PAINTING.
§ 1. _Technical Processes._
Most of our observations upon Egyptian sculpture are applicable to the
sister art of painting. The conventions which form the characteristic
originality of the Egyptian style were established by the sculptor;
but when the artist had to draw the outline of a form, and to fill it
in with colour instead of cutting it upon the naked surface of the
wall, the difference of process did not affect his method of
comprehending and interpreting his models. We find the same qualities
and the same defects. The purity of line, the nobility of pose, the
draughtsmanship at once just and broad, the ignorance of perspective,
and the constant repetition of traditional attitudes are found in both
methods. Painting, in fact, never became an independent and
self-sufficing art in Egypt. It was commonly used to complete
sculpturesque effects, and it never freed itself from this
subordination. It never attempted to make use of its own peculiar
resources for the expression of those things which sculpture could not
compass--the depths of space, the recession of planes, the varieties
of hue which passion spreads over the human countenance, and the
nature and intensity of the feelings which are thus betrayed. We may
say that it is only by some abuse of terms that we can speak of
_Egyptian painting_ at all. No people have spread more colour upon
stone and wood than the Egyptians; none have had a more true instinct
for colour harmony; but yet they never attempted to express, by the
gradation of tone, by the juxtaposition or superposition of tints, the
real aspects of the surfaces which present themselves to our eyes,
aspects which are unceasingly modified by the amount of light or
shadow, by distance and the state of the atmosphere. They had not the
least glimmering of what we call chiaroscuro or of aerial perspective.
Their painting rests upon conventions as audacious as those of their
sculpture. In it every surface has an uniform and decided value though
in nature everything is shaded. A nude figure is all one colour--dark
for a man, light for a woman. A drapery has but one tone, the artist
never seeming to trouble himself whether it be in light or shadow, or
partly in one partly in the other. In a few plates in Lepsius, and
still more in Prisse,[327] there are suggestions that an artist here
and there, more skilful than his rivals, understood that values
differed, and distinguished in his more careful work between colour in
shadow and colour in light. One or two contours appear to hint at the
rotundity of chiaroscuro. In accepting such a suggestion, however, we
should be making a mistake against which we have been warned even by
such early travellers as the authors of the _Description_.[328] The
effects in question must be placed to the credit of the sculptor. The
images in which they appear are painted bas-reliefs, and the slight
shadow thrown by their salient grounds gives an appearance of
half-tint to their contours. Wherever pictures are without relief
there is no such appearance, and yet changes of value would in them be
more useful than elsewhere.
[327] Vol. ii. plates 41, 66, and 70.
[328] _Description, Antiquités_, vol. iii. p. 45.
To place unbroken colours in juxtaposition to each other without
transitions is to illuminate; it is not painting in the true sense of
the word, and its practitioner is an artisan rather than an artist.
The artist is he who traces the design upon the walls, who, chalk in
hand, sketches the forms of men and women and the lines of the
ornament. Many of these sketches are admirable for the freedom and
breadth of their outline. The portrait of Amenophis III. which is to
be seen in his tomb in the Bab-el-Molouk is a good example of these
master-studies (Fig. 263). When nothing interfered to prevent the
completion of the work, the painter came with his palette and brushes
to spread colour over the spaces enclosed by these lines. Nothing
could be easier than his task. He was only required to lay his colours
smoothly, and to avoid overpassing the boundaries laid down for him.
The hues of the flesh and of the draperies were fixed in advance as
well as those of the various objects which were repeatedly introduced
in such works.
[Illustration: FIG. 263.--Outline for a portrait of Amenophis III.
Champollion, pl. 232.]
At Beni-Hassan, and in several of the Theban tombs, there are
representations of the painter at work. When he had to spread a single
tint over a large surface--brown, for instance, upon the whole
superficies of a limestone statue--we see him seated upon a kind of
stool, his pot of colour in his left hand, his brush in his
unsupported right (Fig. 54 Vol. I.). Sometimes his work was more
complicated than this. There are a few royal portraits, and a few
scenes with numerous actors, in which the whole scale of tints at his
command must have been required. He then makes use of a palette.
Specimens of these palettes are to be seen in every museum. They are
rectangular pieces of wood, of alabaster, or of enamelled earthenware.
They usually have seven little colour cups, but a few have as many as
eleven or twelve. Small _styles_, as large as a crow-quill, have been
found with these palettes. The use of these has been much discussed.
Prisse cut one and steeped it in water. It was then discovered that
the reed of which it was composed became a brush when its fibres were
thus softened by moisture.[329] None of the large brushes which must
have been used to spread the colour over considerable surfaces have
been discovered, but Prisse believes that they too must have been made
of fibrous reeds, such as the sarmentose stems of the _Salvadora
persica_. Others think that for such purposes the hair pencil must
have been employed.
[329] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 289.
Cakes of colour have sometimes been found in the tombs, together with
earthenware mortars and pestles for grinding them. The tints usually
employed were _yellow_, _red_, _blue_, _green_, _brown_, _white_, and
_black_. These correspond to the seven cups hollowed in most of the
palettes. They each included several varieties. Some of these colours
were vegetable, such as indigo; others--and these more numerous--were
mineral. Among the latter is a certain blue, which has preserved all
its brilliancy even after so many centuries. Its merits were extolled
by Theophrastus and Vitruvius. It is an ash with wonderful power of
resisting chemical agents, and neither turning green nor black with
exposure to the air. It must have been composed, we are told, of sand,
copper-filings, and subcarbonate of soda reduced to powder and burnt
in an oven. Copper is also the colouring principle, at least in our
days, of those greens which are more or less olive in tone. Different
shades of red, yellow, and brown, were obtained from the ochres. Their
whites, formed of lime, of plaster, or of powdered enamel, have
sometimes preserved a snowy whiteness beside which our whitest papers
seem grey.[330] As for violet, Champollion tells us that no colour
used by the ancients had that value. In those few bas-reliefs in which
it is now found, it is a result of the changes which time has spread
over surfaces originally gilded. The hue in question is caused, we
are told, by the mordant or other preparation upon which the gold was
laid.[331]
[330] Fuller details as to the composition of these colours are
given in PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, pp.
292-295. A paper written by the father of Prosper Mérimée and
printed by Passalacqua at the end of his _Catalogue_ (pp. 258,
et seq.) may also be consulted with profit; its full title is
_Dissertation sur l'Emploi des Couleurs, des Vernis, et des
Émaux dans l'Ancienne Égypte_, by M. MÉRIMÉE, _Secrétaire
Perpétuel de l'École Royale des Beaux-Arts_. This paper shows
that M. Mérimée added taste and a love for erudition to the
talent as a painter which he is said to have possessed. BELZONI
shows that the manufacture of indigo must have been practised by
the ancient Egyptians by much the same processes as those in use
to-day (_Narrative of the Operations_, etc. p. 175). See also
WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. ii. p. 287.
[331] CHAMPOLLION, _Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie_, p. 130.
[Illustration: OFFERINGS TO THE DEAD
FRAGMENT OF A FUNERARY PAINTING ON PLASTER
(XVIIIth Dynasty)]
In the Theban tombs the figures are first drawn and then painted upon
a fine coat which has all the polish of stucco. It seems to consist of
a very fine plaster and a transparent glue. It is still white where no
tint has been laid upon it; here and there its shining surface is
still undimmed.[332] When the pictures were executed upon wood or, as
in the mummies, upon linen laid down upon a thin layer of plaster, a
preparatory coat of white was always spread in the first instance. The
tints became more brilliant over such a coat, the most opaque being in
some degree transparent.[333]
[332] _Description, Ant._ vol. iii. p. 44.
[333] MÉRIMÉE, _Dissertation sur l'Emploi des Couleurs_, p. 130.
The paintings are, as a rule, free from cracks. The colours seem to
have been mixed with water and some flexible gum like tragacanth.[334]
M. Hector Leroux, who took impressions of many bas-reliefs during his
visit to Egypt, is inclined to believe that the Egyptians sometimes
mixed honey with their colours, as the makers of water-colours do now.
In some of the tombs the painting became sticky when he laid his
moistened paper upon their surfaces. In others no amount of wetting
affected the surface of the colours, which remained as smooth and hard
as enamel. Some Egyptian paintings are covered with a resinous varnish
which has blackened with time and spoilt the colours upon which it is
laid.[335] The same varnish was used for the mummy cases and gives
them the dark hue which they now present. A few exceptionally well
preserved examples permit us to suppose that their colours when fresh
must have been much lighter in tone and more brilliant than they now
appear. No such precaution was taken, as a rule, in the case of the
frescos. Their surfaces were left free from a substance that could so
greatly alter with time, and thanks partly to this, partly to the
equality of temperature and to the dryness and tranquillity of the
air, they have retained an incomparable freshness. The centuries have
passed gently over them, but since all the world has taken to visiting
Egypt, including even the foolish and ignorant, they have suffered
greatly from the barbarity of tourists. Of this the state of those
beautiful decorations in the tomb of Seti which have excited the
admiration of all cultivated travellers, is a painful instance.
[334] MÉRIMÉE, _Dissertation_, etc. Champollion uses the term
_gouache_, body colour, in speaking of these paintings, but as
the characteristic of that process is that every tint is mixed
with white, there is some inaccuracy in doing so.
[335] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 291.
Several mummy masks are in existence which prove that encaustic
painting, in which naphtha and wax were used, was employed by the
Egyptians;[336] but this process does not seem to have been developed
until after the Macedonian conquest. Speaking generally, we may say
that the Egyptian method was _distemper_.
[336] PRISSE, _Histoire_, etc. text, p. 291.
The Egyptians produced easel pictures as well as wall paintings. In
one of the Beni-Hassan tombs two artists are represented painting
animals upon a panel.[337] Herodotus tells us that Amasis presented
his portrait to the people of Cyrene.[338] Supposing it to be the work
of a native artist, we may form some idea of its character from the
Egyptian portraits, dating from the Roman epoch, which are now in the
Louvre. Doubtless the portrait of Amasis was very different in style
from these productions of the decadence; but it is probable that, like
them, it was painted upon a cedar panel.
[337] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. ii. p. 294.
[338] HERODOTUS, ii. 182.
We have no reason to believe that the Egyptians ever succeeded in
crossing the line which separates illumination from painting. The
convention which saw only single flat tones on every surface being
once adopted, it was sometimes pushed to extraordinary lengths. Not
content with ignoring the varieties of tone and tint which nature
everywhere presents, the Egyptian artists sometimes adopted arbitrary
hues which did not, even faintly, recall the actual colours of the
objects upon which they were used. As a rule they represented the
female skin as a light-yellow, and the male as a reddish-brown. This
distinction may be understood. Besides its convenience as indicative
of sex to a distant observer, it answers to a difference which social
habits have established in every civilized society. More completely
covered than men and less in the open air, the women, at least those
of the upper classes, are less exposed to the effects of sun and wind
than men. Their skins are usually fairer. In northern climates they
are whiter, in southern less brown. We are surprised therefore to find
that in the small temple at Ipsamboul the carnations of male and
female, whether they be kings and queens or gods and goddesses, are
all alike of a vivid yellow, not far removed from chrome.[339] Those
divinities who have the limbs and features of man, such as Amen,
Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, should, we might think, be subject to the
same rule as the images of men and women, and in most cases it is so.
But, on the other hand, the painter often endows them with skins of
the most fanciful and arbitrary hue. At Ipsamboul there is an Amen
with a blue skin,[340] and, again, an Amen and an Osiris which are
both green.[341] At Philæ we find numerous examples of the same
singularity.[342] At Kalabché, in Nubia, there are royal figures
coloured in the same fashion.[343]
[339] There are other exceptions to the ordinary rule. In a fine
bas-relief in the Louvre, representing Seti I. before Hathor,
the carnations of the goddess are similar to those of the
Pharaoh; they are in each case dark red (basement room, B, 7).
[340] CHAMPOLLION, _Monuments de l'Égypte et de la Nubie_, pl.
11. Blue was the regular colour for Amen when represented with a
complete human form; when he was ram-headed he was generally
painted green (see CHAMPOLLION, _Panthéon Égyptien_, No. 1;
PIERRET, _Dictionnaire Archéologique_; and pl. 2, vol. i. of the
present work).--ED.
[341] _Ibid._ pl. 59.
[342] _Ibid._ plates 71, 76, 78, 91.
[343] _Ibid._ pl. 154.
Exceptional though they may be, these curious representations help us
to understand the Egyptian method of looking at colour. They did not
employ it like the modern painter, in order to add to the illusion;
they used it decoratively, partly to satisfy that innate love for
polychromy which we have explained by the intensity of a southern sun,
partly to give relief to their figures, which would stand out more
boldly from the white ground when brilliant with colour than when they
had to depend solely upon their slight relief. In the interior of the
figure colour was used to distinguish the flesh from the draperies,
and to indicate those enrichments in the latter which made up the
elegance of the Egyptian costume. A good example of this way of using
colour is seen in the tomb of Amenophis III., which contains the
portrait of Queen Taia reproduced in our Fig. 264.[344]
[344] We place this portrait of Taia in our chapter on painting
because its colour is exceptionally delicate and carefully
managed (see PRISSE, text, p. 421). The original is, however, in
very low relief, so low that it hardly affects the colour
values.
We find, too, that in pictures in which people of different races are
brought together, the artist employs different tones to mark their
varied hues. In a tomb at Abd-el-Gournah, in which the construction of
a building is represented, the workmen, who are doubtless slaves or
prisoners of war, have not all skins of one colour; some are light
yellow, some light red, while others are reddish-brown. We are led to
believe that this is not merely the result of caprice on the part of
the painter, by the fact that the men with the light yellow skin seem
to have more hair on their chests and chins than the others. They
come, no doubt, from northern latitudes, whose inhabitants are more
hairy than the southerners.[345] The negroes are made absolutely
black,[346] the Ethiopians very dark brown.[347]
[345] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part iii. pl. 40, cf. pl. 116.
[346] _Ibid._ pl. 117.
[347] See the Ethiopians in the painting from the tomb of
Rekmara, which is reproduced in WILKINSON, vol. i. plate 2.
But although the Egyptian painter made no attempt to imitate the hues
of nature in their infinite variety, we find a curious effort in
certain Theban paintings to reproduce one of those modifications of
local tone which were to attract so many artists of later times. The
flesh tints are brown where they are uncovered, and light yellow where
they are veiled; the painter thus attempting to show the warm skin
shining through the semi-transparence of fine linen.[348]
[348] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part iii. pl. 216.
This is, however, but an isolated attempt, and it does not affect the
truth of our description of Egyptian painting, and of its conventional
methods of using colour. The observations we have made apply equally
justly to coloured bas-reliefs and to paintings properly speaking. The
latter are only found in the tombs. In the temples the figures which
compose the decoration are always engraved upon the walls in some
fashion before they are touched with colour, and the office of the
painter was restricted to filling in the prepared outlines with
colour. It is the same, as a rule, with the steles; but a few exist
upon which the painter has had the field to himself. The papyri, too,
were illustrated by the artist in colour. Those elaborate examples of
the _Ritual of the Dead_, which come from the tombs of princes and of
rich subjects, are full of carefully executed vignettes (Figs. 97 and
184, Vol. I.).
It is easy to understand why the painter reserved himself for the
tomb. The pictures upon the external walls of the temples and upon the
pylons were seen in the full glare of a southern sun; so too, at least
for a part of the day, were those upon the walls of the courtyards,
and upon the shafts of their surrounding columns. Even in the interior
many of the decorations would receive direct sunlight from the
claustra of the attic, others would be subject to friction from the
hands and garments of visitors. Painting by itself would be unfitted
for such situations. It would either have its effect destroyed by the
direct light, or its colours dulled and damaged by constant touches.
Figures carved in the substance of the walls would have a very
different duration. When their colours paled with time, a few strokes
of the brush would be sufficient to renew their youth, and the
combination of colour with relief would give a much more telling
result than could be obtained by the use of the latter alone.
[Illustration: FIG. 264.--Portrait of Queen Taia. From Prisse.]
With the tomb it was very different. In its case neither violent
changes of temperature, nor friction, nor the rays of a dazzling sun
were to be feared. Its doors were to be ever closed, and the scenes
which were entrusted to its walls were to have no spectator but the
dead man and his protecting Osiris. To carry out the whole work with
the brush was quicker than to associate that instrument with the
chisel, and we need therefore feel no surprise that many tombs were so
decorated.
These paintings are in no way inferior to the sculptural works of the
same period; the outlines of both must, in fact, have been traced by
the same hands. The wielders of the chisel and brush must have been
nothing more than journeymen or artisans; the true artist was he who
traced upon the wall the outline which had afterwards to be filled in
either in relief or in colour.
We should have liked to have reproduced the best of these paintings
with all their richness and variety of tint, but we had no original
studies of which we could make use, and, as in the painted
architecture, we saw no great advantages to be gained by copying the
plates of Champollion, of Lepsius, or of Prisse. The processes which
they were compelled to employ have in many cases visibly affected the
fidelity of their transcriptions. We have therefore felt ourselves
compelled, much to our disappointment, to trust almost entirely to
black and white. We have, however, been careful to preserve the
relative values of the different tones. Those who have seen Egyptian
paintings in the original, or even in the copies which hang upon the
staircase of the Egyptian museum in the Louvre, will be able to
restore their true colours to our engravings without difficulty; the
flesh tints, light or dark according to circumstances, the blackness
of the hair, the whiteness of linen cloth and of the more brilliant
colours, the reds and blues which adorn certain parts of the draperies
and certain details of furniture and jewellery, may all be easily
divined.
Our plates, though less numerous than we could have wished, will help
the reader to restore the absent colour. Plate II., in the first
volume, gives a good idea of the scale of tints used in the painted
bas-reliefs of the temples; we have every reason to believe it
accurate.[349] The plate which faces page 334 is a faithful
reproduction of a fragment in the Louvre. It comes from a Theban tomb,
and shows the elegance and refinement of the contours which the
painter had to fill up. The colour has faded, but the most interesting
point in all these pictures is the outline, in which alone real
artistic talent and inventive power are displayed. Finally, our Plates
III. and IV., drawn and coloured from notes and sketches made upon the
spot by M. Bourgoin, represent the polychromatic decoration of the
Ancient Empire as it was left by those who decorated the tomb of
Ptah-hotep. In this case at least we know that we possess the true
value of the tones brought together by the artist, for the mastaba in
question is one of those which the desert sands have most completely
preserved.
[349] The materials for this plate were borrowed from the
_Description de l'Égypte_. In the complete copies of that work
the plates were coloured by hand, with extreme care, after those
fine water-colours the most important of which are now in the
_Cabinet des Estampes_ of the _Bibliothèque Nationale_. The
colours thus applied are far nearer the truth than those of the
chromo-lithographs in more modern publications.
§ 2. _The Figure._
In the mastabas colours are applied to figures in relief. It is not
till we reach the first Theban Empire, in the tombs at Beni-Hassan,
that we find real paintings in which the brush alone has been used.
[Illustration: FIG. 265.--Painting at Beni-Hassan. Champollion, pl.
374.]
We have already described the style and character of the paintings at
Beni-Hassan. In most cases the outlines prepared for the painter do
not differ from those meant for the sculptor.
We have already reproduced many works in outline in which there is
nothing to show whether they are paintings or bas-reliefs. Their
execution is almost identical (see Figs. 2, 5, 25, 98, 170, Vol. I.;
Figs. 25, 26, 31, Vol. II). It is the same with the two wrestling
scenes which we take from the frescos in which all the gymnastic
exercises then in vogue are represented (Figs. 265 and 266), and with
the charming group formed by an antelope and a man stroking his muzzle
(Fig. 267).
[Illustration: FIG. 266.--Painting at Beni-Hassan. Champollion, pl.
371.]
[Illustration: FIG. 267.--Painting at Beni-Hassan. Champollion, pl.
359.]
Even at Beni-Hassan, however, there are a few paintings in which the
peculiar and distinguishing characteristics of that art are to be
found. The group of singers and musicians figured on this page is an
instance in point. Two of the heads are shown in full face, a view
which we hardly ever meet with in the bas-reliefs. The hair and the
draperies are also treated in a fashion quite different from that of
sculpture, at least in the case of the two musicians on the right.
Their twisted tresses seem to be thrown into disorder by the energetic
movements of their heads, which they seem to sway in time to the music
of the flute, which is also marked by the hands of two members of the
party. The deep shadows cast by their hair give a strong relief to the
oval contours of the two faces which look out of the picture. The
execution of the drapery is governed by the same idea, its numerous
small folds are suggested by lines at slight intervals.
[Illustration: FIG. 268.--Painting at Beni-Hassan. Champollion, pl.
377 _ter_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 269.--Painting at Thebes. From Horeau.]
[Illustration: FIG. 270.--Painting at Thebes. From Prisse.]
In the whole series of Egyptian wall-paintings I know of nothing which
is more truly pictorial in character than this picture. A careful
study of it might well lead us to believe that its painter
deliberately set himself to cast off traditional methods, and to
obtain all the effect that the skilful use of colour can give. But the
seed thus cast did not spring up. Theban painting is not an advance
upon that of Beni-Hassan. It hardly ever attempts the full face. It is
only here and there that we can point to a work in which the brush
seems to have dwelt upon a few details that would be rendered in a
more summary fashion by the chisel. The mandore player in Fig. 270,
who comes from the same hypogeum at Abd-el-Gournah as the Amenophis
III. upon the knees of a goddess in Fig. 24, is one of these rare
instances. The hair, plaited into narrow tresses and retained in place
by a long comb, is carried out with quite unusual care. The areolæ of
the breasts are very clearly marked, a detail which Prisse says he
never met with elsewhere.[350]
[350] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 424.
[Illustration: FIG. 271.--Harpist. From the _Description_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 272.--European prisoner. From Champollion.]
[Illustration: FIG. 273.--Head of the same prisoner.]
The slender proportions which we have already noticed as
characteristic of this period are here strongly marked. They are also
conspicuous in the figures in Plate II. This is a funerary scene.
Three women stand before the defunct; one hands the cup for the
libation, the two others play upon the flute and the harp
respectively.
This fragment must have formed part of a funerary scene similar to
that put before us in full by a painting in one of the tombs in the
_Valley of Queens_ at Thebes. We there see women with offerings and
others playing upon musical instruments, advancing towards the
deceased, who has his daughter upon his knees and his wife seated at
his right hand (Fig. 269).
The two often reproduced players upon the harp in the tomb of Rameses
III. (long called _Bruce's Tomb_, after its discoverer) belong to the
same class of representations (Fig. 271). Robed in a long black
mantle, the musician abandons himself entirely to his music. The
draughtsmanship of the arms is faulty, but the pose of the figure is
natural and life-like. The harp is very richly ornamented; its base
terminates in a royal head rising from a circlet of ample necklaces.
The wood seems to be inlaid with colour.
[Illustration: FIG. 274.--Ethiopian prisoner. Champollion, pl. 932.]
[Illustration: FIG. 275.--Head of the same prisoner.]
Among the most interesting of the painted figures in the royal tombs
are the prisoners of war and other representations of foreign and
conquered races. We reproduce two of these figures from the tomb of
Seti I. In order that the care expended by the artist both on the
costumes and upon the peculiar characteristics of the physiognomies
may be appreciated, we have given their figures at full length, and
also their heads upon a larger scale.
The first of these two prisoners must have been a European, according
to Champollion. His white skin, his straight nose, and the tattooing
upon his arms all help to prove this (Figs. 272 and 273). He is
dressed in a long robe, bordered with a rich fringe and covered with
ornaments. This robe is held up by a large knot over the left
shoulder, but it leaves one half of his body without a covering. His
profile is very curious; the nose is large and aquiline, his beard
curled and wavy, and down by his right ear hangs one of those side
locks which were, in Egypt, the peculiar property of infancy. Long
tresses hanging down on each side of the brow, and two fringe-like
bands passing round the head complete this strange head-dress.
[Illustration: FIG. 276.--Winged figure. _Description_, vol. ii. pl.
92.]
The individual in the second figure appears to be an Ethiopian (Figs.
274 and 275). His costume is comparatively simple. It consists of a
pair of drawers kept in place by a wide band like a baldrick, which is
passed over the left shoulder and tied round the loins. The end of
this baldrick hangs down between the legs; it is decorated with
rosettes and edged with a band upon which circular ornaments are
scattered. The almost negro features are similar to those represented
in the bas-relief at the Ramesseum which is reproduced in Fig. 221.
The shape of the head-dress, too, is similar. The artist has had some
difficulty with the woolly hair, and has attempted to render its
appearance by a series of knots strung together. In this part of the
picture, as in Fig. 273, there is some conventionality, but in the
outline of the figure and especially of the face, we find the
characteristic genius of Egyptian art, the power to create types which
are at once life-like and general, to epitomize all those attributes
which constitute a species and allow it to be defined.
[Illustration: FIG. 277.--Winged figure. _Description_, vol. ii, pl.
87.]
The scenes represented upon the walls of the tomb may be divided into
two groups: those which are more or less historical, and those which
are purely religious or mystical. Among the latter the figures of
winged goddesses, of Isis and Nephthys, are frequently encountered.
They are either seated or standing, carved upon the sarcophagi or
painted upon the wooden mummy cases. One wing is always raised, the
other lowered (Figs. 276 and 277). The artists of other Oriental
races, and even of the Greeks themselves, loved to endow the figures
of men and animals with wings. Egypt was the first to carry out this
idea, and the winged figures which had a definite meaning when used in
the tombs, came at last to be employed as mere decoration upon the
industrial products which she exported through the Phœnicians. Fig.
277 comes from a royal tomb, and it shows how these winged goddesses
were sometimes combined with motives, which were either purely
decorative or easily used for decorative purposes. Like sphinxes and
griffins, these composite forms amused the eye and were soon seized
upon by the ornamentist, while their wings, which could be either
closed or expanded, were useful for covering large spaces and helping
to "furnish" the decoration.
§ 3. _Caricature._
We have shown the artists of ancient Egypt making naïve and sincere
transcripts of reality; we have shown them, in their religious and
historical scenes, inventing motives, creating types, and even
aspiring to the ideal; we have yet to show that they understood fun
and could enjoy a laugh. Without this last quality their art would
hardly be complete. In the royal tombs at Thebes we find a lion and a
donkey singing to their own accompaniment on the harp and lyre
respectively.[351] This particular bent of the Egyptian artist is seen
at its best, however, in a group of remains which are called the
_Satirical Papyri_, and apparently date from the nineteenth dynasty.
The Egyptians, like the Greeks after them, seem to have understood
that sculpture properly speaking, the art that produces figures of
large size from such materials as bronze and marble, does not lend
itself to the provocation of laughter by the voluntary production of
ugliness and deformity. They also perceived that such subjects were
equally ill-adapted for wall paintings, whether in tombs or palaces.
Among them, as among the Greeks, the grotesque was only allowed to
appear where the forms were both very much smaller than life and
considerably generalized. The designs traced with a light and airy
hand upon such papyri as that of which the Turin Museum possesses an
important fragment are examples of this treatment.
[351] JOHN KENRICK, _Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs_, vol. i.
pp. 269, 270.
The drawings in this papyrus are not caricatures as we now understand
the word. Caricature is an exaggerated portrait; it founds itself
upon reality while turning it into ridicule by the accentuation of its
most laughable features. But the drawings in this manuscript are
inspired by the same ideas and the same intellectual bent as our
modern caricatures. They respond to the universal taste of mankind for
the mental relaxation afforded by parody, for the relief from the
serious business of life which is to be found in comedy and burlesque.
Ancient Egypt was a merry country. Its inhabitants were as pleased as
children over the simplest and most homely jokes; jests, fantastic
tales, and fables in which animals acted like men and women, were as
popular with them as with their successors in civilisation. Their
comic artists were especially fond of treating scenes of this last
description, and their works often remind us of those produced in much
later times for the illustration of Æsop or La Fontaine.
[Illustration: FIG. 278.--Battle of the Cats and Rats. From Prisse.]
Prisse reproduces the most interesting part of the Turin papyrus, and
we have copied a fragment of his plate (Fig. 278). "In the first
group, four animals--an ass, a lion, a crocodile, and a monkey--make
up a quartette, playing on such musical instruments as were then in
fashion. Next comes an ass dressed, armed, and sceptred like a
Pharaoh; with a majestic swagger he receives the offerings brought to
him by a cat of high degree, to whom a bull is proud to act as
conductor. At the side a unicorn seems to threaten a kneeling cat with
its harp..... The scenes drawn below, and on a smaller scale, are no
more coherent than these. In the first place we see a flock of geese
in open rebellion against its conductors--three cats, one of whom has
fallen under the blows of the angry birds. Next we come to a sycamore
in which an hippopotamus is perched; a hawk has climbed into the tree
by means of a ladder and proceeds to dislodge him; finally, we have a
fortress defended by an army of cats, who are without other arms than
their claws and teeth, against a storming party of rats provided with
arms offensive and defensive, and led by one of their own species, who
is mounted on a chariot drawn by two greyhounds.
"The artist's idea--at least in the lower part of the picture--seems
to have been to paint the cats defeated by the animals upon which they
prey. It is the world turned upside down, or if the painter must be
credited with a deeper meaning, it is the revolt of the oppressed
against the oppressor."[352]
[352] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, pp. 142, 143.
The lower part of the plate contains a scene of the same kind taken
from a papyrus in the British Museum. A flock of geese are being
driven along by a cat, and a herd of goats by two wolves with crook
and wallet; one of the wolves is playing on the double flute. At the
other end there is a lion playing draughts with an antelope.
One of the tombs has upon its walls a picture of a humble and timid
cat attempting to propitiate a lion by the offering of a goose.[353]
[353] _Ibid._ p. 144.
In the opinion of some these scenes are satires upon royalty and
religion. This is an evident exaggeration. We have no reason to
suppose that the Egyptian intellect ever arrived at the maturity
required for scepticism. Neither the authority of Pharaoh nor that of
the priests seems to have ever been called in question. But although
their anger was not stirred by the government of the world, they could
find something to laugh at in it. In the cat presented to an ass we
cannot fail to see a parody of Pharaoh receiving the homage of some
vanquished enemy. Still more personal is the cat offering a goose to a
lion. The cat can only be that unlucky fellah who, in the Egypt of the
Pharaohs as in that of the Khedives, has never succeeded in keeping
clear of the bastinado and the _corvée_ except by giving presents to
the _sheikh_ of his village or the _mudir_ of the neighbouring town.
In laying this scene upon the wall the artist was writing a page of
his own biography and of the history of all the people about him. He
revenged himself in his own way upon the greedy functionary to whom
he had been compelled to offer the fatlings of his own farm-yard.
[Illustration: FIG. 279.--The soles of a pair of sandals. From
Champollion.]
[Illustration: FIGS. 280, 281.--The god Bes. From the Louvre. Actual
size.]
Traces of this mocking spirit are to be found in other productions of
Egyptian art. Thus the soles of those leathern or wooden sandals which
have come down to our times often present a group of two prisoners,
the one a negro, and the other a native, perhaps, of Libya or Syria.
There can be no mistake as to the intentions of the artist. The
Egyptian seems to have enjoyed a laugh at the expense of his trembling
enemies. Not content with thus treading upon them at every step he
took, he added insult to injury by making them grotesque (Fig. 279).
The same spirit may be recognized in those figures of Bes which are so
numerous in our museums. It was by mere exaggeration of certain not
uncommon features that the figure of this paunchy dwarf was arrived
at. His animal grin, beady eyes, flat nose, thick lips, and pendent
tongue, his short legs and salient buttocks, make up a sufficiently
droll personality (Figs. 280 and 281). The comic intention is very
marked in a composition reproduced by Prisse, in which a person of
proportions rather less curtailed than those of the ordinary Bes, but
endowed with the features, the head-dress, and the lion-like tail of
that god, is shown playing upon a cithara.[354]
[354] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Égypte_, text, p. 146.
These productions were not always decent. The Turin papyrus contains a
long priapic scene.
§ 4._ Ornament._
In the painted decorations with which the Egyptians covered every
available surface, the figure played a more important part than in the
case of any other people. But yet the multiplication of historical,
religious, and domestic scenes, the countless groups of gods, men, and
the lower animals, had their limits. However great their development
might be, these traditional themes could only supply a certain number
of scenes, which required, moreover, to be framed. Again, there were
certain surfaces upon which the Egyptians did not, as a rule, place
figures, either because they would be seen with difficulty, or, as in
the case of ceilings, because taste warned them that it would be
better to treat such a surface in some other fashion. Between the
lofty roofs of the hypostyle halls and the sky which covers our heads
the Egyptian decorator established a relationship which readily
commends itself to the mind. The ceilings of the temples at Thebes had
generally a blue ground, upon which vultures with their great wings
outspread, floated among golden stars (Figs. 192 and 282).
Side by side with the paintings which deal with living form we find
those painted ornaments which cover with their varied tints all the
surfaces which are not occupied by the figure. This system of ornament
went through a continual process of enrichment and complication. Its
appearance in the early centuries is well shown in our two Plates,
III. and IV.; the first shows the upper, the second the lower part of
the western wall in the tomb of Ptah-hotep at Sakkarah. They confirm
the ideas of Semper as to the origin of ornament.[355] That writer was
the first to show that the basket-maker, the weaver, and the potter,
originated by the mere play of their busy hands and implements those
combinations of line and colour which the ornamentist turned to his
own use when he had to decorate walls, cornices, and ceilings. The
industries we have named are certainly older than the art of
decoration, and the forms used by the latter can hardly have been
transferred from it to mats, woven stuffs, and earthen vessels. In the
regularity with which the lines and colours of early decoration are
repeated it is easy to recognize the enforced arrangement of rushes,
reeds, and flaxen threads, while chevrons and concentric circles are
the obvious descendants of the marks traced by the finger or rude
implement of the potter upon the soft clay.
[355] SEMPER (G.), _Der Stil in den Technischen und Tektonischen
Künsten, oder Praktische Æsthetik_. Munich, 1860-3, 2 vols. 8vo,
with 22 plates, some coloured, and numerous engravings in the
text.
[Illustration: FIG. 282.--Vultures on a ceiling.]
In these examples the intentions of the decorator are easily grasped.
He has begun with a ground of rush-work, like that which is also found
in the tomb of Ti.[356] In the compartments between the vertical
bars he has imitated the appearance of mat walls, and of windows
closed by the same contrivances (see Fig. 165). As if to prevent
mistakes, he has been careful to introduce the cords, rings, and lath,
by which the lower ends of the mats are kept in place. The design of
the ornament is quite similar to those produced to this day by the
basket or mat-maker. They are squares, lozenges, and chevrons. In the
middle of the lozenges we find little crosses or circles of a
different colour, which help to lighten the effect. Each mat has a red
border at its lower end, which forms a satisfactory tailpiece, and
unites it with the straight lath. There are narrow grooves between the
mats in which the chains for drawing the latter up and down seem to be
imitated. In any case, this latter detail is copied from the
productions of one of the oldest of civilized industries--that of the
blacksmith.
[356] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 418.
[Illustration: FRAGMENT OF WESTERN WALL IN TOMB OF PTAH-HOTEP
Drawn in perspective to a scale of one half]
[Illustration: FIGS. 283, 284.--Details from the tomb of Ptah-hotep.]
Six colours are used in this decoration: black, white, red, yellow,
green, and blue. The result is sober, well-balanced, and by no means
without harmony.
In other parts of the same tomb we find this taste for literal
imitation applied to another theme. As interpreted by the ornamentist,
lotus and papyrus were sure in time to put on conventional forms, but
here those vegetables found are reproduced with a feeling for truth
that could not be excelled by a modern flower painter (Fig. 283).[357]
In Fig. 284 a bird among the lotus-stalks is in the grasp of a human
hand.
[357] DUMISCHEN, _Resultate der Archæologisch-photographischen
Expedition_. Berlin, 1869, folio, part i. plate 8.
The ornamentist also borrowed motives from those robes and carpets of
varied colour, which are preserved for us in the paintings (see Fig.
285). But with time and experience his hand became more skilful, his
imagination more active, and he was no longer contented to convey his
ideas wholesale, from nature on the one hand, and on the other from
those humble arts which flourish even in the earliest ages of every
civilized society. He learnt to create designs for himself--designs
which can certainly not be traced to the mats and tissues which formed
his first models. Our Figure 286 will give some idea of the variety of
motives to be found upon the panels and ceilings of the tombs and
other buildings at Thebes. The chess-board pattern which was so much
used during the Ancient Empire, is found here also; but by its side
appear patterns composed of frets, meandering lines, and rosettes.
Below these, again, are designs in which lines twist themselves into
volutes and spirals, crossing each other and enclosing lotus flowers,
rosettes, and forms like the shafts of columns. The flowers are in no
way imitative; their motives have been suggested, not supplied, by
nature. The papyrus may have given the first idea for the sixth of
these designs, while in the last we find a motive which afterwards
played an important part in Greek and Roman ornament--namely, the
skull of an ox. The two specimens of this last-named motive given by
Prisse, are taken from tombs of the eighteenth and twentieth
dynasties.[358]
[358] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 369.
[Illustration: FIG. 285.--Carpet hung across a pavilion.]
These tombs and the mummy cases they contain are often decorated with
symbolic ornament, as well as with geometrical designs and those
suggested by the national flora. The compartments of ceiling
decorations have scarabs in their centres, and upon the mummy
cases it is occasionally substituted for the uræus-crowned disk in the
centre of a huge pair of extended wings. Beneath it, figures of Isis
or Nephthys, the guardians of the tomb, are found (Fig. 287). The
effect is similar to that of the winged globes which are found upon
cornices. In the latter the disk which represents the sun is red, and
stands boldly out from the green of the two wings. The latter, again,
are relieved against a striped ground, on which bands of red, blue,
and white are laid alternatively. Thanks to the happy choice of these
colours, the result is excellent from a decorative point of view, and
that in spite of its continual repetition and the simplicity of its
lines.
[Illustration: FIG. 286.--Specimens of ceiling decorations. From
Prisse.]
[Illustration: TOMB OF PTAH-HOTEP
CEILING AND UPPER PART OF WESTERN WALL
Drawn in perspective to a scale of one fifth]
[Illustration: FIG. 287.--Painting on a mummy case. _Description_,
vol. ii. pl. 58.]
[Illustration: FIG. 288.--Winged globe. From Prisse.]
Among the original motives to be found in these paintings, there is
yet another which deserves to be named for its uncommon character, we
mean those tables for offerings which are shown loaded with vases and
other objects of a like nature. As if to mark the importance of the
funerary gifts, the stems of these tables are made so lofty that they
rise high above two trees, apparently cypresses, which grew right and
left of their feet (Figs. 289 and 290).
The Egyptians made use of the afterwards common decorative motive of
alternate buds and open blooms of lotus, but they entirely failed to
give it the lightness and elegance with which it was endowed by the
Greeks. Their buds were poor and meagre, their flowers heavy, and the
general design not without stiffness.[359]
[359] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part iii. plate 62. PRISSE,
_Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, atlas, plate lettered _Frises
Fleuronnées_.
The colours are often well preserved, at least in parts, and, as one
combination is repeated several times, it is easy to restore the
missing parts by reference to those which are intact. The gilding,
however, has disappeared, and left hardly a trace behind. Gold was
used pretty generally in order to give warmth and brightness. The
obelisks, those of Hatasu for instance, were gilded upon all four
faces; the winged globe was sometimes gilded,[360] and so were the
bronze plates with which the temple doors were covered. The important
part played by the gilders, some of whose books of gold have come down
to our time,[361] is chiefly known to us by the inscriptions. Their
employment may also be divined here and there by the fashion in which
the stone has been prepared, sometimes by the peculiar colour effects
in certain parts of the bas-reliefs.
[360] _Description, Antiquités_, vol. ii. p. 533.
[361] There is one of these books in the Louvre (_Salle
Funéraire_, case Z); the gold leaf which it contains differs
from that now in use only in its greater thickness.
In some tombs gold is found in its pure state. During the excavations
at the Serapeum, Mariette opened the tomb of Ka-em-nas, a son of
Rameses II. When the mummy chamber was entered, the lower parts of the
walls and of the mummy cases shone with gold in the candle-light. The
floor was strewn with scraps of the same metal, and as many as four
books of gold leaf were found in the tomb. Mariette was then in want
of funds, and in order that the excavations might proceed, he obtained
authority from the French consul to sell this gold, to which of
course, no scientific interest was attached. The thick gold mask of
the prince and the fine jewelry which adorned his mummy are now in the
Louvre.
The mummy's toe-nails, bracelets, and lips, and the linen mask over
its face, were very often gilt. The feet are sometimes entirely gilt.
So too is the shroud. Those of princes and great personages are
sometimes covered with gold from head to foot.
[Illustration: FIGS. 289, 290.--Tables for offerings; from the
paintings in a royal tomb.]
The Egyptian artisans understood these delicate operations at a very
early date. Even in the tombs at Beni-Hassan we find the process of
gold-beating illustrated in full. We need hardly say that a decorative
industry which disposed of such complete resources, thoroughly
understood what we call _graining_, the imitation of the veins and
textures of wood, and also those of the different kinds of granite,
upon other substances. In more than one instance we find the commoner
kinds of stone thus made to look like rarer and more costly
materials.