such as marble; but the rocks
from which the Egyptians struck their finest work do not lend
themselves kindly to the chisel. To obtain the effects required they
had to expend as much time and patience upon them as upon their works
of architecture. But in spite of the industry and skill of workmen who
did not count their hours, there must always have been a certain
inequality and rudeness in works carried out by instruments that
bruised and shattered rather than cut. The stubbornness of the
material, and the defects of the tools employed, had a double
consequence. In order to avoid all danger of spoiling his figure when
roughing it out, the artist was compelled to err on the side of over
solidity and heaviness; he was obliged to multiply the points of
support, and to avoid anything like delicacy or slightness of parts.
On the other hand, he was forced to fine down and almost to obliterate
the suggestive contours of the living form by the final polish, in
order to correct the irregularities due to the rude and uncertain
nature of his implements.
[Illustration: FIG. 253.--Painting at Thebes (Champollion, pl. 161).]
[Illustration: FIG. 254.--Painting at Thebes (Champollion, pl. 161).]
All this explains the absolute necessity for the supporting blocks
reserved by the Egyptian sculptor at the back of his statues, and for
the great massiveness of their forms. To begin with, the comparative
slenderness of the attachment between the head and the body was an
element of danger. The repeated blows struck by the mallet upon the
point might break it off unless precautions were taken. We find,
therefore, that the _klaft_ head-dress was introduced as often as
possible. Its large ends fell down upon each breast, and acted as
buttresses to the head. When the _klaft_ was not used the hair was
brought together in a solid mass, and, falling to the shoulders, gave
strength to the neck. We may say the same of the long and thick
beard, the shape of which was modified under the pressure of the same
necessity. It is never disengaged and turned up at the end, as we see
it in the paintings. "...The head covering, which is sometimes very
tall and slender, is always supported at the back for nearly the whole
of its height and width. The figure itself is supported either at the
back or the side by a pier of varying thickness...."[305] The stone is
left between the two legs when one is thrust forward, between the arms
and the side, and in the hollows above the hips. Nothing could have
been easier than to remove these masses, after the work was otherwise
complete, by means of the drill. But that instrument, by which the
necessary holes could have been made without dangerous shocks, was
certainly unknown to the Egyptians. They could only have removed the
masses in question by the striking processes we have mentioned,
processes which might result in the breaking of an arm or a leg. The
hardest materials are also, in a sense, the most brittle. If it was
difficult for the sculptor to free the limbs and head of his statue
from the rock in which they were partly imprisoned, how much more
difficult, nay, how impossible, it must have been to give them any
energetic movement--that of running, for instance, or fighting. The
beauty and expressiveness of such movements did not escape his
observation, but a want of material resources compelled him to forego
their reproduction.
[305] E. SOLDI, _La Sculpture Égyptienne_, pp. 41, 42.
[Illustration: FIG. 255.--Painting at Thebes (Champollion, pl. 186).]
[Illustration: FIG. 256.--Bronze statuette. Actual size. Boulak.]
The truth of these observations is confirmed by the fact that when the
chisel came to be used upon less unkindly materials, the Egyptian
sculptor shook himself free of more than one of those despotic
conventions which tyrannized over the makers of the royal colossi. The
wooden statues have no supporting mass at the back or side; the legs
are separated and free; the arms are no longer fixed to the sides, but
are often bent into easy positions (Fig. 7, Vol. I., and Fig. 178). We
may say the same of bronze (Figs. 179 and 180). We may judge of the
freedom which was often given to works in the latter material by the
beautiful little statuette figured upon this page (Fig. 256). The
limestone figures are not so free. Convenient instruments for ridding
them of superfluous stone were wanting, and, moreover, there was a
certain temptation to imitate those statues in the harder rocks which
were looked upon as the highest achievements of the national art. The
figures were often supported by a mass of stone in which the posterior
surfaces of the legs were imbedded. Sometimes, however, this support
was absent, and in that case attitudes became extremely various (Fig.
48, Vol. I., and Figs. 192, 194, 195, Vol. II.), perfect ease and
suppleness being often attained. Further confirmation of our theory is
afforded by those little ornamental articles which may be referred to
the industrial rather than the fine arts. In them we find the figures
of men and animals introduced with the most playful and easy skill.
The spontaneity of their grouping and the facility with which the most
lively actions are pressed into the service of the artist, are
remarkable. The graceful and almost athletic figures of swimming girls
which form the handles of so many perfume spoons may be given as
instances of this (Fig. 257). The qualities which are so conspicuous
in these little works are absent from the official and monumental art
of Egypt, because the materials and tools employed hindered their
development and prevented the happy genius of the Egyptian people from
reaching complete fruition.
[Illustration: FIG. 257.--Spoon for perfumes. Louvre. Drawn by
Saint-Elme Gautier.]
This influence is to be recognized in the modelling as well as in the
pose of Egyptian statues: their general forms are fairly well
understood and expressed, but there is none of that power to suggest
the muscles under the skin, and the bones under the muscles, which
distinguishes Greek sculpture. The suppleness and elasticity of living
flesh are entirely wanting. Everything is in its place, but details
are as much suppressed as if the work were to be seen at a distance at
which they would be invisible.
The admirable portraits which have been unearthed in such numbers and
the skilful modelling of many an isolated work, prove that it was
neither the power of observation nor that of manipulation that was
wanting. Why, then, was it that the Egyptians failed to advance
farther upon the road that led to mastery in their art? It was due to
their infatuation for granite. Even when they worked in soft stone
their manipulation was governed by the capabilities of the more
stubborn material. The chisel alone can give those truthful and
delicate contours without which no sculpture can reach perfection, and
the chisel could hardly be used on any material but limestone or wood.
The granite or basalt statue, roughly blocked out with tools which
imperfectly obeyed the hand, could only be brought to completion with
the sand or emery of the polisher. No refinement of execution could be
hoped for under such conditions. Every surface was flattened and every
expressive ridge smoothed down, and the appearance of superficial
finish thus obtained involved many sacrifices.
The abuse of this latter process is one of the great defects of
Egyptian technique; but there was another, and, perhaps, more potent
cause of failure. The method of writing adopted by the Egyptians, and
elaborated at a very early date, must have had a greater effect upon
their plastic arts than has generally been supposed. The characters
employed by them, at least in monumental situations, were not merely
symbols of sounds, as the characters of later syllabic or alphabetic
forms of writing became; they were direct images of objects. Practical
requirements soon led to the simplification of such objects, to the
suppression of all details beyond those necessary for identification.
The figures employed were thus soon reduced to mere empty outlines.
Shadow and colour, all those details which distinguish the species of
a genus and the individuals of a species, were carefully and
systematically eliminated. The sign which stood for a lion or a man,
was the same for all lions and all men, although between one man or
one lion and another there are differences of stature, of age, of
colour, of strength, and of beauty.
Now, in the early ages of Egyptian civilization, when the hieroglyphs
in the Memphite necropolis were chiselled in relief, the same hand
must have been employed upon the portraits of any particular
inhabitants of a tomb and upon the inscriptions which accompanied
them. Thus we find upon the panels from the tomb of Hosi (Figs.
174-6), that there is no appreciable difference between the technique
of the figures and of the accompanying characters. The same firm and
lively handling is visible in both. The images which play the part of
written characters are much smaller than the three portraits, and that
is all. The crafts of scribe and sculptor were thus combined in one
man; his chisel traced indifferently funerary portraits and
hieroglyphs. When the use of papyrus led to much and rapid writing,
the two professions were separated. The scribe wrote sometimes with
the kalem upon papyrus, sometimes with the brush or the point upon
wood, stucco, or stone. But he always found enough to do in his own
profession without combining it with another.
Sculptors and painters multiplied on their side with the
multiplication of the royal and divine images; they represented the
king fighting against the enemies of Egypt or returning thanks to the
gods for their assistance, and the king's subjects accompanying him to
battle, or busied over the varied labours of a civilized society. They
had to observe life and to study nature. By dint of so doing they
created a style, a certain method of looking at and interpreting
natural facts which became common to all the artists of Egypt. One of
the most striking features of this style is the continual endeavour to
strip form of all that is accidental and particular, to generalize and
simplify it as much as possible, a tendency which finds a very natural
explanation in the early endeavours of the Egyptians to represent, in
their writing, the concrete shapes of every being in earth or sky.
This habit of making plastic epitomes of men and animals, and even of
inanimate things, was confirmed by the persistent use of ideographic
characters during all the centuries of Egyptian civilization. The
profession of the scribe was in time separated from that of the
sculptor, but the later preserved some of the marked characteristics
which it put on before this division of labour was finally
established. The Egyptian eye had become accustomed to see things
represented in that simplified aspect of which the hieroglyphs are so
striking an example, and to deprive individuals, by a kind of
unconscious abstraction, of those details by which they stood out from
their species as a whole.
The most original features of Egyptian sculpture and its arrested
development must, then, be referred, on the one hand to the nature of
the materials employed, and, on the other, to the habits contracted
during many centuries of ideographic writing.[306] It has long been
the fashion to attribute capital importance to what is called a canon,
in describing the origin of the Egyptian style. The ideas which have
been published on this question seem to us manifestly exaggerated; we
must examine them a little closely.
[306] M. CH. BLANC had a glimmering of the great influence
exercised over the plastic style of Egypt by the hieroglyphs;
see his _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, p. 354.
The word _canon_ comes from the Greek κάνων, a _rule_. As
applied to the arts it has been defined as "a system of measurements
by the use of which it should be possible to tell the size of any part
by that of the whole, or the size of the whole by that of any one of
its parts."[307] The idea of proportion, upon which every canon must
rest, is a creation of the brain. A canon, therefore, is the result of
those searching and comprehensive generalizations of which only races
with great intellectual gifts are capable. Each of the arts may have
its canon, or rule of proportion, establishing a proper relation
between all the elements of its creations and easily expressible in
figures.
[307] _Dictionnaire de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts_, under the
word _Canon_.
The finest examples of a canon as applied to architecture are
furnished by the Greek orders. Given the smallest member of an Ionic
or Doric order, the dimensions of all the other members of the column
and its entablature may be calculated with almost complete accuracy.
There is nothing of the kind in Egyptian architecture. There is no
constant proportion between the heights and thicknesses of the shaft,
the capital, and the entablature; there is no constant relation
between their shapes. In a single building, and in a single order, we
find proportions varying between one hall or court and another.
The word _canon_ has an analogous sense when applied to sculpture. We
establish a canon when we say that a figure should be so many heads
high, and that its limbs should bear a certain proportion to the same
unit. It would be the same if, as has often been proposed, the medius
of the hand were erected into the unit of measurement, except that the
figure would then be divided into a larger number of parts. Both
ancients and moderns have investigated this question, but we need not
dwell upon the results of their inquiries. The Greeks had the canon of
Polycletus; the Romans that of Vitruvius, while Leonardo da Vinci set
an example to the numerous artists who have investigated the question
since his time.[308]
[308] These researches are described in the chapter entitled
_Des Proportions du Corps Humain_ of M. CH. BLANC'S _Grammaire
des Arts du Dessin_, p. 38.
Had the Egyptians a canon? Did they choose some one part of the human
body and keep all the other parts in a constant mathematical relation
with it? Did their canon, if they had one, change with time? Is it
true that, in deference to the said canon, all the artists of Egypt
living at one time gave similar proportions to their figures?
It has sometimes been pretended that in each century the priests
decided upon the dimensions, or at least upon the proportions, to be
given by artists to their figures. Such an assertion can hardly be
brought into harmony with the facts observed.
The often quoted words of Diodorus have been taken as a text: "The
Egyptians claim as their disciples the oldest of the Greek sculptors,
especially Telecles and Theodoros, both sons of Rhæcos, who executed
the statue of the Pythian Apollo for the inhabitants of Samos. Half of
this statue, it is said, was executed at Samos by Telecles, the other
half at Ephesus by Theodoros, and the two parts so exactly fitted each
other that the whole statue appeared to be the work of a single
sculptor. After having arranged and blocked out their stone, the
Egyptians executed the work in such fashion that all the parts adapted
themselves one to another in the smallest details. To this end they
divided the human figure into twenty-one parts and a quarter, upon
which the whole symmetry of the work was regulated."[309]
[309] DIODORUS, i. 98, 5-7.
We may ask what authority should attach to the words of Diodorus, a
contemporary of Augustus, in a matter referring to the Pharaonic
period. But when the monuments began to be examined it was proclaimed
that they confirmed his statements. Figures were found upon the
tomb-walls which were divided into equal parts by lines cutting each
other at right angles. These, of course, were the canonical standards
mentioned by Plato and Diodorus.
Great was the disappointment when these squares were counted. In one
picture containing three individuals, two seated figures, one beside
the other, are inscribed in fifteen of the squares; a standing figure
in front of them occupies sixteen.[310] Another figure is comprised in
nineteen squares.[311] In another place we find twenty-two squares and
a quarter between the sole of the foot and the crown of the head.[312]
In yet another, twenty-three.[313] As for the division given by
Diodorus, it never occurs at all, and in fact it is hardly to be
reconciled with the natural punctuation of the human body by its
articulation and points of section.
[310] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part iii. plate 12.
[311] _Ibid._ plate 78. It is in this division into nineteen
parts that M. Blanc finds his proof that the medius of the
extended hand was the canonical unit. (_Grammaire_, &c. p. 46.)
[312] At Karnak, in the granite apartments. See CHARLES BLANC,
_Voyage de la Haute-Égypte_, p. 232. Two figures upon the
ceiling of a tomb at Assouan are similarly divided.
[313] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part iii. p. 282.
To surmount the difficulty the theory of successive canons was
started; some declared for two,[314] some for three.[315] This theory
requires explanation also. Do its advocates mean that in all the
figures of a single epoch there is a scale of proportion so constant
that we must seek for its cause in an external peremptory regulation?
If, however, we doubt the evidence of our eyes and study the plates in
Lepsius or the monuments in our museums, measure in hand, we shall see
at once that no such theory will hold water. Under the Ancient Empire
proportions varied appreciably between one figure and another. As a
rule they were short rather than tall; but while on the one hand we
encounter certain forms of very squat proportions, amounting almost to
deformity (Fig. 120, Vol. I.), we also find some whose forms are very
lengthy (Fig. 101, Vol. I.). The artists of Thebes adopted a more
slender type, but with them too we find nothing like a rigorous
uniformity. Again, the elongation of the lower part of the body is
much more strongly marked in the funerary statuettes (Fig. 50, Vol.
I.) and in the paintings (Plate XII.) than in statues of the natural
size (Figs. 211, 216) and in the colossi. If there had been a canon in
the proper sense of the term its authority would have applied as much
to those statuettes and bas-reliefs as to the full-sized figures. But,
as a fact, the freedom of the artist is obvious; his conception is
modified only by the material in which he worked. He could not make a
great statue in stone too slender below, as it would want base and
solidity; but as soon as he was easy on that score he allowed himself
to be carried away by the temptation to exaggerate what seemed to him
an especially graceful feature.
[314] EBERS, _Ægypten_, vol. ii. p. 54. PRISSE, _Histoire de
l'Art Égyptien_, text, pp. 124-128.
[315] LEPSIUS, _Ueber einige Kuntsformen_, p. 9. BIRCH, in
WILKINSON'S _Manners and Customs_, vol. ii. LEPSIUS,
_Denkmæler_, part ii. pl. 9, p. 270, note 3.
We see, then, that art in Egypt went through pretty much the same
changes and developments as in other countries in which it enjoyed a
long and busy life. Taste changed with the centuries. It began by
insisting on muscular vigour, as displayed in great breadth of
shoulder and thickset proportions generally. In later years elegance
became the chief object, and slenderness of proportion was sometimes
pushed even to weakness. In each of these periods all plastic figures
naturally approached the type which happened to be in fashion, and in
that sense alone is it just to assert that Egyptian art had two
different and successive canons.
The question as to whether the Egyptians ever adopted a unit of
measurement in their rendering of the human figure or not, is
different. Wilkinson and Lepsius thought they had discovered such a
unit in the length of the foot, Prisse and Ch. Blanc in that of the
medius. There is nothing in the texts to support either theory, and an
examination of the monuments themselves shows that sometimes one,
sometimes the other of the two units, is most in accordance with their
measurements. Between the Ancient Empire and the New proportions
differed so greatly that it is impossible to refer them to one unit.
Among the works of a single period we find some that may be divided
exactly by one of the two; others which have a fraction too much or
too little. It has not yet been proved, therefore, that the Egyptians
ever adopted such a rigorous system as that attributed to them. Like
all races that have greatly practised design, they established certain
relations between one part of their figures and another, relations
which gradually became more constant as the national art lost its
freedom and vitality; and they arrived at last at the mechanical
reproduction of a single figure without troubling themselves to
calculate how many lengths of the head, the nose, the foot, or the
medius, it might contain. Their eyes were their compasses, and they
worked--at least under the New Empire and during the Græco-Roman
period--from models which represented the experience of the past. It
is therefore unnecessary to search for an explanation of the
uniformity which characterises their works in the following of a rigid
mathematical system; we must be content to see in it the natural
result of an artistic education into which, as the centuries succeeded
one another, the imitation of previous types, and the application of
traditional recipes entered more and more.
As for the designs traced within lines which cross each other at
regular intervals, they can be nothing but drawings squared for
transferring purposes. _Squaring_ is the usual process employed by
artists when they wish to repeat a figure in different dimensions from
those of the original. Having divided the latter by horizontal and
perpendicular lines cutting each other at regular intervals, they go
through the same operation upon the blank surface to which the figure
is to be transferred, making the lines equal in number to those upon
the original, but the resulting squares larger if the copy is to be
larger, smaller if it is to be smaller, than that original. Egyptian
decorators often made use of this process for the transference of
sketches upon papyrus, stone, or wood, to the wall. Of this practice
we give two examples. The first is an elaborate composition in which
several modifications and corrections of lines and attitudes may be
traced (Fig. 258); the second is an isolated figure (Fig. 259). In
each case the figures extend vertically over nineteen squares. The
first dates from the eighteenth, the second from the nineteenth
dynasty.[316]
[316] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_.
[Illustration: FIG. 258.--Design transferred by squaring. From
Prisse.]
The same device is sometimes made use of to transfer heads, and even
animals, from a small sketch to the wall. In the tomb of Amenophis
III., in the Bab-el-Molouk, there is a fine portrait of a prince thus
squared;[317] at Beni-Hassan we find a cow and an antelope treated in
the same fashion.[318]
[317] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part iii. pl. 70.
[318] _Ibid._ plate 152.
Traces of another and yet more simple process are to be found. Before
drawing the figures in his bas-reliefs the artist sometimes marked in
red on the walls the vertical and horizontal lines which would give
the poise of the body, the height of the shoulders and armpits, and of
the lower edge of the drawers. The positions of secondary anatomical
points were marked upon these lines, and the whole formed a rough
guide for the hand of the designer.[319]
[319] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 123.
LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, pl. 65.
The fact that these lines and squares are only found upon a small
number of paintings and bas-reliefs does not prove that their
employment was in any way exceptional. It is probable that one of the
two processes was generally used, but that the colour spread both upon
figures and ground hides their traces. The few pictures in which they
are now to be traced were never completed.
Most of the painters and sculptors to whom the decorations of tombs
and temples were confided must have had recourse to these
contrivances, but here and there were artists who had sufficient skill
and self-confidence to make their sketches directly upon the wall
itself. More than one instance of this has been discovered in those
Theban tombs whose decorations were left unfinished. In a few cases
the design has been made in red chalk by a journeyman and afterwards
corrected, in black chalk, by the master.[320]
[320] Upon the preparation of the bas-relief, see BELZONI,
_Narrative of the Operations_, etc. p. 175.
PRISSE gives several interesting examples of these corrected
designs, among others a fine portrait of Seti I. (_Histoire_,
etc. vol. ii.)
Examples of these corrections are to be found in sculpture as
well as in painting. Our examination of the sculptures at Karnak
showed that the artist did not always follow the first sketch
traced in red ink, but that as the work progressed he modified
it, and allowed himself to be guided, to some extent, by the
effects which he saw growing under his hands. The western wall
of the hypostyle hall contains many instances of this. It is
decorated with sculptures on a large scale, in which the lines
traced by the chisel differ more or less from those of the
sketch. (_Description, Ant._ vol. ii. p. 445.)
[Illustration: FIG. 259.--Design transferred by squaring. From
Prisse.]
As the bas-relief was thus preceded a sketch which was more or less
liable to modification, it would seem probable that a similar custom
obtained in the case of the statue. It appears especially unlikely
that those great figures in the harder rocks which represented such
an enormous outlay of manual labour, would be attacked without some
guide which should preserve them from the chance of ruin by some
ill-considered blow. Did the Egyptian sculptor begin, then, with a
clay sketch? There is no positive information on the subject, but in
all those numerous bas-reliefs which represent sculptors at work,
there is not one in which the artist has before him anything in the
shape of a model or sketch to guide him in his task. It is possible
that the sameness of his statues, especially of his colossal figures
in granite or sandstone, enabled the Egyptian to dispense with an aid
which the infinite variety of later schools was to render necessary.
The Egyptian sculptor was contented with a few simple attitudes which
he reproduced again and again. He doubtless began by marking the
salient points and relative heights of the different parts upon his
block. The rock was so hard that there was little risk of his
journeymen spoiling the material by taking away too much, supposing
them to be carefully overlooked. Marble would have been far more
liable to such an accident. Even Michael Angelo, when he worked the
marble with his own hands, spoilt more than one fine block from
Carrara.
Although we have no evidence to show that the Egyptians understood the
use of clay models, we have some idea of the process by which they
were enabled to do without them, and of the nature of their
professional education. The chief Egyptian museums possess works which
have been recognized as graduated exercises in the technique of
sculpture. They are of limestone, and of no great size--from four to
ten inches high. The use of these little models is shown to have been
almost universal by the fact that Mariette found them on nearly every
ancient site that he excavated. Their true character is beyond
doubt.[321] At Boulak there are twenty-seven sculptured slabs which
were found at Tanis. One is no more than a rough sketch, just begun.
By its side is a completed study of the same subjects. Some of these
slabs are carved on both sides; on others we find one motive treated
twice, side by side, once in the state of first sketch, and again as a
finished study. The plaques which bear the heads of cynocephali, of
lions and lionesses, are remarkable for the freedom of their execution
(Figs. 260, 261, and 262).[322] The same may be said of fifteen royal
heads found at Sakkarah. They should be examined together. They
range[323] in order from No. 623, which is a roughly-blocked-out
sketch, to 637, a finished head. One of these models is divided down
the middle, so as to give accent to the profile. A few of them are
squared in order to test the proportions. But even here no canon of
proportion is to be found. "If the squares were based upon some
unchanging unit, they would be identical in every model in which they
occur. But in one of these heads we find three horizontal divisions
between the uræus and the chin; in another four. In most cases the
number of the squares seems to have been entirely due to the
individual caprice or convenience of the artist. There are but two
examples in which another rule seems to have been followed; in them
the proportions of the squares are identical, and their intersections
fall upon the same points. All that may be fairly deduced from this,
however, is that they are the work of the same hands."[324] A second
series of royal heads was found at Tanis; others have been discovered
in the Fayoum. Boulak also possesses models of the ram, the jackal,
and the uræus, of arms, legs, hands, &c. Upon a plaque from Tanis the
figure of Isis appears twice, once as a sketch and once as a finished
study.
[321] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musée_, Nos. 623-688.
[322] Nos. 652-654 of the _Notice du Musée_.
[323] In the Boulak catalogue.
[324] MARIETTE, _La Galerie de l'Égypte Ancienne à l'Éxposition
du Trocadéro_, pp. 69, 70.
[Illustration: FIG. 260.--Head of a Cynocephalus.]
[Illustration: FIG. 261.--Head of a Lion.]
[Illustration: FIG. 262.--Head of a Lioness.]
From the style of these remains Mariette is disposed to think that
they were not earlier than the Saite epoch. As the Egyptian intellect
gradually lost its inventive powers, the study of such models as these
must have played a more and more important part in artistic education;
but we have no reason to believe that their use was confined to the
later ages of the monarchy. As artists became accustomed to reproduce
certain fixed types, they gradually lost their familiarity with
nature, and their works became ever more uniform and monotonous. This
tendency is to be easily recognized in Egyptian work long before the
days of Amasis and the Psemetheks; in some degree it is found even in
the productions of the Ancient Empire. The use of the models in
question may have become general at the beginning of the Middle
Empire. But their introduction was not due to the priests, but to the
masters in the arts, who saw that they offered a sure and rapid method
of instructing their scholars.
* * * * *
Yet one more cause of the monotony of type which distinguished
Egyptian art after its first renascence remains to be noticed. The
Egyptians were fully conscious of the great antiquity of their
civilization. They thought of other nations much as the Greeks and
Romans of a later age thought of those whom they called barbarians.
When the scribes had to speak of foreigners they made use of a
complete vocabulary of contemptuous terms, and, as always occurs, the
pride of race upon which they were based long survived the condition
of things which formed its justification. The Greek conquest was
necessary to cure the Egyptians of their disdain, or, at least, to
compel them to hide it. Now the visible sign of their superiority was
the beauty of the national type, as elaborated by judicious selection
and represented in art since the earliest days of the monarchy. The
Egyptian was proud of himself when he compared the refined features of
his gods and kings, their graceful attitudes and smiling looks, with
the thick and heavy lines of the negro or the hard and truculent
features of the Libyan and the Syrian nomad. In attempting to
innovate, some danger of lowering the nobility of the type would be
incurred. The pressure of neighbouring races ended by throwing back
the Egyptian frontiers. At one time they were forcibly curtailed by
victorious invasion; at others they were weakened here and there,
allowing the entrance of the shepherds, of foreign merchants, and of
mercenaries of various nationalities. The purity of the Egyptian blood
was menaced, and at all hazards it was necessary to preserve without
alteration the ideal image of the race, the concrete emblem of its
glorious past and the pledge of its high destinies. It was thus that
in Egypt progress was hampered by fear of retrogression. Perfection is
impossible to those who fear a fall.
Another obstacle that helped to prevent the Egyptians from reaching
the perfection which their early achievements seemed to promise, was
their love for colour. They did not establish a sufficiently sharp
line of demarcation between painting and sculpture. They always
painted their statues, except when they carved them in materials which
had a rich natural hue of their own, a hue to which additional
vivacity was given by a high polish. By this means varied tints were
obtained which were in harmony with the polychromatic decoration which
was so near their hearts. Their excuse is to be found in their
ignorance of statuary marble and of the clear and flesh-like tones and
texture which it puts on under the sculptor's chisel.
The Egyptians, however, never committed the fault of colouring their
statues in an imitative fashion, like those who make wax figures.
Their hues were always conventional. Moreover, they were never either
broken or shaded, which is sufficient to show that no idea of
realistic imitation was implied in their use.[325] Sculpture is
founded upon an artificial understanding by which tangible form and
visible colour are dissociated from each other. When the sculptor
looks to the help of the painter he runs great risk of failing to give
all the precision and beauty of which form by itself is capable, to
his work. Even the Greeks did not grasp this truth at once. The
Egyptians had at least a glimmering of it, and we must thank them for
having employed polychromy in their sculpture in a discreet fashion.
[325] CH. BLANC, _Voyage de la Haute-Égypte_, p. 99.
§ 10. _The General Characteristics of the Egyptian Style._
We have attempted to give an idea of the origin of Greek sculpture, of
its development and its decadence. We have noticed those slow changes
of taste and style which sometimes required a thousand years for their
evolution, for a century in Egypt was hardly equal to a generation
elsewhere. After proving that Egypt did not escape the universal law
of change, we studied the methods and conventions which were peculiar
to her sculptors and impressed their works with certain common
characteristics. The union of these characteristics formed the
Egyptian style. We must now define that style, and attempt to make its
originality clear to our readers.
In its commencement Egyptian art was entirely realistic. It was made
realistic both by the conceptions which presided at its birth and by
the wants which it was called upon to satisfy. The task to which it
applied itself with a skill and conscience which are little less than
marvellous, was the exact representation of all that met its vision.
In the bas-relief it reproduced the every-day scenes of agricultural
life and of the national worship; in the statue it portrayed
individuals with complete fidelity. But even in those early ages
imagination was not asleep. It was continually seeking to invent forms
which should interpret its favourite ideas. It figured the exploits of
the king, the defender of the national civilization, in the form of a
warrior brandishing his mace over the heads of his enemies. In the
royal statues everything combined to mark the gulf between the Pharaoh
and his subjects, their materials, size, attitude, and expression,
although in natural life there can have been no such distinction.
Finally the Great Sphinx at Gizeh is sufficient to prove that the
Egyptians, in their endeavour to make the great deities whom they had
conceived visible to the eye, had attempted to create composite types
of which the elements were indeed existent in nature, but separate and
distinct.
After the first renascence their imaginations played more freely. They
multiplied the combinations under which their gods were personified.
They transformed and idealized the human figure by the gigantic
proportions which they gave to it in the seated statues of the king,
and in those upright colossi in which the majesty of Pharaoh and the
divinity of Osiris are combined in one individual. The sculptors
portrayed the king in attitudes which had never been seen by mortal
eyes. Sometimes he is seated upon the knee of a goddess and drawing
nourishment from her breast; sometimes he bends, like a respectful and
loving son, before his father Amen, who blesses him, and seems by his
gesture to convey to him some of his own omnipotence and immortality.
Again he is presented to us in the confusion of battle, towering so
high above his adversaries that we can only wonder how they had the
temerity to stand up against him. Events hardly passed thus in those
long and arduous campaigns against the Khetas and the _People of the
sea_, in which more than one of the Theban Pharaohs spent their lives.
Victory, when it was victory, was long and hotly disputed. Superiority
of discipline and armament told at last and decided the contest in
favour of the Egyptians, who were inferior in strength and stature to
most of their enemies, especially to those who came from Asia Minor
and the Grecian islands.
It is hardly just, therefore, to say, as has been said,[326] that
"Egyptian art had only one aim, the exact rendering of reality; in it
all qualities of observation are developed to their utmost
capabilities, those of imagination are wanting." Egyptian art is not
like the sensitized plate of the photographer. It does not confine
itself to the faithful reproduction of the objects placed before it.
Painters and sculptors were not content, as has been pretended, with
the art that can be _seen_, as opposed to the art that can be
_imagined_, and an injustice is done to them by those who would
confine the latter to the Aryan race. The apparent precision of such
an assertion makes it all the more misleading. Egyptian art was
realistic in its inception and always remained so to a certain degree,
but with the passage of time the creative intellect began to play a
part in the production of plastic works; it added to and combined the
elements which it took from nature, and thus created imaginary beings
which differed from natural fact by their proportions, their beauty,
and their composition. The Egyptian artist had his ideal as well as
the Greek.
[326] E. MELCHIOR DE VOGÜE, _Chez les Pharaons_.
In saying, then, that the art of Egypt was realistic, we have only
laid the first stone of the definition we wish to establish. Its
original character was, perhaps, still more due to another feature,
namely to its elimination or suppression of detail. This elimination,
far from diminishing with time, went on increasing as the country grew
older. It may be traced to the action of two causes. In the first
place, the influence of the ideographic writing upon the national
style can hardly be exaggerated. The concrete images of things could
only be introduced into it by means of simplification and
generalization. In such a school the eye learnt to despoil form of all
those details which were merely accidental, of all that made it
particular. It sought for the species, or even the genus, rather than
the individual. This tendency was increased by the peculiar properties
of the materials upon which the Egyptians lavished their skill and
patience. The harder rocks turned the edges of their bronze chisels,
and compelled them to choose between roughly-blocked-out sketches and
a laborious polish which obliterated all those minor details of
modelling which should vary according to the sex, the age, and the
muscular exertion of the persons represented. We see, then, that the
rebellious nature of the granite, and the imperfect methods which it
imposed, completed the lessons begun by that system of figured writing
which dates from the remotest periods of Egyptian civilization.
There is an obvious contradiction between the tendency which we have
just noticed, and those habits of realistic imitation whose existence
has been explained by the desire to secure a posthumous existence for
the dead. The history of Egyptian sculpture, is, in fact, the history
of a contest in the mind of the artist between these two opposing
forces. In the early years of the monarchy, his first duty was to
supply a portrait statue, the chief merit of which should lie in the
fidelity of its resemblance. Of this task he acquitted himself most
skilfully and conscientiously, reproducing every individual
peculiarity, and even deformity of his model. His chief attention was
given to the face, as being the member by which men are principally
distinguished one from another. Even then, and in the funerary
statues, the body was much more general in its forms than the head. In
the course of succeeding ages the sculptor was able, whenever he
wished to make a faithful portrait either of an individual man or of a
race, to bring this faculty into play and to clearly mark the
differences between races or between the individuals of a race, by the
varying character of the head. But yet his art showed an ever
increasing tendency to follow the bent which had been given to it by
the practice of glyptic writing, and by the long contest with unkindly
materials. After the close of the Ancient Empire Egyptian art became
ambitious of a higher style. Under the Theban Pharaohs it worked hard
to attain it, and it knew no better means to the desired end than the
continual simplification and generalization of form.
* * * * *
This is the great distinguishing characteristic of the Egyptian style.
The uniformity, stiffness, and restraint of the attitudes, the
over-rigorous symmetry of the parts and of the limbs, and the close
alliance of the latter with the bodies, are only secondary features.
We shall find them in the works of every race compelled to make use of
materials that were either too hard or too soft. Moreover, these are
the constant characteristics of archaic art, and it must not be
forgotten that even in Egypt many wooden and limestone figures have
been unearthed which surprise us by the freedom of their attitudes and
movements. The true originality of the Egyptian style consists in its
deliberately epitomizing that upon which the artists of other
countries have elaborately dwelt, in its lavishing all its executive
powers upon chief masses and leading lines, and in the marvellous
judgment with which it seizes their real meaning, their proportions,
and the sources of their artistic effect.
As figures increased in size this tendency towards the suppression of
detail increased also, and so too did their fitness for the
architectonic _rôle_ they had to play. The colossi which flank the
entrances to an Egyptian temple have been often criticised from an
erroneous standpoint. They have been treated as if they were meant to
be self-sufficient and independent. Their massiveness and want of
vitality have been blamed; it has been said that the seated figures
could not rise, nor the standing ones walk. To form a just estimate of
their merit we must take them with the monuments of which they formed
a part. We must rouse our imaginations, and picture them to ourselves
with their flanking colonnades about them, with the pylons at their
backs, and the obelisks at their sides. We must close our eyes for a
moment and reconstruct this combination of architectural and
sculpturesque lines. We shall then readily perceive how entirely these
colossi were in harmony with their surroundings. Their vertical and
horizontal lines echoed those of the monument to which they were
attached. The rhythm of the long colonnades was carried on by their
repetition of a single attitude, while their colossal dimensions and
immovable solidity brought them into complete accord with the huge
structures by which they were surrounded. It has been said that, more
than any of its rivals, "the architecture of Egypt impresses us with
the idea of absolute stability, of infinite duration." Could anything
be in more complete harmony with such an art than the grave and
majestic attitudes of these seated Pharaohs, attitudes which from
every line breathe a profound calm, a repose without change and
without end.
[Illustration]