THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.
§ 1. _Definition and Characteristics of Industrial Art._
The expression, _industrial art_, has sometimes been severely
criticised, but yet it answers to a real distinction founded upon the
nature of things, and we do not see that it could be dispensed with.
When the artist sets about making a statue or a picture his only aim
is to produce a fine work. He does not take _utility_, in the
unphilosophic sense of the word, into account. The task which he sets
before himself is to discover some form which shall truly interpret
his own individual thoughts and feelings. This done, his end is
accomplished. The resulting work of art is self-contained and
self-sufficient. Its _raison d'être_ is to satisfy one of the deepest
and most persistent desires of the human mind, the _æsthetic
sentiment_, or _instinct for the beautiful_.
In the industrial arts it is different. When a cabinet-maker or a
potter sets to work to produce an easy chair, or a vase, his first
idea is to make a chair in which one may sit comfortably, or a vessel
to which liquids may be safely entrusted and from which they may be
easily poured. At first, the artisan does not look beyond fulfilling
these wants, but a time comes, and comes very soon, when he feels
impelled to ornament the furniture or pottery upon which he is at
work. He is no longer content to turn out that which is merely useful;
he wishes everything that comes from his hands to be rich and
beautiful also. He begins by adding ornament made up of dots and
geometrical lines; this he soon follows up with forms borrowed from
organic life, with leaves and flowers, with figures of men and
animals; and from an artisan he springs at once to be an artist. But
his productions are strictly works of industrial art, and although
they may deserve a high place in right of their beauty, that beauty
is only in some sort an excrescence, it does not affect the primary
object of the matters to which it is applied, although it may greatly
increase their value and interest.
In view of this definition, it may be asserted that architecture
itself is one of the industrial arts. The first duty of the
constructor is to make his building well fitted for the object it has
to serve. The house must afford a proper shelter for its inhabitants,
the tomb must preserve the corpse entrusted to it from all chance of
profanation, the temple must shield the statue or the symbol of the
god from curious glances, and afford convenient space for ritual
celebrations. These requirements may be fulfilled by edifices which
have no pretensions to beauty. With a roof and a certain number of
naked walls, it is always possible to cover and enclose a given space,
and to divide it into as many portions as may be desired. Such a
process has nothing in common with art. Art steps in when the builder
attempts to endow his work with that symmetry which does not exclude
variety, with nobility of proportion, and with the charm of a
decoration in which both painter and sculptor play their parts. The
constructor then gives place to the architect. The latter, of course,
always keeps the practical end in view, but it is not his sole
preoccupation. The house, as he builds it, has to respond to all the
wants, intellectual as well as corporeal, of civilized man; the tomb
must embody his ideas of death and a future life; the magnificent
dimensions and the gorgeous decorations of the temple must give
expression to the inexpressible, must symbolize the divine majesty to
the eyes of men, and help to make it comprehensible by the crowds that
come to sacrifice and pray.
In all this, the _rôle_ played by art is so preponderant that it would
be unjust to class architecture among the industrial arts. The
ambition of those who built the temple of Amen, at Karnak, or that of
Athené, on the Acropolis, was to produce a work which should give
faithful expression to the highest thoughts which the human mind can
conceive. In one sense, architecture may be called the first of the
arts. In those great compositions whose remains we study with such
reverence, whose arrangements we endeavour with such care to
re-establish, it was the architect who determined what part the
painter and the sculptor should take in the work, who laid out for
them the spaces they were called upon to fill.
Although we shall not include architecture among the industrial arts,
the distinction which we have established loses none of its practical
importance. We must acknowledge, however, that there are certain
classes of objects which lie upon the border-line between the two
categories, so that we have some difficulty in deciding whether they
belong to fine or to industrial art. The work of some Cellini of
ancient times, or of your own day, may be classed, for instance, by
its general form and ostensible use, among the more or less
utilitarian productions of the goldsmith or silversmith; but, on the
other hand, it may be adorned with figures executed in such a fashion
that we are tempted to place it among works of sculpture. Rigorous and
inflexible definitions have, in fact, to be confined to the exact
sciences, such as geometry. In the complexity of life, definitions and
classifications can only be adhered to with a reservation. They help
the historian to find his way amid the infinite diversity of
phenomena, but he is the first to acknowledge that they are far from
having an absolute value. They must be taken for what they are worth,
simply as methods of exposition, as approximations which are useful
and convenient, though more or less imperfect.
We have no intention of writing a history of Egyptian industry. We
refer those who require an account of it to the voluminous work of Sir
Gardner Wilkinson, where they will find abundant details upon the
trades of Egypt and the materials which they employed. We shall be
content with selecting a few examples from the chief industries upon
which the wealth of Egypt depended, in order to show how her artisans,
like those of Greece, sought to give a certain amount of artistic
value to every object that left their hands. Forms and motives which
we have encountered in the higher branches of art are there again to
be found. When civilization is in its first infancy, and the plastic
instinct just struggling into life, it is from those handicrafts which
may be called elementary or primitive that art borrows its first
combinations of line and colour. But afterwards, when art has
developed itself and created a style expressive of the national
genius, the process is reversed, and the handicraftsman borrows in
turn from the artist. In our modern society the use of machines and
the division of labour have put a great gulf between the workman and
the artist. Among the ancients it was very different. The workman was
responsible for his work from inception to completion, and he expended
upon it all the inventiveness, taste, and skill, that he possessed. He
was not the slave of a machine turning out thousands of repetitions of
a single object with inflexible regularity. Every day he introduced,
almost without knowing it, some variation upon his work of the day
before; his labour was a perpetual improvisation. Under such
conditions it is difficult to say where the artist began and where the
handicraftsman left off. In spite of the richness and subtlety of
their idioms, the classic languages were unable to mark this
distinction. In Greek, as in Latin, there was but a single term for
two positions which seem to us by no means equal in dignity.
§ 2. _Glass and Pottery._
The potter's is, perhaps, the oldest of all the crafts. Among the
relics of the cave-men and lake-dwellers of the West, the remains of
rough pottery, shaped by the hand and dried either by the sun or in
the neighbourhood of the domestic hearth, have been found. The Egypt
of the earliest dynasties was already more advanced than this. The
vases found in the mastabas show by their symmetrical shapes that the
potter's wheel was already in use, and by their quality, that,
although the Egyptians were content to dry their bricks in the sun,
they fired their pottery in kilns and thoroughly understood the
process.[362]
[362] The oldest representation of the potter's wheel yet
discovered is in one of the paintings at Beni-Hassan. It is
reproduced in BIRCH'S _Ancient Pottery_, p. 14.
Egypt afforded an abundant supply of excellent potter's earth, and her
inhabitants, like those of ancient Greece and Italy, employed
terra-cotta for purposes to which we should now apply glass, wood, or
metal. A good idea of the varied uses to which the material was put
may be obtained from the early chapters of the work in which Dr. Birch
has traced the history of ancient pottery, with the help of numerous
illustrations.[363]
[363] S. BIRCH, _A History of Ancient Pottery, Egyptian,
Assyrian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman_, 1 vol. 8vo, 1873. London,
Murray.
We shall not dwell upon common earthenware. It is represented by
numerous vessels from the most ancient tombs in the Memphite
necropolis; they are of a reddish or yellowish colour, and, in spite
of the absence of all glaze, they hold water perfectly well. Like
Greek vessels of the same kind they have sometimes three ears or
handles (Fig. 291). Examples of coupled vessels, like those found in
Cyprus, have also been discovered. They communicate with one another
by a tube and are kept together by a common handle (Fig. 292). Of all
the representative specimens of earthenware from the mastabas given by
Lepsius, there is but one which does not seem to belong to the
category of domestic pottery. It is a kind of aryballus, and is
gracefully ornamented with interlacing circles.[364] In later times
many of these unglazed vases were decorated with the brush, but they
were not remitted to the oven after that operation.[365] The colour
was therefore without lustre or solidity, and the designs were always
very simple. To this group belong the vases shaped in the form of
men, women, or animals, which are common enough in museums.[366]
Sometimes a head, recalling that of the god Bes, is sketched in low
relief upon a vase, and in a few instances a pair of small arms
complete the fanciful design (Fig. 293).
[364] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part ii. pl. 153.
[365] BIRCH, _Ancient Pottery_, p. 37.
[366] BIRCH, _Ancient Pottery_, Figs. 23 and 25.
[Illustration: FIG. 291.--Pitcher of red earth. British Museum.]
[Illustration: FIG. 292.--Red earthenware. British Museum.]
Another kind of pottery, that known as _Egyptian porcelain_, must be
noticed in greater detail. This designation is inexact. The proper
name would be _Egyptian faience_. It consists of white sand, gently
fused, and overspread with a glaze of coloured enamel. This enamel is
composed of flint and soda, with the addition of a colouring matter.
This faience has been fired with such care that it is able to support
the high temperature of a porcelain kiln without damage. Vases of many
different kinds, enamelled tiles, statuettes (Fig. 294), sepulchral
_figurines_ (Figs. 96 and 97, Vol. I.), neck ornaments and other
articles for decorating the person, amulets (Fig. 295), scarabs,
rings, and many other articles were made in this material.
Vases were generally either blue or apple green. A very small number
of them were ornamented with figures of men or animals, always treated
in a purely decorative fashion. No vase has yet been discovered with
any attempt to portray an incident upon it. The figures are never
united by a subject. Bouquets of lotus around some central motive are
of most frequent occurrence (Fig. 296). Sometimes these flowers are
combined with mystic symbols, like the eyes in Fig. 297. These
designs, which are in black, are produced by inlaying coloured enamel.
[Illustration: FIG. 293.--Gray earthenware. Boulak.]
[Illustration: FIG. 294.--The God Bes. Enamelled earthenware.]
Two of the vases which we reproduce (Figs. 296 and 297) are similar to
those shown in the bas-reliefs, in scenes of libation to the gods or
to the dead. Their form is that of the Greek φιάλη and the
Latin _patera_. Numerous bottles have also been found whose general
shape exactly resemble that of the Greek ἀρύβαλλος (Fig. 298).
The blue with which these objects are covered has often preserved a
brilliance and transparency which could not even now be surpassed.
Yellow, violet, and white glazes are also met with, but less
frequently. The hieroglyphs which many of them bear prove that the
manufacture of these little articles was in full swing under the
three great Theban dynasties, that it continued through the Saite
period, and that under the Ptolemies, and even later still, it was not
extinct. To the same branch of industry belong those tiles of
enamelled faience which seem to have been used by the Egyptians from
very early times. They were also used by the Assyrians, as we shall
see hereafter. "These tiles were used very extensively in eastern and
southern countries, and are found both in palaces and in private
dwellings. In the towns of Turkey and of Modern Egypt, in the towns
and villages of Algeria and of all the African coast as far as the
Straits of Gibraltar, thousands of examples are to be found. The
freshness which seems to result from their use and the enduring
brilliancy of their colours make these tiles very popular with the
inhabitants of hot climates."[367]
[367] BRONGNIART, _Histoire de la Ceramique_, vol. ii. p. 95.
[Illustration: FIG. 295.--Pendant for necklace. Louvre.]
[Illustration: FIG. 296.--Enamelled earthenware. British Museum.]
[Illustration: FIG. 297.--Enamelled earthenware. British Museum.]
[Illustration: FIG. 298.--Enamelled faience. British Museum.]
[Illustration: FIG. 299.--Doorway in the Stepped Pyramid at Sakkarah.]
We do not know whether these tiles were used for the floors and walls
in the dwellings of rich Egyptians or not, but it appears certain that
their manufacture was understood even as early as the Ancient Empire.
The doorway of a chamber in the stepped pyramid of Sakkarah is
enframed with enamelled plaques. A sketch of Perring's, which we
reproduce, gives a good idea of this arrangement (Fig. 299).[368] Some
of these plaques are now in London, but a still larger number are in
the Berlin Museum, where the doorway as a whole has been restored, the
missing parts being replaced by copies. Our Figures 300-302 show the
back, the front, and the profile, of a single plaque. The obverse is
slightly convex, and covered with a greenish-blue glaze; the reverse
has a salient tenon which was held securely by the mortar. Through a
small hole in this tenon a rod of wood or metal may have passed which,
by uniting all the plaques in each horizontal row, would give
additional solidity to the whole arrangement.[369] On the backs of
several plaques there are marks which seem to be rotation numbers.
They are figured in the centre of Perring's sketch. Other bricks from
the same doorway are covered with an almost black enamel. They form
the horizontal mouldings between the rows of upright bricks, and are
decorated with a sort of arrow-head pattern.
[368] See also LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part ii. pl. 2, and the
_Verzeichniss der Ægyptischen Alterthümer_ of the Berlin Museum,
1879, p. 25.
[369] We owe our ability to give these curious details to the
kindness of M. Conze and the officers of the Egyptian museum at
Berlin. One of the original fragments brought home by Lepsius
was lent to us.
[Illustration: FIGS. 300-302.--Enamelled plaque from the Stepped
Pyramid.]
This fashion endured throughout the Theban period. The most important
relic of it which we now possess is from the decoration of a temple
built by Rameses III. to the north-west of Memphis, near the modern
Tell-el-Yahoudeh, upon the railway from Cairo to Ismailia. The
building itself was constructed of crude brick, the walls being lined
with enamelled tiles. The royal ovals and titles were cut in the earth
before it was fired, and afterwards filled up with an enamel so tinted
as to stand out in strong relief from the colour of the brick. Other
tiles represent African and Asiatic prisoners. The figures are in
relief; the enamel is parti-coloured, the hair of the prisoners being
black, their carnations yellowish-brown, and certain details of their
costume being accentuated by other hues. Dr. Birch reproduces some of
these painted reliefs and compares them to the _figurines rustiques_
of Bernard Palissy.[370] The principal fragments of this decoration
are in the store-rooms of the Boulak Museum. They deserve more
publicity than they have received. Most of them are purely decorative
in character and bear designs of which an idea may be gained from
three pieces of faience which are now in the British Museum. Two have
graceful rosettes, while the third is covered with a pattern
resembling a spider's web (Figs. 303-305).[371]
[370] BIRCH, _Ancient Pottery_, p. 50.
[371] I am told that a circular base, like that of a column of a
table for offerings, was discovered in the same building. It is
entirely covered with this same faience.
[Illustration: FIGS. 303-305.--Enamelled earthenware plaques in the
British Museum.]
Certain buildings in Memphis seem to have been decorated in the same
fashion. "The most curious thing brought by me from Mitrahineh,"
writes Jomard, "is a fragment of enamelled and sculptured terra-cotta,
which probably belonged to a wall lined with that fine material. It is
remarkable for the brilliant blue, the blue of the lapis-lazuli, which
covers it.... The outlines of the hieroglyphs are as firm, and their
edges as sharp as if they were the work of a skilful carver, and had
never been subjected to the heat of a furnace. They are of blue
stucco, inlaid into the body of the enamel. I look upon this kind of
decoration as analogous to that of the Cairo divans, in which we see
walls covered with earthenware tiles which are painted with various
ornaments and subjects."[372] Now that attention has been attracted to
this kind of decoration, traces of it will no doubt be found at many
other points of Ancient Egypt.[373]
[372] _Description, Antiquités_, vol. v. p. 543, and _Atlas_,
vol. v. plate 87, Fig. 1.
[373] The collection of M. Gustave Posno, which will, we hope,
be soon absorbed into that of the Louvre, contains many
enamelled bricks from decorative compositions like those in the
stepped pyramid and the temple of Rameses III. (Nos. 8, 9, 11,
20, 58, 59, 60, 61 of the Catalogue published at Cairo in 1874).
One of these, which has a yellow enamel, bears in relief the
oval and the royal banner of Papi, of the sixth dynasty. Another
has the name Seti I.; others those of Rameses III. and Sheshonk.
The reliefs upon which prisoners' heads appear must have come
from Tell-el-Yahoudeh.
These enamels were not always used upon stone or faience; their
charming varieties of tone are also found upon wooden grounds. M.
Maspero mentions as an example of this the fragments of a mummy case
in the Turin Museum. An inscription upon the wood is surrounded by
faience ornament of a very rich colour. Mariette also mentions bronzes
in which the remains of enamel and of _pietra dura_ inlays are yet to
be seen.[374]
[374] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musée de Boulak_, p. 69.
Enamel is glass coloured by means of a metallic oxide and spread
thinly over a surface, with which it is combined by means of heat. The
Egyptians must therefore have understood the manufacture of glass
at a very early date. It is represented in the paintings at
Beni-Hassan.[375] Workmen are shown crouched by a fire and blowing
glass bottles by means of a hollow cane, exactly as they do to this
day. This industry continued to flourish in Egypt down to the Roman
epoch. The glass manufacturers of Alexandria told Strabo that Egypt
possessed a peculiar vitrifiable earth, without which the magnificent
works in many-coloured glass could not be executed.[376] It is
generally supposed that this "earth" was soda. The Venetians of the
middle ages imported the soda required for their glass-making from
Alexandria. It is said that Egyptian soda is the best known. It comes
from the ashes of a plant called by botanists _Mesem Bryanthemum
copticum_.[377]
[375] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, vol. ii. p. 140.
[376] STRABO, xvi. ch. ii. § 25.
[377] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 313.
Vessels of Egyptian glass are to be found in most museums, which
recall those of Venice by their bands and fillets of brilliant
colours. As for ordinary glass it seems never to have been quite
transparent and colourless; it was always tinged with green and
slightly opaque. It was upon their productions in colour that the fame
of the Egyptian glass-makers depended. They produced vases, cups,
pateræ, goblets, beads and other ornaments for necklaces and
bracelets, amulets and everything else that the material would allow,
in prodigious quantities, both for domestic consumption and for
exportation. At one time mummies were covered with a kind of garment
composed of multitudinous strings of beads.
Statuettes, such as the two figured below, were also made of glass.
The larger of the two, which still has the hook, by which it was
suspended, in its head, is entirely covered with parti-coloured
ornaments similar to those shown upon its right shoulder. Our
draughtsman at Boulak had no time to finish the drawing he had begun,
and we have reproduced it in its actual condition rather than omit it
or have it completed in any degree conjecturally. The details given
afford a sufficiently good idea of the motives employed by the
Egyptian artist. The ornamentation of the other figure is more simple
(Fig. 307), but the attitude is the same. There are two colours on the
very well modelled head which acts as tail-piece to the _Introduction_
in our first volume. The globe of the eye and its contours stand out
in black against the yellow of the flesh. The wig is also black.
[Illustration: FIG. 306.--Glass statuette. Boulak. Actual size.]
[Illustration: FIG. 307.--Glass statuette. Boulak. Actual size.]
* * * * *
Nothing can have been more surprising to the ancient traveller who set
foot upon the soil of Egypt for the first time, than the vast number
of these objects in coloured glass and in green or blue faience. They
appeared everywhere; upon the walls of buildings and upon the persons
of their inhabitants, upon every article which helped to furnish tombs
or temples, palaces or private houses. Everything shone with the
brilliant colours of this enamel, whose unchanging brightness was so
grateful to a southern eye. It harmonized to perfection with the
whiteness of the fine linen worn by the richer classes of Egyptians,
and formed happy combinations with the rich red and blue fringes which
bordered their robes and girdles. Enamel was much more easily cleaned
than cloth. When it was tarnished by dust or dirt, a few drops of
water would restore all its brightness. The lavish employment of such
a material doubtless did much to give the persons of the Egyptians and
their dwellings that neat and smiling aspect which so charmed foreign
visitors. Herodotus tells us that one of the features which most
strongly warned the traveller that he was in the presence of a very
ancient and refined civilization, was the national passion for a
cleanliness that was almost too fastidious, for fine linen constantly
renewed, for frequent ablutions, for the continual use of the razor. A
nation dressed in spotless white, shaved, circumcised and continually
washed, afforded a curious contrast to shaggy barbarians clothed in
wool that was dirty with long usage. Even in the time of Herodotus
more than one tribe of Greek mountaineers was still in existence, that
hardly differed in habits and costume from those early ancestors of
the Hellenes who, as Homer tells us, "slept upon the bare ground and
never washed their feet."
§ 3. _Metal-work and Jewelry._
Egypt had, perhaps, her age of stone. MM. Hamy and François Lenormant
have called attention to the cut and polished flints which have been
found in Egypt, and Mariette brought a whole series of them to the
Universal Exhibition of 1878. Mariette, however, was careful to remark
that some of these flint implements, exactly similar in appearance to
those found in the open air, were discovered in the tombs, among the
mummies.[378]
[378] MARIETTE, _De la Galerie de l'Égypte Ancienne à
l'Exposition Rétrospective du Trocadéro_, 1878, pp. 111, 112.
WILKINSON, _The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_,
etc. vol. ii. p. 261.
These flint knives, therefore, are not necessarily anterior to the
commencement of Egyptian history, that is to say to the first
dynasties mentioned by Manetho. Moreover, Herodotus tells us that it
was with a flint knife that the Egyptian embalmer made his first
incision upon the corpse entrusted to him.[379] It would, then, be
difficult to distinguish between prehistoric flint objects and those
which belong to the civilization whose remains we are now studying,
while our examination of the latter leads us quite as deeply into the
past as we desire to go.
[379] HERODOTUS, ii. 86.
Even under the earliest dynasties the Egyptians were metal-workers.
Several bronze objects are in existence which date at least from the
end of the Ancient Empire,[380] and in the bas-reliefs of the tomb of
Ti, we see smiths directing the flame, by means of long tubes, upon
the block of metal which they are forging (Fig. 21, Vol. I.). This is
a kind of elementary blow-pipe, such as those still used by certain
savage tribes.
[380] See page 197.
The Egyptians began by making use of pure copper, which they could
obtain from Sinai and other mines within easy reach. Various
indications allow us to conclude that they were long ignorant of the
fact that by mixing it with a little tin its hardness could be
enormously increased.[381] In any case, they had certainly discovered
the secret during the fifth, or, at latest, the sixth, dynasty. As to
where they found the tin, we can say nothing positively. No deposit of
that metal is known either in Egypt or in the neighbouring countries.
It may possibly have come from India, passing through various hands on
its way. In later years the Phœnicians brought it from Spain and the
southern shores of Britain. The metal must then have become common
enough, and it was used in large quantities by the Egyptian founders.
Thus when the pavement of the room in the north-western corner of the
Temple of Rameses III. at Medinet-Abou was raised, nearly a thousand
bronze statues, all representing Osiris, were found. The existence of
this deposit bears witness to the Egyptian habit of sanctifying the
site of a new temple by sowing it broad-cast with sacred images.[382]
[381] See BIRCH, notes to Wilkinson's _Manners and Customs_,
vol. ii. p. 232, edition of 1878.
[382] MARIETTE, _Itineraire_, p. 210.
Bronze was employed for all kinds of domestic purposes. The graceful
mirror-handle reproduced below (Fig. 308) is in the Boulak Museum. So
too, are the bronze hair-pin (Fig. 309) and the curiously designed
dagger (Fig. 310).
The analysis of various specimens of Egyptian bronze shows that the
proportion of tin which it contained was not constant. It varies from
about five to fifteen per cent.[383] Traces of iron are also found in
it.
[383] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. ii. pp. 232
and 401.
[Illustration: FIG. 308.--Mirror-handle.]
[Illustration: FIG. 309.--Bronze hair-pin.]
[Illustration: FIG. 310.--Bronze dagger.]
The date at which this last named metal was introduced into the
country is still matter of dispute. Various facts brought together by
Dr. Birch, lead us to think that the Egyptians were acquainted with
iron at least as soon as the commencement of the Theban
supremacy,[384] but it would seem that they always made a greater use
of bronze.
[384] _Ibid._ Vol. II. PP. 250, 251.
The word that signifies gold appears in the oldest inscriptions, and
in the pictures at Beni-Hassan contemporary with the twelfth dynasty
the whole process of making gold ornaments is represented.[385] From
that time onward the Egyptian Pharaohs caused the veins of quartz in
the mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea to be worked; they also
obtained large supplies of the precious metal from Ethiopia. Silver
came from Asia. It seems to have been rarer than gold, at least during
the last centuries of the monarchy. As Belzoni remarked, while gold is
lavished upon the mummies and upon all the sepulchral furniture about
them silver is only met with in exceptional cases.[386] In 1878,
Mariette exhibited in Paris five massive patera-shaped silver vases,
which, from the style of their ornaments, he attributed to the Saite
epoch.
[385] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, vol. ii. pp. 233-237.
[386] BELZONI, _Narrative_, etc. vol. i. p. 277.
The finest specimens of Egyptian jewelry now extant belong to the
three great Theban dynasties. We may give as instances the jewels of
Queen Aah-hotep, which are among the most precious treasures of the
Boulak Museum,[387] and those found in the tomb of Kha-em-uas, son of
Rameses II. These are in the Louvre. The splendid breast ornament
figured on the opposite page (Fig. 311), is one of them. It is made of
lapis-lazuli and gold, and is thus described by M. Pierret: "Jewel in
the form of a naos, in which a vulture and an uræus are placed side by
side; above them floats a hawk with extended wings; in his claws are
seals, the emblems of eternity. Under the frieze of the naos an oval
with the prenomen of Rameses II. is introduced. Two _tet_ are placed
in the lower angles of the frame."[388] These jewels were funerary in
character. They consist of a little chapel in the middle of which
there is usually a scarab--emblem of transformation and
immortality--adoring the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. They are called
_pectorals_ because they were placed upon the bosoms of the dead.
Great numbers of them have been found in the tombs, in metal, in
wood, and in earthenware; few, however, are as rich as that of
Kha-em-uas. Each compartment of the golden frame-work is filled in
either with coloured glass or with a piece of some _pietra dura_ with
a rich hue of its own.
[387] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musée de Boulak_, Nos. 810-839.
Coloured reproductions of them are published in M. CÉSAR DALY'S
_Revue de l'Architecture_, a sequel to the _Histoire d'Égypte
d'après les Monuments_ (published in 1860) of M. ERNEST
DESJARDINS.
[388] PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, Louvre, No.
521. This jewel is reproduced, with many others from the same
tomb, in two fine coloured plates in MARIETTE'S unfinished work,
_Le Sérapéum de Memphis_. Folio, 1857.
[Illustration: FIG. 311.--Pectoral. Actual size. Drawn by Saint-Elme
Gautier.]
In the same case as this pectoral there are two golden hawks incrusted
in the same fashion, which may have belonged to a similar jewel. The
larger of the two (Fig. 312) has a ram's head.[389] There is a
necklace about its throat, and in its talons it grasps a pair of
seals, the symbols of reproduction and eternity. The same emblem is
held by the smaller hawk (Fig. 313), whose wings form a large
crescent.[390]
[389] PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, Louvre, No.
535.
[390] _Ibid._ No. 534.
[Illustration: FIG. 312.--Golden Hawk. Actual size. Drawn by
Saint-Elme Gautier.]
[Illustration: FIG. 313.--Golden Hawk. Actual size. Drawn by
Saint-Elme Gautier.]
Living forms are interpreted in a less conventional fashion in the
little monuments which are known as _ægides_, on account of their
shape. This may be seen by reference to one recently acquired by the
Louvre (Fig. 314). The name of an Osorkhon of the twenty-second
dynasty and that of Queen Ta-ti-bast are on the back. At the top
appears the lion-head of the goddess Sekhet, modelled with great
skill and freedom, and supported on each side by the head of a hawk;
below these comes a plate of gold, entirely covered with fine
engraving. A seated figure with expanded wings forms a centre for
numerous bands of ornament in which the open flower of the lotus is
combined with its buds and circular leaves.
Necklaces are also very rich and various in design. Fig. 315 is the
restoration of one which exists in a dislocated state in one of the
cases of the Louvre. It is formed of glass beads in four rows, below
which hangs a row of pendants, probably charms. The _tet_, the god
_Bes_, the _oudja_ or symbolic eye, &c., are to be distinguished among
them.
[Illustration: FIG. 314.--Ægis. Louvre. Actual size. Drawn by
Saint-Elme Gautier.]
The beautiful group of Osiris, Isis, and Horus deserves to rank as a
work of sculpture (Fig. 316). These little figures are of gold. Osiris
is crouching between the other two deities on a pedestal of
lapis-lazuli, which bears the name of Osorkhon II. The inscription
upon the base consists of a religious benediction upon the same
Pharaoh. These little figures are finely executed, and the base upon
which the group stands is incrusted with coloured glass.
We have already reproduced specimens of finger rings (Figs. 241 and
243), and the additional examples on page 387 will help to show how
varied were their form. Many of these little articles have moveable or
rotating stones upon which figures or inscriptions are engraved. Some
have this merely upon a flattened or thickened part of the ring,
which, again, is sometimes double (Fig. 318). Ear-rings of many
different forms have been found; they are ornamented with little
figures in relief (Figs. 319 and 320).
Some writers have spoken of the _cloisonné enamels_ of Egypt. This
expression is inaccurate, as Mariette has observed.[391] There are
certainly _cloisons_ in many of the jewels above described--such as
the pectoral and the two hawks--_cloisons_ made up of thin ribs of
silver or gold, but these compartments are not combined by firing with
the material used to fill them. Where the Chinese place enamel the
Egyptians inserted fragments of coloured glass or of such stones as
the amethyst, cornelion, lapis-lazuli, turquoise, jasper, &c. The work
was not passed through an oven after the insertion of these colouring
substances; it was therefore rather a mosaic than an enamel in the
proper sense of the term. By an analagous process bronze was
damascened with gold and silver, threads of these two metals being
inserted in prepared grooves and hammered into place. Mariette has
called attention to several bronzes at Boulak thus inlaid with
gold,[392] and in the Louvre there is a graceful little sphinx marked
with the cartouche of Smendes, which is damascened with silver.
[391] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musée de Boulak_, No. 388. _Galerie
de l'Égypte Ancienne au Trocadéro_, pp. 114, 115.
[392] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musée_, Nos. 107, 108, 131.
The Egyptians were also workers in ivory, which was obtained in large
quantities from Ethiopia. Sometimes they were content with carving it
(Fig. 322), sometimes they engraved upon it with the _point_ and then
filled in the design with black, giving it a forcible relief (Fig.
323). The ivory plaque from Sakkarah reproduced in Fig. 321, deserves
to be studied for its technical method, although it dates from the
Greek period. The blacks shown in our woodcut are produced in the
original by filling up with mastic the hollows made with the _point_.
Famous sculptors were especially fond of working in ivory. Iritesen
speaks as follows upon a stele translated by M. Maspero:--"Ah! there
is no one who excels at this work except myself and the eldest of my
legitimate sons. God decided that he should excel, and I have seen the
perfection of his handiwork as an artist, as the chief of those who
work in precious stones, in gold, silver, ivory and ebony."[393]
[393] _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, v.
part ii. 1877.
[Illustration: FIG. 315.--Necklace. Louvre. Drawn by Saint-Elme
Gautier.]
[Illustration: FIG. 316.--Osiris, Isis, and Horus.]
No traces of amber have been discovered in Egypt, and Egyptologists
tell us that no word for it is to be found in the language.
[Illustration: FIGS. 317, 318.--Rings. Louvre.]
[Illustration: FIGS. 319, 320.--Ear-rings. Louvre.]
A complete idea of Egyptian jewelry and work in the precious metals
cannot be given without colour; without its assistance the brilliance,
softened into completest harmony by the action of time, which
distinguishes the objects of which we have now been speaking, can only
be guessed at. Our best advice to those who wish to thoroughly
appreciate their beauty, is to examine them in the museums where they
are exposed. But even in the black and white of our draughtsman the
excellent taste which animated the Egyptian jeweller may be fairly
estimated. Other races, the Greeks, for instance, gave more lightness
and a more refined grace to their trinkets, but our familiarity with
their productions does not prevent us from recognizing the nobility
and amplitude of these designs. Their originality, too, is strongly
brought out by their affinity to the style and decoration of the great
national buildings; we might almost be tempted to think that their
designs and colour compositions were supplied by architects.
[Illustration: FIG. 321.--Ivory Plaque. Boulak.]
The same characteristics are to be recognized on the vases figured in
the royal tombs at Thebes.[394] They are coloured yellow and blue,
and both their form and tint forbid us to suppose that they were of
any material but metal, of gilt bronze or gold, or of silver.
Incrustations in enamel or coloured _pietra dura_ relieve the monotony
of the metal surface. Some of these pieces seem to have been very
large. Their decoration and design is rich and complex. Flowers and
half-opened buds, lions' heads, masks of Bes and of negroes, birds,
sphinxes, etc., are introduced. We may presume that such objects were
made for presentation to the gods and preservation in treasure-houses;
few of them could have been put to any practical use. The great men of
Egypt followed the example of Pharaoh in enriching the temples. The
stele of Neb-oua, chief prophet of Osiris in the reign of Thothmes
III., runs thus: "I have consecrated numerous gifts in the temple of
my father Osiris; in silver, in gold, in lapis-lazuli, in copper, and
in all kinds of precious stones."[395]
[394] See two plates of PRISSE entitled: "_Art Industriel. Vases
en Or Émaillé_; _Rhytons et autres Vases_."
[395] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musée_, No. 93.
[Illustration: FIG. 322.--Ivory Castanet. Louvre.]
[Illustration: FIG. 323.--Fragment of an Ivory Castanet. Louvre.]
§ 4. _Woodwork._
The Egyptians made great use of wood. Under the Ancient Empire it
furnished the material for all their lighter constructions, to which,
by the help of colour, great variety and cheerfulness was imparted.
Even in those early ages the cabinet-maker or joiner endeavoured to
make his work artistic. Various articles of furniture had their feet
carved into the shape of lions' paws, or the hoofs of oxen.[396] To
judge from certain stone objects preserved in the mastabas, wood,
which was comparatively easy to work, must have afforded the material
for those skilfully-made and complex pieces of furniture whose forms
are preserved for us by paintings from the Theban epoch.[397]
[396] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part ii. plates 36 and 90.
[397] Among such objects is a table for libations, which was
found in a tomb at Sakkarah. It is supported by two lions, whose
pendent tails are twisted round a vase. MARIETTE, _Notice du
Musée_, No. 93.
In these pictures the labours of the carpenter (Fig. 324), and those
of the cabinet-maker (Fig. 325) are often represented. The specimens
of furniture in our modern museums are mostly of a commonplace
character, but they are interesting from the light they throw upon the
methods of the Egyptian joiners (Fig. 326). The richness and
elaboration of Egyptian furniture under the great Theban dynasties
can only be estimated from the paintings. We have already seen that
their musical instruments were elaborately decorated; the harp of the
famous minstrel figured on page 345 is entirely covered with
incrustations, and its foot is ornamented with a bust of graceful
design. In this luxurious age the arts of the cabinet-maker must have
been carried to a great height. The interior of an ancient Egyptian
house must have been very different from the bareness which greets a
visitor to the modern East. Chairs with or without arms, tables of
varied form, folding seats, foot-stools, brackets supporting vases of
flowers, cabinets in which objects of value were locked up, filled the
rooms. The upper classes of Egypt lived a life that was refined and
elegant as well as civilized. A great lord of the time of a Thothmes
or a Rameses was not content, like a Turkish bey or pacha, with a
divan, a few carpets, and a mattress which, after being locked up in a
cupboard during the day, is spread upon the floor for his
accommodation at night. He had his bedstead, often inlaid with metal
or ivory, and, like a modern European, he had other articles of
furniture besides.
[Illustration: FIG. 324.--Workman splitting a piece of wood. Gournah.
From Champollion.]
[Illustration: FIG. 325.--Joiner making a bed. From Champollion.]
Several pictures are extant in which Egyptian receptions--Egyptian
_salons_--are represented. The company is not crouched upon the earth,
in the modern Oriental fashion. Both men and women are seated upon
chairs, some of which have cushioned seats and backs.[398]
[398] See the illustration which EBERS calls _A Reception in
Ancient Egypt_. (_Ægypten_, vol. ii. p. 276.)
[Illustration: FIG. 326.--Coffer for sepulchral statuettes. Louvre.]
The elegance of these seats may be guessed from the two examples on
the next page, one from the tomb of Rameses III. (Fig. 327), the other
from that of Chamhati (Fig. 328). They are both royal chairs, or
thrones. The smaller chair figures among a number of things presented
by Chamhati to his master, Pharaoh, and we need feel no surprise that
among the supports of both these pieces of furniture, those crouching
prisoners which became about this time such a common motive in
Egyptian ornament, are to be found. In the one example, they are
incorporated with the carved members which support the seat, in the
other they are inserted between the legs, which are shaped
respectively like the fore and hind quarters of a lion. Each arm
terminates in a lion's head. A crowned, winged, and hawk-headed uræus,
some lotus-flowers, and a sphinx with a vanquished enemy beneath his
paws, are carved upon either side of the chair. The scheme of
decoration as a whole is a happy combination of æsthetic beauty with
allusions to the power and success of the king.
[Illustration: FIG. 327.--Chair. From the _Description_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 328.--Chair. From Prisse.]
These elaborate pieces of furniture are only known to us by the
paintings, but when we turn to articles of a less ambitious
description, such as toys and what are called _bimbeloterie_ in
French, and, rather helplessly, "fancy articles" in English, we have
many fine specimens to turn to. Of these the most conspicuous are
those perfume spoons whose handles so often embody charming motives.
The more simple examples are ornamented merely with the buds or open
flowers of the lotus (Fig. 329). Others, however, have beautifully
carved figures. In Fig. 330 we see a young woman picking a lotus bud.
Several stalks crowned with open flowers support the bowl, which is
shaped like that of a modern spoon, except that its narrow end is
turned towards the handle. The attitude and expression of this little
figure are very good. The right foot, which is thrust forward, only
touches the ground by the toes. The water in which she is about to
step may hide sharp flints or unkindly roots, and, with commendable
prudence, she begins by testing the bottom. Her legs are bare, because
she has raised her garment well above the knee before descending into
the marsh. Her carefully plaited hair and her crimped petticoat show
that her social condition is good.
Another spoon shows us a musician between stems of papyrus. She stands
upright upon one of those boats which were used in the papyrus-brakes
(Fig. 331). Her instrument is a long-handled guitar. The musician
herself seems to have been one of those dancers and singers whose
condition was pretty much the same in ancient as in modern Egypt. Her
only garment is a short petticoat knotted about her waist. The bowl of
this spoon is rectangular.
[Illustration: FIG. 329.--Perfume Spoon. Boulak. Drawn by Bourgoin.]
Another common motive is that of a girl swimming. She is represented
at the moment when her stroke is complete; her upper and lower limbs
are stretched out to their full extent so as to offer the least
possible resistance to the water (Fig. 257). There is a perfume-box in
the Louvre which is supported on a figure contrasting strongly with
the last described. The box is shaped like a heavy sack, and is
supported upon the right shoulder of a slave, who bends beneath its
weight. By the thick lips, flat nose, heavy jaw, low forehead, and
closely-shaven, sugar-loaf head, we may recognize this as yet another
of those caricatures of prisoners which we have already encountered in
such numbers.[399] A perfume-box at Boulak should also be mentioned.
It is in the shape of a goose turning its head backwards. Its wings
open and give access to the hollow of the box.
[399] This figure is reproduced in Rayet's _Monuments de l'Art
Antique_ and described by M. MASPERO. (_Cuillers de Toilette en
Bois._)
This desire to ornament even the most apparently insignificant
objects of domestic use was universal. The sticks which are shown in
the bas-reliefs in the hands of almost every Egyptian of good social
position, were generally provided with a more or less richly
ornamented head. The simplest terminate in a handle which appears to
be modelled after the leaf of the lotus, as it rises above the level
of the water, and, before opening to the full expansion, forms an
obtuse angle with the stalk which supports it (Fig. 332). Other sticks
of a similar shape have an eye painted upon them (Fig. 333). Sometimes
the handle is shaped like a lotus-flower surmounted by an oval knob
(Fig. 334). Wooden pins have been found with the head of a jackal or
some other animal carved upon them (Fig. 335).
[Illustration: FIGS. 330, 331.--Perfume Spoons. Louvre. Drawn by
Saint-Elme Gautier.]
Wooden articles were often entirely gilt. A Hathoric capital in the
Louvre (Fig. 336) is an instance of this. The outlines of the eyes and
eyebrows stand out in black upon the dead gold which covers the rest
of this little monument.
[Illustration: FIGS. 332-334.--Walking-stick handles. Boulak.]
The coffin-makers were large consumers of wood. Some mummy cases were
of that material, others of a very thick board made up of many layers
of linen glued together with such skill and firmness that the
resulting substance had all the hardness and resonance of wood. Cases
of both kinds were covered with a thin coat of plaster, varnished, and
decorated with designs in colour. The thickness of the plaster coat
may be easily seen in the numerous cracks which these coffins display.
All the decorative motives which we find traced by the brush or
engraved by the chisel upon the walls of buildings and upon works in
terra-cotta, in metal, and in wood, must have been repeated upon the
woven stuffs of the country, and upon those needle embroideries with
which they were ornamented. There is nothing in which the superiority
of Egyptian manufactures is better shown than in linen cloth. Linen
has been recovered from the tombs which is as fine as the best Indian
muslin. Some has been found which feels like silk to the touch, and
equals the best French _batiste_ in the perfection of its weaving. We
know from the bas-reliefs and paintings that some Egyptian stuffs had
the transparency of gauze. Body-linen was usually of a dazzling white,
but in some instances it was dyed red, and in others it had borders
made up of several bands of red and indigo blue. The designs were
either woven in the stuff or applied to it by a process which gave
effects not unlike those of our printed cottons. Golden threads were
introduced into specially fine tissues. But the great excellence of
Egypt in such matters as these was in her needle embroidery. Even
during the epoch of Roman supremacy her productions of that kind were
eagerly sought after.[400]
[400] MARTIAL, _Epigrammata_, xiv. 150. LUCAN, X. v. 141.
[Illustration: FIG. 335.--Wooden pin or peg. Boulak.]
[Illustration: FIG. 336.--Hathoric capital. Louvre.]
§ 5. _The Commerce of Egypt._
When, under the great Theban Pharaohs, Egypt found herself impelled,
either by force or by inclination, to emerge from her long isolation,
her vast internal commerce and her industrial development must have
had a greater effect over the foreigners with whom she came into
contact than her gigantic buildings, or the colossal statues,
bas-reliefs, and paintings with which they were adorned. During the
Middle Empire she opened her gates to some extent to certain tribes of
Semites and Kushites, who dwelt close to her frontier. After her
conquest by the Hyksos, and the establishment, some centuries later,
of her own supremacy in Syria, she never ceased to hold intercourse
with her neighbours.
Her foreign relations were, however, peculiar in character. During
many centuries it never occurred to the worshipper of Osiris that it
was possible to live and die out of the sacred valley of the Nile.
Thrown by some accident outside those limits which for him coincided
with the frontiers of the habitable world, he would have felt as
helpless as a Parisian stranded upon some cannibal island. In later
years, after about the seventeenth century B.C. the separation between
the Egyptians and the people of Western Asia became less complete. The
time arrived when Babylon and Greece were in advance of Egypt; but
even then the Egyptians shrank from changing their ancient habits.
Their well-being in the valley watered by their sacred river was too
complete, their pride of race was too great, to allow of their
mingling readily with those whom they looked upon as barbarians. Still
more effectual was their unwillingness, their fear, to confide their
mortal bodies to any other soil but that of Egypt. There alone could
they count with certainty upon the care and skill which would preserve
it from final destruction. Nowhere but in the _Western Mountain_ could
they be sure of receiving the necessary offerings and homage. The gods
who watched over the mummy, who guided the soul in its subterranean
voyage and shielded it during the tests to which it was exposed after
death, dwelt in Egypt alone. Military expeditions were pushed into
Syria, and even as far as the Euphrates, but no Egyptian crossed the
Isthmus of Suez without longing for the day of his return. He brought
back the plunder of his successful combats to the crowded cities of
his own country, with their countless monuments and their memories of
a glorious past; he could enjoy life only where the tombs of his
ancestors and his own _happy dwelling_ marked the spot where he should
repose when that life had ceased.
By taste, then, the Egyptian was no traveller. But in time the men of
other nations came to seek him; they came to buy from him the
countless wonders which had been created by his skilful and patient
industry. The Phœnician, especially after the beginning of the
eighteenth dynasty, took upon himself the useful office of middle-man;
in later days, under the Psemetheks and their successors, the Greek
came to dispute that office with him. Like the Portuguese and the
Dutch in China and Japan, first the Phœnicians and afterwards the
Ionians had their _factories_ at Memphis and in the cities of the
Delta. Thanks to these adroit and enterprising middle-men, Egypt
had a large foreign trade without either ships, sailors, or
merchant-adventurers. Upon this point much valuable information has
been obtained from the texts, but the discoveries of modern archæology
have been still more efficient in enabling us to form a true and vivid
conception of the trade carried on by the inhabitants of the Nile
Valley.
Ever since attention was first drawn to the wide distribution of such
objects, not a year has passed without articles of Egyptian
manufacture being discovered at some distant point. Syria and Phœnicia
are full of them; they have been found in Babylonia and in Assyria,
upon the coasts of Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in the islands of the
Grecian Archipelago, in Greece itself, in Etruria, in Latium, in
Corsica and Sardinia, in the neighbourhood of Carthage; they are, in
fact, spread over all Western Asia and the whole basin of the
Mediterranean. At the moment when the Phœnicians began to secure the
monopoly of this trade the Egyptian workshops had no rivals in the
world; and when, after many centuries, other nations began to pour
their manufactures into the same markets, they had long to compete in
vain against a prestige which had been built up by ages of good work
and well earned notoriety.