_PAINTING AND SCULPTURE_.
The statues and bas-reliefs which decorated the temples and tombs of
Ancient Egypt were for the most part painted. Coloured stones, such as
granite, basalt, diorite, serpentine, and alabaster, sometimes escaped this
law of polychrome; but in the case of sandstone, limestone, or wood it was
rigorously enforced. If sometimes we meet with uncoloured monuments in
these materials, we may be sure that the paint has been accidentally rubbed
off, or that the work is unfinished. The sculptor and the painter were
therefore inseparably allied. The first had no sooner finished his share of
the task than the other took it up; and the same artist was often as
skilful a master of the brush as of the chisel.
I.--DRAWING AND COMPOSITION.
Of the system upon which drawing was taught by the Egyptian masters, we
know nothing. They had learned from experience to determine the general
proportions of the body, and the invariable relations of the various parts
one with another; but they never troubled themselves to tabulate those
proportions, or to reduce them to a system. Nothing in what remains to us
of their works justifies the belief that they ever possessed a canon based
upon the length of the human finger or foot. Theirs was a teaching of
routine, and not of theory. Models executed by the master were copied over
and over again by his pupils, till they could reproduce them with absolute
exactness. That they also studied from the life is shown by the facility
with which they seized a likeness, or rendered the characteristics and
movements of different kinds of animals. They made their first attempts
upon slabs of limestone, on drawing boards covered with a coat of red or
white stucco, or on the backs of old manuscripts of no value. New papyrus
was too dear to be spoiled by the scrawls of tyros. Having neither pencil
nor stylus, they made use of the reed, the end of which, when steeped in
water, opened out into small fibres, and made a more or less fine brush
according to the size of the stem. The palette was of thin wood, in shape a
rectangular oblong, with a groove in which to lay the brush at the lower
end. At the upper end were two or more cup-like hollows, each fitted with a
cake of ink; black and red being the colours most in use. A tiny pestle and
mortar for colour-grinding (fig. 160), and a cup of water in which to clip
and wash the brush, completed the apparatus of the student. Palette in
hand, he squatted cross-legged before his copy, and, without any kind of
support for his wrist, endeavoured to reproduce the outline in black. The
master looked over his work when done, and corrected the errors in red ink.
[Illustration: Fig. 160.--Pestle and mortar for grinding colours.]
[Illustration: Fig. 161.--Comic sketch on ostrakon in New York Museum.]
[Illustration: Fig. 162.--Vignette from _The Book of the Dead_, Saïte
period]
[Illustration: Fig. 163.--Vignette from _The Book of the Dead_, from
the papyrus of Hûnefer.]
The few designs which have come down to us are drawn on pieces of
limestone, and are for the most part in sufficiently bad preservation. The
British Museum possesses two or three subjects in red outline, which may
perhaps have been used as copies by the decorators of some Theban tomb
about the time of the Twentieth Dynasty. A fragment in the Museum of Gizeh
contains studies of ducks or geese in black ink; and at Turin may be seen a
sketch of a half-nude female figure bending backwards, as about to turn a
somersault. The lines are flowing, the movement is graceful, the modelling
delicate. The draughtsman was not hampered then as now, by the rigidity of
the instrument between his fingers. The reed brush attacked the surface
perpendicularly; broadened, diminished, or prolonged the line at will; and
stopped or turned with the utmost readiness. So supple a medium was
admirably adapted to the rapid rendering of the humorous or ludicrous
episodes of daily life. The Egyptians, naturally laughter-loving and
satirical, were caricaturists from an early period. One of the Turin papyri
chronicles the courtship of a shaven priest and a songstress of Amen in a
series of spirited vignettes; while on the back of the same sheet are
sketched various serio-comic scenes, in which animals parody the pursuits
of civilised man. An ass, a lion, a crocodile, and an ape are represented
in the act of giving a vocal and instrumental concert; a lion and a gazelle
play at draughts; the Pharaoh of all the rats, in a chariot drawn by dogs,
gallops to the assault of a fortress garrisoned by cats; a cat of fashion,
with a flower on her head, has come to blows with a goose, and the hapless
fowl, powerless in so unequal a contest, topples over with terror. Cats, by
the way, were the favourite animals of Egyptian caricaturists. An ostrakon
in the New York Museum depicts a cat of rank _en grande toilette_, seated
in an easy chair, and a miserable Tom, with piteous mien and tail between
his legs, serving her with refreshments (fig. 161). Our catalogue of comic
sketches is brief; but the abundance of pen-drawings with which certain
religious works were illustrated compensates for our poverty in secular
subjects. These works are _The Book of the Dead_ and _The Book of Knowing
That which is in Hades_, which were reproduced by hundreds, according to
standard copies preserved in the temples, or handed down through families
whose hereditary profession it was to conduct the services for the dead.
When making these illustrations, the artist had no occasion to draw upon
his imagination. He had but to imitate the copy as skilfully as he could.
Of _The Book of Knowing That which is in Hades_ we have no examples earlier
than the time of the Twentieth Dynasty, and these are poor enough in point
of workmanship, the figures being little better than dot-and-line forms,
badly proportioned and hastily scrawled. The extant specimens of _The Book
of the Dead_ are so numerous that a history of the art of miniature
painting in ancient Egypt might be compiled from this source alone. The
earliest date from the Eighteenth Dynasty, the more recent being
contemporary with the first Caesars. The oldest copies are for the most
part remarkably fine in execution. Each chapter has its vignette
representing a god in human or animal form, a sacred emblem, or the
deceased in adoration before a divinity. These little subjects are
sometimes ranged horizontally at the top of the text, which is written in
vertical columns (fig. 162); sometimes, like the illuminated capitals in
our mediaeval manuscripts, they are scattered throughout the pages. At
certain points, large subjects fill the space from top to bottom of the
papyrus. The burial scene comes at the beginning; the judgment of the soul
about the middle; and the arrival of the deceased in the Fields of Aalû at
the end of the work. In these, the artist seized the opportunity to display
his skill, and show what he could do. We here see the mummy of Hûnefer
placed upright before his stela and his tomb (fig. 163). The women of his
family bewail him; the men and the priest present offerings. The papyri of
the princes and princesses of the family of Pinotem in the Museum of Gizeh
show that the best traditions of the art were yet in force at Thebes in the
time of the Twenty-first Dynasty. Under the succeeding dynasties, that art
fell into rapid decadence, and during some centuries the drawings continue
to be coarse and valueless. The collapse of the Persian rule produced a
period of Renaissance. Tombs of the Greek time have yielded papyri with
vignettes carefully executed in a dry and minute style which offers a
singular contrast to the breadth and boldness of the Pharaonic ages. The
broad-tipped reed-pen was thrown aside for the pen with a fine point, and
the scribes vied with each other as to which should trace the most
attenuated lines. The details with which they overloaded their figures, the
elaboration of the beard and the hair, and the folds of the garments, are
sometimes so minute that it is scarcely possible to distinguish them
without a magnifying glass. Precious as these documents are, they give a
very insufficient idea of the ability and technical methods of the artists
of ancient Egypt. It is to the walls of their temples and tombs that we
must turn, if we desire to study their principles of composition.
[Illustration: Figs. 164 and 165.--Scenes from the tomb of Khnûmhotep at
Beni Hasan, Twelfth Dynasty.]
[Illustration: Fig. 166.--From a tomb-painting in the British Museum,
Eighteenth Dynasty.]
Their conventional system differed materially from our own. Man or beast,
the subject was never anything but a profile relieved against a flat
background. Their object, therefore, was to select forms which presented a
characteristic outline capable of being reproduced in pure line upon a
plane surface. As regarded animal life, the problem was in no wise
complicated. The profile of the back and body, the head and neck, carried
in undulating lines parallel with the ground, were outlined at one sweep of
the pencil. The legs also are well detached from the body. The animals
themselves are lifelike, each with the gait and action and flexion of the
limbs peculiar to its species. The slow and measured tread of the ox; the
short step, the meditative ear, the ironical mouth of the ass; the abrupt
little trot of the goat, the spring of the hunting greyhound, are all
rendered with invariable success of outline and expression. Turning from
domestic animals to wild beasts, the perfection of treatment is the same.
The calm strength of the lion in repose, the stealthy and sleepy tread of
the leopard, the grimace of the ape, the slender grace of the gazelle and
the antelope, have never been better expressed than in Egypt. But it was
not so easy to project man--the whole man--upon a plane surface without
some departure from nature. A man cannot be satisfactorily reproduced by
means of mere lines, and a profile outline necessarily excludes too much of
his person. The form of the forehead and the nose, the curvature of the
lips, the cut of the ear, disappear when the head is drawn full face; but,
on the other hand, it is necessary that the bust should be presented full
face, in order to give the full development of the shoulders, and that the
two arms may be visible to right and left of the body. The contours of the
trunk are best modelled in a three-quarters view, whereas the legs show to
most advantage when seen sidewise. The Egyptians did not hesitate to
combine these contradictory points of view in one single figure. The head
is almost always given in profile, but is provided with a full-face eye and
placed upon a full-face bust. The full-face bust adorns a trunk seen from a
three-quarters point of view, and this trunk is supported upon legs
depicted in profile. Very seldom do we meet with figures treated according
to our own rules of perspective. Most of the minor personages represented
in the tomb of Khnûmhotep seem, however, to have made an effort to
emancipate themselves from the law of malformation. Their bodies are given
in profile, as well as their heads and legs; but they thrust forward first
one shoulder and then the other, in order to show both arms (fig. 164), and
the effect is not happy. Yet, if we examine the treatment of the farm
servant who is cramming a goose, and, above all, the figure of the standing
man who throws his weight upon the neck of a gazelle to make it kneel down
(fig. 165), we shall see that the action of the arms and hips is correctly
rendered, that the form of the back is quite right, and that the prominence
of the chest--thrown forward in proportion as the shoulders and arms are
thrown back--is drawn without any exaggeration. The wrestlers of the Beni
Hasan tombs, the dancers and servants of the Theban catacombs, attack,
struggle, posture, and go about their work with perfect naturalness and
ease (fig. 166). These, however, are exceptions. Tradition, as a rule, was
stronger than nature, and to the end of the chapter, the Egyptian masters
continued to deform the human figure. Their men and women are actual
monsters from the point of view of the anatomist; and yet, after all, they
are neither so ugly nor so ridiculous as might be supposed by those who
have seen only the wretched copies so often made by our modern artists. The
wrong parts are joined to the right parts with so much skill that they seem
to have grown there. The natural lines and the fictitious lines follow and
complement each other so ingeniously, that the former appear to give rise
of necessity to the latter. The conventionalities of Egyptian art once
accepted, we cannot sufficiently admire the technical skill displayed by
the draughtsman. His line was pure, firm, boldly begun, and as boldly
prolonged. Ten or twelve strokes of the brush sufficed to outline a figure
the size of life. The whole head, from the nape of the neck to the rise of
the throat above the collar-bone, was executed at one sweep. Two long
undulating lines gave the external contour of the body from the armpits to
the ends of the feet. Two more determined the outlines of the legs, and two
the arms. The details of costume and ornaments, at first but summarily
indicated, were afterwards taken up one by one, and minutely finished. We
may almost count the locks of the hair, the plaits of the linen, the
inlayings of the girdles and bracelets. This mixture of artless science and
intentional awkwardness, of rapid execution and patient finish, excludes
neither elegance of form, nor grace of attitude, nor truth of movement.
These personages are of strange aspect, but they live; and to those who
will take the trouble to look at them without prejudice, their very
strangeness has a charm about it which is often lacking to works more
recent in date and more strictly true to nature.
[Illustration: Fig. 167.--Funerary repast, tomb of Horemheb, Eighteenth
Dynasty.]
[Illustration: Fig. 168.--From a wall-painting, Thebes, Ramesside period.]
We admit, then, that the Egyptians could draw. Were they, as it has been
ofttimes asserted, ignorant of the art of composition? We will take a scene
at hazard from a Theban tomb--that scene which represents the funerary
repast offered to Prince Horemheb by the members of his family (fig. 167).
The subject is half ideal, half real. The dead man, and those belonging to
him who are no longer of this world, are depicted in the society of the
living. They are present, yet aloof. They assist at the banquet, but they
do not actually take part in it. Horemheb sits on a folding stool to the
left of the spectator. He dandles on his knee a little princess, daughter
of Amenhotep III., whose foster-father he was, and who died before him. His
mother, Sûit, sits at his right hand a little way behind, enthroned in a
large chair. She holds his arm with her left hand, and with the right she
offers him a lotus blossom and bud. A tiny gazelle which was probably
buried with her, like the pet gazelle discovered beside Queen Isiemkheb in
the hiding-place at Deir el Baharî, is tied to one of the legs of the
chair. This ghostly group is of heroic size, the rule being that gods are
bigger than men, kings bigger than their subjects, and the dead bigger than
the living. Horemheb, his mother, and the women standing before them,
occupy the front level, or foreground. The relations and friends are ranged
in line facing their deceased ancestors, and appear to be talking one with
another. The feast has begun. The jars of wine and beer, placed in rows
upon wooden stands, are already unsealed. Two young slaves rub the hands
and necks of the living guests with perfumes taken from an alabaster vase.
Two women dressed in robes of ceremony present offerings to the group of
dead, consisting of vases filled with flowers, perfumes, and grain. These
they place in turn upon a square table. Three others dance, sing, and play
upon the lute, by way of accompaniment to those acts of homage. In the
picture, as in fact, the tomb is the place of entertainment. There is no
other background to the scene than the wall covered with hieroglyphs, along
which the guests were seated during the ceremony. Elsewhere, the scene of
action, if in the open country, is distinctly indicated by trees and tufts
of grass; by red sand, if in the desert; and by a maze of reeds and lotus
plants, if in the marshes. A lady of quality comes in from a walk (fig.
168). One of her daughters, being athirst, takes a long draught from a
"gûllah"; two little naked children with shaven heads, a boy and a girl,
who ran to meet their mother at the gate, are made happy with toys
brought home and handed to them by a servant. A trellised enclosure covered
with vines, and trees laden with fruit, are shown above; yonder, therefore,
is the garden, but the lady and her daughters have passed through it
without stopping, and are now indoors. The front of the house is half put
in and half left out, so that we may observe what is going on inside. We
accordingly see three attendants hastening to serve their mistresses with
refreshments. The picture is not badly composed, and it would need but
little alteration if transferred to a modern canvas. The same old
awkwardness, or rather the same old obstinate custom, which compelled the
Egyptian artist to put a profile head upon a full-face bust, has, however,
prevented him from placing his middle distance and background behind his
foreground. He has, therefore, been reduced to adopt certain more or less
ingenious contrivances, in order to make up for an almost complete absence
of perspective.
[Illustration: Fig. 169.--From wall-scene in tomb of Horemheb.]
[Illustration: Fig. 170.--From wall-scene, Ramesseum.]
[Illustration: Fig. 171.--Archers, as represented on walls of Medinet
Habû.]
Again, when a number of persons engaged in the simultaneous performance of
any given act were represented on the same level, they were isolated as
much as possible, so that each man's profile might not cover that of his
neighbour. When this was not done, they were arranged to overlap each
other, and this, despite the fact that all stood on the one level; so that
they have actually but two dimensions and no thickness. A herdsman walking
in the midst of his oxen plants his feet upon precisely the same ground-
line as the beast which interposes between his body and the spectator. The
most distant soldier of a company which advances in good marching order to
the sound of the trumpet, has his head and feet on exactly the same level;
as the head and feet of the foremost among his comrades (fig. 169). When a
squadron of chariots defiles before Pharaoh, one would declare that their
wheels all ran in the self-same ruts, were it not that the body of the
first chariot partly hides the horse by which the second chariot is drawn
(fig. 170). In these examples the people and objects are, either
accidentally or naturally, placed so near together, that the anomaly does
not strike one as too glaring. In taking these liberties, the Egyptian
artist but anticipated a contrivance adopted by the Greek sculptor of a
later age. Elsewhere, the Egyptian has occasionally approached nearer to
truth of treatment. The archers of Rameses III. at Medinet Habû make an
effort, which is almost successful, to present themselves in perspective.
The row of helmets slopes downwards, and the row of bows slopes upwards,
with praiseworthy regularity; but the men's feet are all on the same level,
and do not, therefore, follow the direction of the other lines (fig. 171).
This mode of representation is not uncommon during the Theban period. It
was generally adopted when men or animals, ranged in line, had to be shown
in the act of doing the same thing; but it was subject to the grave
drawback (or what was in Egyptian eyes the grave drawback) of showing the
body of the first man only, and of almost entirely hiding the rest of the
figures. When, therefore, it was found impossible to range all upon the
same level without hiding some of their number, the artist frequently broke
his masses up into groups, and placed one above the other on the same
vertical plane. Their height in no wise depends on the place they occupy in
the perspective of the tableau, but only upon the number of rows required
by the artist to carry out his idea. If two rows of figures are sufficient,
he divides his space horizontally into equal parts; if he requires three
rows, he divides it into three parts; and so on. When, however, it is a
question of mere accessories, they are made out upon a smaller scale.
Secondary scenes are generally separated by a horizontal line, but this
line is not indispensable. When masses of figures formed in regular order
had to be shown, the vertical planes lapped over, so to speak, according to
the caprice of the limner. At the battle of Kadesh, the files of Egyptian
infantry rise man above man, waist high, from top to bottom of the phalanx
(fig. 172); while those of the Kheta, or Hittite battalions, show but one
head above another (fig. 173).
[Illustration: Fig. 172.--Phalanx of Egyptian infantry, Ramesseum.]
[Illustration: Fig. 173.--Hittite battalion, Ramesseum.]
It was not only in their treatment of men and animals that the
Egyptians allowed themselves this latitude. Houses, trees, land and
water, were as freely misrepresented. An oblong rectangle placed upright,
or on its side, and covered with regular zigzags, represents a canal. Lest
one should be in doubt as to its meaning, fishes and crocodiles are put in,
to show that it is water, and nothing but water. Boats are seen floating
upright upon this edgewise surface; the flocks ford it where it is shallow;
and the angler with his line marks the spot where the water ends and the
bank begins. Sometimes the rectangle is seen suspended like a framed
picture, at about half way of the height of several palm trees (fig. 174);
whereby we are given to understand a tank bordered on both sides by trees.
Sometimes, again, as in the tomb of Rekhmara, the trees are laid down in
rows round the four sides of a square pond, while a profile boat conveying
a dead man in his shrine, hauled by slaves also shown in profile, floats on
the vertical surface of the water (fig. 175). The Theban catacombs of the
Ramesside period supply abundant examples of contrivances of this kind;
and, having noted them, we end by not knowing which most to wonder at--the
obstinacy of the Egyptians in not seeking to discover the natural laws of
perspective, or the inexhaustible wealth of resource which enabled them to
invent so many false relations between the various parts of their subjects.
[Illustration: Fig. 174.--Pond and palm-trees, from wall painting in tomb
of Rekhmara, Eighteenth Dynasty.]
When employed upon a very large scale, their methods of composition shock
the eye less than when applied to small subjects. We instinctively feel
that even the ablest artist must sometimes have played fast and loose with
the laws of perspective, if tasked to cover the enormous surfaces of
Egyptian pylons.
[Illustration: Fig. 175.--Scene from tomb of Rekhmara, Eighteenth Dynasty.]
[Illustration: Fig. 176.--Scene from Mastaba of Ptahhotep, Fifth Dynasty.]
[Illustration: Fig. 177.--Palestrina mosaic.]
Hence the unities of the subject are never strictly observed in these
enormous bas-reliefs. The main object being to perpetuate the memory of a
victorious Pharaoh, that Pharaoh necessarily plays the leading part; but
instead of selecting from among his striking deeds some one leading episode
pre-eminently calculated to illustrate his greatness, the Egyptian artist
delighted to present the successive incidents of his campaigns at a single
_coup d'oeil_. Thus treated, the pylons of Luxor and the Ramesseum show a
Syrian night attack upon the Egyptian camp; a seizure of spies sent by the
prince of the Kheta for the express purpose of being caught and giving
false intelligence of his movements; the king's household troops surprised
and broken by the Khetan chariots; the battle of Kadesh and its various
incidents, so furnishing us, as it were, with a series of illustrated
despatches of the Syrian campaign undertaken by Rameses II. in the fifth
year of his reign. After this fashion precisely did the painters of the
earliest Italian schools depict within the one field, and in one
uninterrupted sequence, the several episodes of a single narrative. The
scenes are irregularly dispersed over the surface of the wall, without any
marked lines of separation, and, as with the bas-reliefs upon the column of
Trajan, one is often in danger of dividing the groups in the wrong place,
and of confusing the characters. This method is reserved almost exclusively
for official art. In the interior decoration of temples and tombs, the
various parts of the one subject are distributed in rows ranged one above
the other, from the ground line to the cornice. Thus another difficulty is
added to the number of those which prevent us from understanding the style
and intention of Egyptian design. We often imagine that we are looking at a
series of isolated scenes, when in fact we have before our eyes the
_disjecta membra_ of a single composition. Take, for example, one wall-side
of the tomb of Ptahhotep at Sakkarah (fig. 176). If we would discover the
link which divides these separate scenes, we shall do well to compare this
wall-subject with the mosaic at Palestrina (fig. 177), a monument of
Graeco-Roman time which represents almost the same scenes, grouped,
however, after a style more familiar to our ways of seeing and thinking.
The Nile occupies the immediate foreground of the picture, and extends as
far as the foot of the mountains in the distance. Towns rise from the
water's edge; and not only towns, but obelisks, farm-houses, and towers of
Graeco-Italian style, more like the buildings depicted in Pompeian
landscapes than the monuments of the Pharaohs. Of these buildings, only the
large temple in the middle distance to the right of the picture, with its
pylon gateway and its four Osirian colossi, recalls the general arrangement
of Egyptian architecture. To the left, a party of sportsmen in a large boat
are seen in the act of harpooning the hippopotamus and crocodile. To the
right, a group of legionaries, drawn up in front of a temple and preceded
by a priest, salute a passing galley. Towards the middle of the foreground,
in the shade of an arched trellis thrown across a small branch of the
Nile, some half-clad men and women are singing and carousing. Little
papyrus skiffs, each rowed by a single boatman, and other vessels fill the
vacant spaces of the composition. Behind the buildings we see the
commencement of the desert. The water forms large pools at the base of
overhanging hills, and various animals, real or imaginary, are pursued by
shaven-headed hunters in the upper part of the picture. Now, precisely
after the manner of the Roman mosaicist, the old Egyptian artist placed
himself, as it were, on the Nile, and reproduced all that lay between his
own standpoint and the horizon. In the wall-painting (fig. 176) the river
flows along the line next the floor, boats come and go, and boatmen fall to
blows with punting poles and gaffs. In the division next above, we see the
river bank and the adjoining flats, where a party of slaves, hidden in the
long grasses, trap and catch birds. Higher still, boat-making, rope-making,
and fish-curing are going on. Finally, in the highest register of all, next
the ceiling, are depicted the barren hills and undulating plains of the
desert, where greyhounds chase the gazelle, and hunters trammel big game
with the lasso. Each longitudinal section corresponds, in fact, with a
plane of the landscape; but the artist, instead of placing his planes in
perspective, has treated them separately, and placed them one above the
other. We find the same disposition of the parts in all Egyptian tomb
paintings. Scenes of inundation and civil life are ranged along the base of
the wall, mountain subjects and hunting scenes being invariably placed high
up. Sometimes, interposed between these two extremes, the artist has
introduced subjects dealing with the pursuits of the herdsman, the field
labourer, and the craftsman. Elsewhere, he suppresses these intermediary
episodes, and passes abruptly from the watery to the sandy region. Thus,
the mosaic of Palestrina and the tomb-paintings of Pharaonic Egypt
reproduce the same group of subjects, treated after the conventional styles
and methods of two different schools of art. Like the mosaic, the wall
scenes of the tomb formed, not a series of independent scenes, but an
ordinary composition, the unity of which is readily recognised by such as
are skilled to read the art-language of the period.
2.--TECHNICAL PROCESSES.
[Illustration: Fig. 178.--Sculptor's sketch from Ancient Empire tomb.]
[Illustration: Fig. 179.--Sculptor's sketch from Ancient Empire tomb.]
The preparation of the surface about to be decorated demanded much time and
care. Seeing how imperfect were the methods of construction, and how
impossible it was for the architect to ensure a perfectly level surface for
the facing stones of his temple-walls and pylons, the decorator had
perforce to accommodate himself to a surface slightly rounded in some
places and slightly hollowed in others. Even the blocks of which it was
formed were scarcely homogeneous in texture. The limestone strata in which
the Theban catacombs were excavated were almost always interspersed with
flint nodules, fossils, and petrified shells. These faults were variously
remedied according as the decoration was to be sculptured or painted. If
painted, the wall was first roughly levelled, and then overlaid with a coat
of black clay and chopped straw, similar to the mixture used for brick-
making. If sculptured, then the artist had to arrange his subject so as to
avoid the inequalities of the stone as much as possible. When these
occurred in the midst of the figure subjects, and if they did not offer too
stubborn a resistance to the chisel, they were simply worked over;
otherwise the piece was cut out and a new piece fitted in, or the hole was
filled up with white cement. This mending process was no trifling matter.
We could point to tomb-chambers where every wall is thus inlaid to the
extent of one quarter of its surface. The preliminary work being done, the
whole was covered with a thin coat of fine plaster mixed with white of
egg, which hid the mud-wash or the piecing, and prepared a level and
polished surface for the pencil of the artist. In chambers, or parts of
chambers, which have been left unfinished, and even in the quarries, we
constantly find sketches of intended bas-reliefs, outlined in red or black
ink. The copy was generally executed upon a small scale, then squared off,
and transferred to the wall by the pupils and assistants of the master. As
in certain scenes carefully copied by Prisse from the walls of Theban
tombs, the subject is occasionally indicated by only two or three rapid
strokes of the reed (fig. 178). Elsewhere, the outline is fully made out,
and the figures only await the arrival of the sculptor. Some designers took
pains to determine the position of the shoulders, and the centre of gravity
of the bodies, by vertical and horizontal lines, upon which, by means of a
dot, they noted the height of the knee, the hips, and other parts (fig.
179). Others again, more self-reliant, attacked their subject at once, and
drew in the figures without the aid of guiding points. Such were the
artists who decorated the catacomb of Seti I., and the southern walls of
the temple of Abydos. Their outlines are so firm, and their facility is so
surprising, that they have been suspected of stencilling; but no one who
has closely examined their figures, or who has taken the trouble to measure
them with a compass, can maintain that opinion. The forms of some are
slighter than the forms of others; while in some the contours of the chest
are more accentuated, and the legs farther apart, than in others. The
master had little to correct in the work of these subordinates. Here and
there he made a head more erect, accentuated or modified the outline of a
knee, or improved some detail of arrangement. In one instance, however, at
Kom Ombo, on the ceiling of a Graeco-Roman portico, some of the divinities
had been falsely oriented, their feet being placed where their arms should
have been. The master consequently outlined them afresh, and on the same
squared surface, without effacing the first drawing. Here, at all events,
the mistake was discovered in time. At Karnak, on the north wall of the
hypostyle hall, and again at Medinet Habu, the faults of the original
design were not noticed till the sculptor had finished his part of the
work. The figures of Seti I. and Rameses III. were thrown too far back, and
threatened to overbalance themselves; so they were smoothed over with
cement and cut anew. Now, the cement has flaked off, and the work of the
first chisel is exposed to view. Seti I. and Rameses III. have each two
profiles, the one very lightly marked, the other boldly cut into the
surface of the stone (fig. 180).
[Illustration: Fig. 180.--Sculptor's correction, Medinet Habû, Rameses
III.]
[Illustration: Fig. 181.--Bow drill.]
The sculptors of ancient Egypt were not so well equipped as those of our
own day. A kneeling scribe in limestone at the Gizeh Museum has been carved
with the chisel, the grooves left by the tool being visible on his skin. A
statue in grey serpentine, in the same collection, bears traces of the use
of two different tools, the body being spotted all over with point-marks,
and the unfinished head being blocked out splinter by splinter with a small
hammer. Similar observations, and the study of the monuments, show that the
drill (fig. 181), the toothed-chisel, and the gouge were also employed.
There have been endless discussions as to whether these tools were of iron
or of bronze. Iron, it is argued, was deemed impure. No one could make use
of it, even for the basest needs of daily life, without incurring a taint
prejudicial to the soul both in this world and the next. But the impurity
of any given object never sufficed to prevent the employment of it when
required. Pigs also were impure; yet the Egyptians bred them. They bred
them, indeed, so abundantly in certain districts, that our worthy Herodotus
tells us how the swine were turned into the fields after seed-sowing, in
order that they might tread in the grain. So also iron, like many other
things in Egypt, was pure or impure according to circumstances. If some
traditions held it up to odium as an evil thing, and stigmatised it as the
"bones of Typhon," other traditions equally venerable affirmed that it was
the very substance of the canopy of heaven. So authoritative was this view,
that iron was currently known as "_Ba-en-pet_," or the celestial metal.[35]
The only fragment of metal found in the great pyramid is a piece of plate-
iron;[36] and if ancient iron objects are nowadays of exceptional rarity as
compared with ancient bronze objects, it is because iron differs from
bronze, inasmuch as it is not protected from destruction by its oxide. Rust
speedily devours it, and it needs a rare combination of favourable
circumstances to preserve it intact. If, however, it is quite certain that
the Egyptians were acquainted with, and made use of, iron, it is no less
certain that they were wholly unacquainted with steel. This being the case,
one asks how they can possibly have dealt at will upon the hardest rocks,
even upon such as we ourselves hesitate to attack, namely, diorite, basalt,
and the granite of Syene. The manufacturers of antiquities who sculpture
granite for the benefit of tourists, have found a simple solution of this
problem. They work with some twenty common iron chisels at hand, which
after a very few turns are good for nothing. When one is blunted, they take
up another, and so on till the stock is exhausted. Then they go to the
forge, and put their tools into working order again. The process is neither
so long nor so difficult as might be supposed. In the Gizeh Museum is a
life-size head, produced from a block of black and red granite in less than
a fortnight by one of the best forgers in Luxor. I have no doubt that the
ancient Egyptians worked in precisely the same way, and mastered the
hardest stones by the use of iron. Practice soon taught them methods by
which their labour might be lightened, and their tools made to yield
results as delicate and subtle as those which we achieve with our own. As
soon as the learner knew how to manage the point and the mallet, his master
set him to copy a series of graduated models representing an animal in
various stages of completion, or a part of the human body, or the whole
human body, from the first rough sketch to the finished design (fig. 182).
Every year, these models are found in sufficient number to establish
examples of progressive series. Apart from isolated specimens which are
picked up everywhere, the Gizeh collection contains a set of fifteen from
Sakkarah, forty-one from Tanis, and a dozen from Thebes and Medinet Habû.
They were intended partly for the study of bas-reliefs, partly for the
study of sculpture proper; and they reveal the method in use for both.[37]
[Illustration: Fig. 182.--Sculptor's trial-piece, Eighteenth Dynasty.]
The Egyptians treated bas-relief in three ways: either as a simple
engraving executed by means of incised lines; or by cutting away the
surface of the stone round the figure, and so causing it to stand out in
relief upon the wall; or by sinking the design below the wall-surface and
cutting it in relief at the bottom of the hollow. The first method has the
advantage of being expeditious, and the disadvantage of not being
sufficiently decorative. Rameses III. made use of it in certain parts of
his temple at Medinet Habû; but, as a rule, it was preferred for stelae and
small monuments. The last-named method lessened not only the danger of
damage to the work, but the labour of the workman. It evaded the dressing
down of the background, which was a distinct economy of time, and it left
no projecting work on the surface of the walls, the design being thus
sheltered from accidental blows. The intermediate process was, however,
generally adopted, and appears to have been taught in the schools by
preference. The models were little rectangular tablets, squared off in
order that the scholar might enlarge or reduce the scale of his subject
without departing from the traditional proportions. Some of these models
are wrought on both sides; but the greater number are sculptured on one
side only. Sometimes the design represents a bull; sometimes the head of a
cynocephalous ape, of a ram, of a lion, of a divinity. Occasionally, we
find the subject in duplicate, side by side, being roughly blocked out to
the left, and highly finished to the right. In no instance does the relief
exceed a quarter of an inch, and it is generally even less. Not but that
the Egyptians sometimes cut boldly into the stone. At Medinet Habû and
Karnak--on the higher parts of these temples, where the work is in granite
or sandstone, and exposed to full daylight--the bas-relief decoration
projects full 6-3/8 inches above the surface. Had it been lower, the
tableaux would have been, as it were, absorbed by the flood of light poured
upon them, and to the eye of the spectator would have presented only a
confused network of lines. The models designed for the study of the round
are even more instructive than the rest. Some which have come down to us
are plaster casts of familiar subjects. The head, the arms, the legs, the
trunk, each part of the body, in short, was separately cast. If a complete
figure were wanted, the _disjecta membra_ were put together, and the result
was a statue of a man, or of a woman, kneeling, standing, seated,
squatting, the arms extended or falling passively by the sides. This
curious collection was discovered at Tanis, and dates probably from
Ptolemaic times.[38] Models of the Pharaonic ages are in soft limestone,
and nearly all represent portraits of reigning sovereigns. These are best
described as cubes measuring about ten inches each way. The work was begun
by covering one face of a cube with a network of lines crossing each other
at right angles; these regulated the relative position of the features.
Then the opposite side was attacked, the distances being taken from the
scale on the reverse face. A mere oval was designed on this first block; a
projection in the middle and a depression to right and left, vaguely
indicating the whereabouts of nose and eyes. The forms become more definite
as we pass from cube to cube, and the face emerges by degrees. The limit of
the contours is marked off by parallel lines cut vertically from top to
bottom. The angles were next cut away and smoothed down, so as to bring out
the forms. Gradually the features become disengaged from the block, the eye
looks out, the nose gains refinement, the mouth is developed. When the
last cube is reached, there remains nothing to finish save the details of
the head-dress and the basilisk on the brow. No scholar's model in basalt
has yet been found;[39] but the Egyptians, like our monumental masons,
always kept a stock of half-finished statues in hard stone, which could be
turned out complete in a few hours. The hands, feet, and bust needed only a
few last touches; but the heads were merely blocked out, and the clothing
left in the rough. Half a day's work then sufficed to transform the face
into a portrait of the purchaser, and to give the last new fashion to the
kilt. The discovery of some two or three statues of this kind has shown us
as much of the process as a series of teacher's models might have done.
Volcanic rocks could not be cut with the continuity and regularity of
limestone. The point only could make any impression upon these obdurate
materials. When, by force of time and patience, the work had thus been
finished to the degree required, there would often remain some little
irregularities of surface, due, for example, to the presence of nodules and
heterogeneous substances, which the sculptor had not ventured to attack,
for fear of splintering away part of the surrounding surface. In order to
remove these irregularities, another tool was employed; namely, a stone cut
in the form of an axe. Applying the sharp edge of this instrument to the
projecting nodule, the artist struck it with a round stone in place of a
mallet. A succession of carefully calculated blows with these rude tools
pulverised the obtrusive knob, which disappeared in dust. All minor
defects being corrected, the monument still looked dull and unfinished. It
was necessary to polish it, in order to efface the scars of point and
mallet. This was a most delicate operation, one slip of the hand, or a
moment's forgetfulness, being enough to ruin the labour of many weeks. The
dexterity of the Egyptian craftsman was, however, so great that accidents
rarely happened. The Sebekemsaf of Gizeh, the colossal Rameses II. of
Luxor, challenge the closest examination. The play of light upon the
surface may at first prevent the eye from apprehending the fineness of the
work; but, seen under favourable circumstances, the details of knee and
chest, of shoulder and face, prove to be no less subtly rendered in granite
than in limestone. Excess of polish has no more spoiled the statues of
Ancient Egypt than it spoiled those of the sculptors of the Italian
Renaissance.
A sandstone or limestone statue would have been deemed imperfect if left to
show the colour of the stone in which it was cut, and was painted from head
to foot. In bas-relief, the background was left untouched and only the
figures were coloured. The Egyptians had more pigments at their disposal
than is commonly supposed. The more ancient painters' palettes--and we have
some which date from the Fifth Dynasty--have compartments for yellow, red,
blue, brown, white, black, and green.[40] Others, of the time of the
Eighteenth Dynasty, provide for three varieties of yellow, three of brown,
two of red, two of blue, and two of green; making in all some fourteen or
sixteen different tints.
Black was obtained by calcining the bones of animals. The other substances
employed in painting were indigenous to the country. The white is made of
gypsum, mixed with albumen or honey; the yellows are ochre, or sulphuret of
arsenic, the orpiment of our modern artists; the reds are ochre, cinnabar,
or vermilion; the blues are pulverised lapis-lazuli, or silicate of copper.
If the substance was rare or costly, a substitute drawn from the products
of native industry was found. Lapis-lazuli, for instance, was replaced by
blue frit made with an admixture of silicate of copper, and this was
reduced to an impalpable powder. The painters kept their colours in tiny
bags, and, as required, mixed them with water containing a little gum
tragacanth. They laid them on by means of a reed, or a more or less fine
hair brush. When well prepared, these pigments are remarkably solid, and
have changed but little during the lapse of ages. The reds have darkened,
the greens have faded, the blues have turned somewhat green or grey; but
this is only on the surface. If that surface is scraped off, the colour
underneath is brilliant and unchanged. Before the Theban period, no
precautions were taken to protect the painter's work from the action of air
and light. About the time of the Twentieth Dynasty, however, it became
customary to coat painted surfaces with a transparent varnish which was
soluble in water, and which was probably made from the gum of some kind of
acacia. It was not always used in the same manner. Some painters varnished
the whole surface, while others merely glazed the ornaments and
accessories, without touching the flesh-tints or the clothing. This varnish
has cracked from the effects of age, or has become so dark as to spoil the
work it was intended to preserve. Doubtless, the Egyptians discovered the
bad effects produced by it, as we no longer meet with it after the close of
the Twentieth Dynasty.
Egyptian painters laid on broad, flat, uniform washes of colour; they did
not paint in our sense of the term; they illuminated. Just as in drawing
they reduced everything to lines, and almost wholly suppressed the internal
modelling, so in adding colour they still further simplified their subject
by merging all varieties of tone, and all play of light and shadow, in one
uniform tint. Egyptian painting is never quite true, and never quite false.
Without pretending to the faithful imitation of nature, it approaches
nature as nearly as it may; sometimes understating, sometimes exaggerating,
sometimes substituting ideal or conventional renderings for strict
realities. Water, for instance, is always represented by a flat tint of
blue, or by blue covered with zigzag lines in black. The buff and bluish
hues of the vulture are translated into bright red and vivid blue. The
flesh-tints of men are of a dark reddish brown, and the flesh-tints of
women are pale yellow. The colours conventionally assigned to each animate
and inanimate object were taught in the schools, and their use handed on
unchanged from generation to generation. Now and then it happened that a
painter more daring than his contemporaries ventured to break with
tradition. In the Sixth Dynasty tombs at Deir el Gebrawî, there are
instances where the flesh tint of the women is that conventionally devoted
to the depiction of men. At Sakkarah, under the Fifth Dynasty, and at Abû
Simbel, under the Nineteenth Dynasty, we find men with skins as yellow as
those of the women; while in the tombs of Thebes and Abydos, about the time
of Thothmes IV. and Horemheb, there occur figures with flesh-tints of rose-
colour.[41]
It must not, however, be supposed that the effect produced by this
artificial system was grating or discordant. Even in works of small size,
such as illuminated MSS. of _The Book of the Dead_, or the decoration of
mummy-cases and funerary coffers, there is both sweetness and harmony of
colour. The most brilliant hues are boldly placed side by side, yet with
full knowledge of the relations subsisting between these hues, and of the
phenomena which must necessarily result from such relations. They neither
jar together, nor war with each other, nor extinguish each other. On the
contrary, each maintains its own value, and all, by mere juxtaposition,
give rise to the half-tones which harmonise them.
Turning from small things to large ones, from the page of papyrus, or the
panel of sycamore wood, to the walls of tombs and temples, we find the
skilful employment of flat tints equally soothing and agreeable to the eye.
Each wall is treated as a whole, the harmony of colour being carried out
from bottom to top throughout the various superimposed stages into which
the surface was divided. Sometimes the colours are distributed according to
a scale of rhythm, or symmetry, balancing and counterbalancing each other.
Sometimes one special tint predominates, thus determining the general tone
and subordinating every other hue. The vividness of the final effect is
always calculated according to the quality and quantity of light by which
the picture is destined to be seen. In very dark halls the force of colour
is carried as far as it will go, because it would not otherwise have been
visible by the flickering light of lamps and torches. On outer wall-
surfaces and on pylon-fronts, it was as vivid as in the darkest depths of
excavated catacombs; and this because, no matter how extreme it might be,
the sun would subdue its splendour. But in half-lighted places, such as the
porticoes of temples and the ante-chambers of tombs, colour is so dealt
with as to be soft and discreet. In a word, painting was in Egypt the mere
humble servant of architecture and sculpture. We must not dream of
comparing it with our own, or even with that of the Greeks; but if we take
it simply for what it is, accepting it in the secondary place assigned to
it, we cannot fail to recognise its unusual merits. Egyptian painting
excelled in the sense of monumental decoration, and if we ever revert to
the fashion of colouring the _façades_ of our houses and our public
edifices, we shall lose nothing by studying Egyptian methods or reproducing
Egyptian processes.
[35] The late T. Deveria ingeniously conjectured that "Ba-en-pet" (iron of
heaven) might mean the ferruginous substance of meteoric stones. See
_Mélanges d'Archéologie Egyptienne et Assyrienne_, vol. i.--
A.B.E.
[36] The traces of tools upon the masonry show the use of bronze and
jewel-points.--A.B.E.
[37] Many such trial-pieces were found by Petrie in the ruins of a
sculptor's house at Tell el Amarna.
[38] A similar collection was found by Mr. F. Ll. Griffith at Tell
Gemayemi, in 1886, during his excavations for the Egypt Exploration
Fund. See Mr. Petrie's _Tanis_. Part II., Egypt Exploration
Fund.--A.B.E.
[39] Mr. Loftie's collection contains, however, an interesting piece of
trial-work consisting of the head of a Ptolemaic queen in red
granite.--A.B.E.
[40] For pigments used at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, see Petrie's
_Medum_.
[41] The rose-coloured, or rather crimson, flesh-tints are also to be seen
at El Kab, and in the famous speos at Beit el Wally, both _tempo_
Nineteenth Dynasty.--A.B.E.
3.--WORKS OF SCULPTURE.
[Illustration: Fig. 183.--The Great Sphinx of Gizeh.]
To this day, the most ancient statue known is a colossus--namely, the Great
Sphinx of Gizeh. It was already in existence in the time of Khûfû (Cheops),
and perhaps we should not be far wrong if we ventured to ascribe it to the
generations before Mena, called in the priestly chronicles "the Servants
of Horus." Hewn in the living rock at the extreme verge of the Libyan
plateau, it seems, as the representative of Horus, to uprear its head in
order to be the first to catch sight of his father, Ra, the rising sun,
across the valley (fig. 183). For centuries the sands have buried it to the
chin, yet without protecting it from ruin. Its battered body preserves but
the general form of a lion's body. The paws and breast, restored by the
Ptolemies and the Caesars, retain but a part of the stone facing with which
they were then clothed in order to mask the ravages of time. The lower part
of the head-dress has fallen, and the diminished neck looks too slender to
sustain the enormous weight of the head. The nose and beard have been
broken off by fanatics, and the red hue which formerly enlivened the
features is almost wholly effaced. And yet, notwithstanding its fallen
fortunes, the monster preserves an expression of sovereign strength and
greatness. The eyes gaze out afar with a look of intense and profound
thoughtfulness; the mouth still wears a smile; the whole countenance is
informed with power and repose. The art which conceived and carved this
prodigious statue was a finished art; an art which had attained self-
mastery, and was sure of its effects. How many centuries had it taken to
arrive at this degree of maturity and perfection? In certain pieces
belonging to various museums, such as the statues of Sepa and his wife at
the Louvre, and the bas-reliefs of the tomb of Khabiûsokarî at Gizeh,
critics have mistakenly recognised the faltering first efforts of an
unskilled people. The stiffness of attitude and gesture, the exaggerated
squareness of the shoulders, the line of green paint under the eyes,--in a
word, all those characteristics which are quoted as signs of extreme
antiquity, are found in certain monuments of the Fifth and Sixth
Dynasties. The contemporary sculptors of any given period were not all
equally skilful. If some were capable of doing good work, the greater
number were mere craftsmen; and we must be careful not to ascribe awkward
manipulation, or lack of teaching, to the timidity of archaism. The works
of the primitive dynasties yet sleep undiscovered beneath seventy feet of
sand at the foot of the Sphinx; those of the historic dynasties are daily
exhumed from the depths of the neighbouring tombs. These have not yielded
Egyptian art as a whole; but they have familiarised us with one of its
schools--the school of Memphis. The Delta, Hermopolis, Abydos, the environs
of Thebes and Asûan[42], do not appear upon the stage earlier than towards
the Sixth Dynasty; and even so, we know them through but a small number of
sepulchres long since violated and despoiled. The loss is probably not very
great. Memphis was the capital; and thither the presence of the Pharaohs
must have attracted all the talent of the vassal principalities. Judging
from the results of our excavations in the Memphite necropolis alone, it is
possible to determine the characteristics of both sculpture and painting in
the time of Seneferû and his successors with as much exactness as if we
were already in possession of all the monuments which the valley of the
Nile yet holds in reserve for future explorers.
[Illustration: Fig. 184.--Panel from tomb of Hesi.]
The lesser folk of the art-world excelled in the manipulation of brush and
chisel, and that their skill was of a high order is testified by the
thousands of tableaux they have left behind them. The relief is low; the
colour sober; the composition learned. Architecture, trees, vegetation,
irregularities of ground, are summarily indicated, and are introduced only
when necessary to the due interpretation of the scene represented. Men and
animals, on the other hand, are rendered with a wealth of detail, a truth
of character, and sometimes a force of treatment, to which the later
schools of Egyptian art rarely attained. Six wooden panels from the tomb of
Hesi in the Gizeh Museum represent perhaps the finest known specimens of
this branch of art. Mariette ascribed them to the Third Dynasty, and he may
perhaps have been right; though for my own part I incline to date them from
the Fifth Dynasty. In these panels there is nothing that can be called a
"subject." Hesi either sits or stands (fig. 184), and has four or five
columns of hieroglyphs above his head; but the firmness of line, the
subtlety of modelling, the ease of execution, are unequalled. Never has
wood been cut with a more delicate chisel or a firmer hand.
The variety of attitude and gesture which we so much admire in the Egyptian
bas-relief is lacking to the statues. A mourner weeping, a woman bruising
corn for bread, a baker rolling dough, are subjects as rare in the round as
they are common in bas-relief. In sculpture, the figure is generally
represented either standing with the feet side by side and quite still, or
with one leg advanced in the act of walking; or seated upon a chair or a
cube; or kneeling; or, still more frequently, sitting on the ground cross-
legged, as the fellahin are wont to sit to this day. This intentional
monotony of style would be inexplicable if we were ignorant of the purpose
for which such statues were intended. They represent the dead man for whom
the tomb was made, his family, his servants, his slaves, and his kinsfolk.
The master is always shown sitting or standing, and he could not
consistently be seen in any other attitude. The tomb is, in fact, the house
in which he rests after the labours of life, as once he used to rest in his
earthly home; and the scenes depicted upon the walls represent the work
which he was officially credited with performing. Here he superintends the
preliminary operations necessary to raise the food by which he is to be
nourished in the form of funerary offerings; namely, seed-sowing,
harvesting, stock-breeding, fishing, hunting, and the like. In short, "he
superintends all the labour which is done for the eternal dwelling." When
thus engaged, he is always standing upright, his head uplifted, his hands
pendent, or holding the staff and baton of command. Elsewhere, the diverse
offerings are brought to him one by one, and then he sits in a chair of
state. These are his two attitudes, whether as a bas-relief subject or a
statue. Standing, he receives the homage of his vassals; sitting, he
partakes of the family repast. The people of his household comport
themselves before him as becomes their business and station. His wife
either stands beside him, sits on the same chair or on a second chair by
his side, or squats beside his feet as during his lifetime. His son, if a
child at the time when the statue was ordered, is represented in the garb
of infancy; or with the bearing and equipment proper to his position, if a
man. The slaves bruise the corn, the cellarers tar the wine jars, the hired
mourners weep and tear their hair. His little social world followed the
Egyptian to his tomb, the duties of his attendants being prescribed for
them after death, just as they had been prescribed for them during life.
And the kind of influence which the religious conception of the soul
exercised over the art of the sculptor did not end here. From the moment
that the statue is regarded as the support of the Double, it becomes a
condition of primary importance that the statue shall reproduce, at least
in the abstract, the proportions and distinctive peculiarities of the
corporeal body; and this in order that the Double shall more easily adapt
himself to his new body of stone or wood.[43] The head is therefore always
a faithful portrait; but the body, on the contrary, is, as it were, a
medium kind of body, representing the original at his highest development,
and consequently able to exert the fulness of his physical powers when
admitted to the society of the gods. Hence men are always sculptured in the
prime of life, and women with the delicate proportions of early womanhood.
This conventional idea was never departed from, unless in cases of very
marked deformity. The statue of a dwarf reproduced all the ugly
peculiarities of the dwarf's own body; and it was important that it should
so reproduce them. If a statue of the ordinary type had been placed in the
tomb of the dead man, his "Ka," accustomed during life to the deformity of
his limbs, would not be able to adapt itself to an upright and shapely
figure, and would therefore be deprived of the conditions necessary to his
future well-being. The artist was free to vary the details and arrange the
accessories according to his fancy; but without missing the point of his
work, he could not change the attitude, or depart from the general style of
the conventional portrait statue. This persistent monotony of pose and
subject produces a depressing effect upon the spectator,--an effect which
is augmented by the obtrusive character given to the supports. These
statues are mostly backed by a kind of rectangular pediment, which is
either squared off just at the base of the skull, or carried up in a point
and lost in the head-dress, or rounded at the top and showing above the
head of the figure. The arms are seldom separated from the body, but are
generally in one piece with the sides and hips. The whole length of the leg
which is placed in advance of the other is very often connected with the
pediment by a band of stone. It has been conjectured that this course was
imposed upon the sculptor by reason of the imperfection of his tools, and
the consequent danger of fracturing the statue when cutting away the
superfluous material--an explanation which may be correct as regards the
earliest schools, but which does not hold good for the time of the Fourth
Dynasty. We could point to more than one piece of sculpture of that period,
even in granite, in which all the limbs are free, having been cut away by
means of either the chisel or the drill. If pediment supports were
persisted in to the end, their use must have been due, not to helplessness,
but to routine, or to an exaggerated respect for ancient method.
[Illustration: Fig. 185.--The Cross-legged Scribe at the Louvre, Old
Empire.]
Most museums are poor in statues of the Memphite school; France and Egypt
possess, however, some twenty specimens which suffice to ensure it an
honourable place in the history of art. At the Louvre we have the "Cross-
legged Scribe,"[44] and the statues of Skemka and Pahûrnefer; at Gizeh
there are the "Sheikh el Beled"[45] and his wife, Khafra[46], Ranefer, the
Prince and General Rahotep, and his wife, Nefert, a "Kneeling Scribe," and
a "Cross-legged Scribe." The original of the "Cross-legged Scribe" of the
Louvre was not a handsome man (fig. 185), but the vigour and fidelity of
his portrait amply compensate for the absence of ideal beauty. His legs are
crossed and laid flat to the ground in one of those attitudes common among
Orientals, yet all but impossible to Europeans. The bust is upright, and
well balanced upon the hips. The head is uplifted. The right hand holds the
reed pen, which pauses in its place on the open papyrus scroll. Thus, for
six thousand years he has waited for his master to go on with the long-
interrupted dictation. The face is square-cut, and the strongly-marked
features indicate a man in the prime of life. The mouth, wide and thin-
lipped, rises slightly towards the corners, which are lost in the
projecting muscles by which it is framed in. The cheeks are bony and lank;
the ears are thick and heavy, and stand out well from the head; the thick,
coarse hair is cut close above the brow. The eyes, which are large and well
open, owe their lifelike vivacity to an ingenious contrivance of the
ancient artist. The orbit has been cut out from the stone, the hollow being
filled with an eye composed of enamel, white and black. The edges of the
eyelids are of bronze, and a small silver nail inserted behind the iris
receives and reflects the light in such wise as to imitate the light of
life. The contours of the flesh are somewhat full and wanting in firmness,
as would be the case in middle life, if the man's occupation debarred him
from active exercise. The forms of the arm and back are in good relief; the
hands are hard and bony, with fingers of somewhat unusual length; and the
knees are sculptured with a minute attention to anatomical details. The
whole body is, as it were, informed by the expression of the face, and is
dominated by the attentive suspense which breathes in every feature. The
muscles of the arm, of the bust, and of the shoulder are caught in half
repose, and are ready to return at once to work. This careful observance of
the professional attitude, or the characteristic gesture, is equally marked
in the Gizeh Cross-legged Scribe, and in all the Ancient Empire statues
which I have had an opportunity of studying.
The Cross-legged Scribe of Gizeh (fig. 186) was discovered by M. de Morgan
at Sakkarah in the beginning of 1893. This statue exhibits a no less
surprising vigour and certainty of intention and execution on the part of
the sculptor than does its fellow of the Louvre, while representing a
younger man of full, firm, and supple figure.
[Illustration: Fig. 186.--The Cross-legged Scribe of Gizeh, from Sakkarah.]
Khafra is a king (fig. 187). He sits squarely upon his chair of state, his
hands upon his knees, his chest thrown forward, his head erect, his gaze
confident. Had the emblems of his rank been destroyed, and the inscription
effaced which tells his name, his bearing alone would have revealed the
Pharaoh. Every trait is characteristic of the man who from childhood
upwards has known himself to be invested with sovereign authority. Ranefer
belonged to one of the great feudal families of his time. He stands
upright, his arms down, his left leg forward, in the attitude of a prince
inspecting a march-past of his vassals. The countenance is haughty, the
attitude bold; but Ranefer does not impress us with the almost superhuman
calm and decision of Khafra.
[Illustration: Fig. 187.--King Khafra, Fourth Dynasty.]
[Illustration: Fig. 188.--Sheikh el Beled, Old Empire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 189.--Rahotep, Ancient Empire.]
General Rahotep[47] (fig. 189), despite his title and his high military
rank, looks as if he were of inferior birth. Stalwart and square-cut, he
has somewhat of the rustic in his physiognomy. Nefert, on the contrary
(fig. 190), was a princess of the blood royal; and her whole person is, as
it were, informed with a certain air of resolution and command, which the
sculptor has expressed very happily. She wears a close-fitting garment,
opening to a point in front. The shoulders, bosom, and bodily contours are
modelled under the drapery with a grace and reserve which it is impossible
to praise too highly. Her face, round and plump, is framed in masses of
fine black hair, confined by a richly-ornamented bandeau. This wedded pair
are in limestone, painted; the husband being coloured of a reddish brown
hue, and the wife of a tawny buff.
[Illustration: Fig. 190.--Nefert, wife of Rahotep, Ancient Empire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 191.--Head of the Sheikh el Beled.]
[Illustration: Fig. 192.--Wife of the Sheikh el Beled, Old Empire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 193.--The Kneeling Scribe, Old Empire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 194.--A Bread-maker, Old Empire.]
Turning to the "Sheikh el Beled" (figs. 188, 191), we descend several
degrees in the social scale. Raemka was a "superintendent of works," which
probably means that he was an overseer of corvée labour at the time of
building the great pyramids. He belonged to the middle class; and his whole
person expresses vulgar contentment and self-satisfaction. We seem to see
him in the act of watching his workmen, his staff of acacia wood in his
hand. The feet of the statue had perished, but have been restored. The body
is stout and heavy, and the neck thick. The head (fig. 191), despite its
vulgarity, does not lack energy. The eyes are inserted, like those of the
"Cross-legged Scribe." By a curious coincidence, the statue, which was
found at Sakkarah, happened to be strikingly like the local Sheikh el
Beled, or head-man, of the village. Always quick to seize upon the amusing
side of an incident, the Arab diggers at once called it the "Sheikh el
Beled," and it has retained the name ever since. The statue of his wife,
interred beside his own, is unfortunately mutilated. It is a mere trunk,
without legs or arms (fig. 192); yet enough remains to show that the figure
represented a good type of the Egyptian middle-class matron, commonplace in
appearance and somewhat acid of temper. The "Kneeling Scribe" of the Gizeh
collection (fig. 193) belongs to the lowest middle-class rank, such as it
is at the present day. Had he not been dead more than six thousand years, I
could protest that I had not long ago met him face to face, in one of the
little towns of Upper Egypt. He has just brought a roll of papyrus, or a
tablet covered with writing, for his master's approval. Kneeling in the
prescribed attitude of an inferior, his hands crossed, his shoulders
rounded, his head slightly bent forward, he waits till the great man shall
have read it through. Of what is he thinking? A scribe might feel some not
unreasonable apprehensions, when summoned thus into the presence of his
superior. The stick played a prominent part in official life, and an error
of addition, a fault in orthography, or an order misunderstood, would be
enough to bring down a shower of blows. The sculptor has, with inimitable
skill, seized that expression of resigned uncertainty and passive
gentleness which is the result of a whole life of servitude. There is a
smile upon his lips, but it is the smile of etiquette, in which there is no
gladness. The nose and cheeks are puckered up in harmony with the forced
grimace upon the mouth. His large eyes (again in enamel) have the fixed
look of one who waits vacantly, without making any effort to concentrate
his sight or his thoughts upon a definite object. The face lacks both
intelligence and vivacity; but his work, after all, called for no special
nimbleness of wit. Khafra is in diorite; Raemka and his wife are carved in
wood; the other statues named are of limestone; yet, whatever the material
employed, the play of the chisel is alike free, subtle, and delicate. The
head of the scribe and the bas-relief portrait of Pharaoh Menkaûhor, in the
Louvre, the dwarf Nemhotep (fig. 195), and the slaves who prepare food-
offerings at Gizeh, are in no wise inferior to the "Cross-legged Scribe" or
the "Sheikh el Beled." The baker kneading his dough (fig. 194) is
thoroughly in his work. His half-stooping attitude, and the way in which he
leans upon the kneading-trough, are admirably natural. The dwarf has a
big, elongated head, balanced by two enormous ears (fig. 195). He has a
foolish face, an ill-shapen mouth, and narrow slits of eyes, inclining
upwards to the temples. The bust is well developed, but the trunk is out of
proportion with the rest of his person. The artist has done his best to
disguise the lower limbs under a fine white tunic; but one feels that it is
too long for the little man's arms and legs.
[Illustration: Fig. 195.--The dwarf Nemhotep, Old Empire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 196.--One of the Tanis Sphinxes.]
The thighs could have existed only in a rudimentary form, and Nemhotep,
standing as best he can upon his misshapen feet, seems to be off his
balance, and ready to fall forward upon his face. It would be difficult to
find another work of art in which the characteristics of dwarfdom are more
cleverly reproduced.
The sculpture of the first Theban empire is in close connection with that
of Memphis. Methods, materials, design, composition, all are borrowed from
the elder school; the only new departure being in the proportions assigned
to the human figure. From the time of the Eleventh Dynasty, the legs become
longer and slighter, the hips smaller, the body and the neck more slender.
Works of this period are not to be compared with the best productions of
the earlier centuries. The wall-paintings of Siût, of Bersheh, of Beni
Hasan, and of Asûan, are not equal to those in the mastabas of Sakkarah and
Gizeh; nor are the most carefully-executed contemporary statues worthy to
take a place beside the "Sheikh el Beled" or the "Cross-legged Scribe."
Portrait statues of private persons, especially those found at Thebes, are,
so far as I have seen, decidedly bad, the execution being rude and the
expression vulgar. The royal statues of this period, which are nearly all
in black or grey granite, have been for the most part usurped by kings of
later date. Ûsertesen III., whose head and feet are in the Louvre, was
appropriated by Amenhotep III., as the sphinx of the Louvre and the colossi
of Gizeh were appropriated by Rameses II. Many museums possess specimens of
supposed Ramesside Pharaohs which, upon more careful inspection, we are
compelled to ascribe to the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Dynasty. Those of
undisputed identity, such as the Sebekhotep III. of the Louvre, the
Mermashiû of Tanis, the Sebekemsaf of Gizeh, and the colossi of the Isle of
Argo, though very skilfully executed, are wanting in originality and
vigour. One would say, indeed, that the sculptors had purposely endeavoured
to turn them all out after the one smiling and commonplace pattern. Great
is the contrast when we turn from these giant dolls to the black granite
sphinxes discovered by Mariette at Tanis in 1861, and by him ascribed to
the Hyksos period. Here energy, at all events, is not lacking. Wiry and
compact, the lion body is shorter than in sphinxes of the usual type. The
head, instead of wearing the customary "klaft," or head-gear of folded
linen, is clothed with an ample mane, which also surrounds the face. The
eyes are small; the nose is aquiline and depressed at the tip; the
cheekbones are prominent; the lower lip slightly protrudes. The general
effect of the face is, in short, so unlike the types we are accustomed to
find in Egypt, that it has been accepted in proof of an Asiatic origin
(fig. 196). These sphinxes are unquestionably anterior to the Eighteenth
Dynasty, because one of the kings of Avaris, named Apepi, has cut his name
upon the shoulder of each. Arguing from this fact, it was, however, too
hastily concluded that they are works of the time of that prince. On a
closer examination, we see that they had already been dedicated to some
Pharaoh of a yet earlier period, and that Apepi had merely usurped them;
and M. Golenischeff has shown that they were made for Amenemhat III., of
the Twelfth Dynasty, and with his features. Those so-called Hyksos
monuments may be the products of a local school, the origin of which may
have been independent, and its traditions quite different from the
traditions of the Memphite workshops. But except at Abydos, El Kab, Asûan,
and some two or three other places, the provincial art of ancient Egypt is
so little known to us that I dare not lay too much stress upon this
hypothesis. Whatever the origin of the Tanite School, it continued to exist
long after the expulsion of the Hyksos invaders, since one of its best
examples, a group representing the Nile of the North and the Nile of the
South, bearing trays laden with flowers and fish, was consecrated by
Pisebkhanû of the Twenty-first Dynasty.
[Illustration: Fig. 197.--Bas-relief head of Seti I.]
[Illustration: Fig. 198.--The god Amen, and Horemheb.]
[Illustration: Fig. 199.--Head of a Queen, Eighteenth Dynasty.]
The first three dynasties of the New Empire[48] have bequeathed us more
monuments than all the others put together. Painted bas-reliefs, statues of
kings and private persons, colossi, sphinxes, may be counted by hundreds
between the mouths of the Nile and the fourth cataract. The old sacerdotal
cities, Memphis, Thebes, Abydos, are naturally the richest; but so great
was the impetus given to art, that even remote provincial towns, such as
Abû Simbel, Redesîyeh, and Mesheikh, have their _chefs-d'oeuvre_, like the
great cities. The official portraits of Amenhotep I. at Turin, of Thothmes
I. and Thothmes III. at the British Museum, at Karnak, at Turin, and at
Gizeh, are conceived in the style of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties,
and are deficient in originality; but the bas-reliefs in temples and tombs
show a marked advance upon those of the earlier ages. The modelling is
finer; the figures are more numerous and better grouped; the relief is
higher; the effects of perspective are more carefully worked out. The wall-
subjects of Deir el Baharî, the tableaux in the tombs of Hûi, of Rekhmara,
of Anna, of Khamha, and of twenty more at Thebes, are surprisingly rich,
brilliant, and varied. Awakening to a sense of the picturesque, artists
introduced into their compositions all those details of architecture, of
uneven ground, of foreign plants, and the like, which formerly they
neglected, or barely indicated. The taste for the colossal, which had
fallen somewhat into abeyance since the time of the Great Sphinx, came once
again to the surface, and was developed anew. Amenhotep III. was not
content with statues of twenty-five or thirty feet in height, such as were
in favour among his ancestors. Those which he erected in advance of his
memorial chapel on the left bank of the Nile in Western Thebes, one of
which is the Vocal Memnon of the classic writers, sit fifty feet high. Each
was carved from a single block of sandstone, and they are as elaborately
finished as though they were of ordinary size. The avenues of sphinxes
which this Pharaoh marshalled before the temples of Luxor and Karnak do not
come to an end at fifty or a hundred yards from the gateway, but are
prolonged for great distances. In one avenue, they have the human head upon
the lion's body; in another, they are fashioned in the semblance of
kneeling rams. Khûenaten, the revolutionary successor of Amenhotep III.,
far from discouraging this movement, did what he could to promote it.
Never, perhaps, were Egyptian sculptors more unrestricted than by him at
Tell el Amarna. Military reviews, chariot-driving, popular festivals, state
receptions, the distribution of honours and rewards by the king in person,
representations of palaces, villas, and gardens, were among the subjects
which they were permitted to treat; and these subjects differed in so many
respects from traditional routine that they could give free play to their
fancy and to their natural genius. The spirit and gusto with which they
took advantage of their opportunities would scarcely be believed by one who
had not seen their works at Tell el Amarna. Some of their bas-reliefs are
designed in almost correct perspective; and in all, the life and stir of
large crowds are rendered with irreproachable truth. The political and
religious reaction which followed this reign arrested the evolution of art,
and condemned sculptors and painters to return to the observance of
traditional rules. Their personal influence and their teaching continued,
however, to make themselves felt under Horemheb, under Seti I., and even
under Rameses II. If, during more than a century, Egyptian art remained
free, graceful, and refined, that improvement was due to the school of Tell
el Amarna. In no instance perhaps did it produce work more perfect than the
bas-reliefs of the temple of Abydos, or those of the tomb of Seti I. The
head of the conqueror (fig. 197), always studied _con amore_, is a marvel
of reserved and sensitive grace. Rameses II. charging the enemy at Abû
Simbel is as fine as the portraits of Seti I., though in another style. The
action of the arm which brandishes the lance is somewhat angular, but the
expression of strength and triumph which animates the whole person of the
warrior king, and the despairing resignation of the vanquished, compensate
for this one defect. The group of Horemheb and the god Amen (fig. 198), in
the Museum of Turin, is a little dry in treatment. The faces of both god
and king lack expression, and their bodies are heavy and ill-balanced. The
fine colossi in red granite which Horemheb placed against the uprights of
the inner door of his first pylon at Karnak, the bas-reliefs on the walls
of his speos at Silsilis, his own portrait and that of one of the ladies of
his family now in the museum of Gizeh, are, so to say, spotless and
faultless. The queen's face (fig. 199) is animated and intelligent; the
eyes are large and prominent; the mouth is wide, but well shaped. This head
is carved in hard limestone of a creamy tint which seems to soften the
somewhat satirical expression of her eyes and smile. The king (fig. 200) is
in black granite; and the sombre hue of the stone at once produces a
mournful impression upon the spectator. His youthful face is pervaded by an
air of melancholy, such as we rarely see depicted in portraits of Pharaohs
of the great period. The nose is straight and delicate, the eyes are long,
the lips are large, full, somewhat contracted at the corners, and strongly
defined at the edges. The chin is overweighted by the traditional false
beard. Every detail is treated with as much skill as if the sculptor were
dealing with a soft stone instead of with a material which resisted the
chisel. Such, indeed, is the mastery of the execution, that one forgets the
difficulties of the task in the excellence of the results.
[Illustration: Fig. 200.--Head of Horemheb.]
[Illustration: Fig. 201.--Colossal statue of Rameses II., Luxor.]
It is unfortunate that Egyptian artists never signed their works; for the
sculptor of this portrait of Horemheb deserves to be remembered. Like the
Eighteenth Dynasty, the Nineteenth Dynasty delighted in colossi. Those of
Rameses II. at Luxor measured from eighteen to twenty feet in height (fig.
201); the colossal Rameses of the Ramesseum sat sixty feet high; and that
of Tanis about seventy.[49] The colossi of Abû Simbel, without being of
quite such formidable proportions, face the river in imposing array. To say
that the decline of Egyptian art began with Rameses II. is a commonplace of
contemporary criticism; yet nothing is less true than an axiom of this
kind. Many statues and bas-reliefs executed during his reign are no doubt
inconceivably rude and ugly; but these are chiefly found in provincial
towns where the schools were indifferent, and where the artists had no
fine examples before them. At Thebes, at Memphis, at Abydos, at Tanis, in
those towns of the Delta where the court habitually resided, and even at
Abû Simbel and Beit el Wally, the sculptors of Rameses II. yield nothing in
point of excellence to those of Seti I. and Horemheb. The decadence did not
begin till after the reign of Merenptah. When civil war and foreign
invasion brought Egypt to the brink of destruction, the arts, like all
else, suffered and rapidly declined. It is sad to follow their downward
progress under the later Ramessides, whether in the wall-subjects of the
royal tombs, or in the bas-reliefs of the temple of Khonsû, or on the
columns of the hypostyle hall at Karnak. Wood carving maintained its level
during a somewhat longer period. The admirable statuettes of priests and
children at Turin date from the Twentieth Dynasty. The advent of Sheshonk
and the internecine strife of the provinces at length completed the ruin of
Thebes, and the school which had produced so many masterpieces perished
miserably.
[Illustration Fig. 202.--Queen Ameniritis.]
[Illustration: Fig. 203.--The goddess Thûeris. Saïte work.]
The Renaissance did not dawn till near the end of the Ethiopian Dynasty,
some three hundred years later. The over-praised statue of Queen
Ameniritis[50] (fig. 202) already manifests some noteworthy qualities. The
limbs, somewhat long and fragile, are delicately treated; but the head is
heavy, being over-weighted by the wig peculiar to goddesses. Psammetichus
I., when his victories had established him upon the throne, busied himself
in the restoration of the temples. Under his auspices, the valley of the
Nile became one vast studio of painting and sculpture. The art of engraving
hieroglyphs attained a high degree of excellence, fine statues and bas-
reliefs were everywhere multiplied, and a new school arose. A marvellous
command of material, a profound knowledge of detail, and a certain elegance
tempered by severity, are the leading characteristics of this new school.
The Memphites preferred limestone; the Thebans selected red or grey
granite; but the Saïtes especially attacked basalt, breccia, and
serpentine, and with these fine-grained and almost homogeneous substances,
they achieved extraordinary results. They seem to have sought difficulties
for the mere pleasure of triumphing over them; and we have proof of the way
in which artists of real merit bestowed years and years on the chasing of
sarcophagus lids and the carving of statues in blocks of the hardest
material. The Thûeris, and the four monuments from the tomb of
Psammetichus[51] in the Gizeh Museum, are the most remarkable objects
hitherto discovered in this class of work. Thûeris[52] (fig. 203) was the
especial protectress of maternity, and presided over childbirth. Her
portrait was discovered by some native sebakh diggers[53] in the midst of
the mounds of the ancient city of Thebes. She was found standing upright in
a little chapel of white limestone which had been dedicated to her by one
Pibesa, a priest, in the name of Queen Nitocris, daughter of Psammetichus
I. This charming hippopotamus, whose figure is perhaps more plump than
graceful, is a fine example of difficulties overcome; but I do not know
that she has any other merit. The group belonging to Psammetichus has at
all events some artistic value. It consists of four pieces of green basalt;
namely, a table of offerings, a statue of Osiris, a statue of Nephthys, and
a Hathor-cow supporting a statuette of the deceased (fig. 204). All four
are somewhat flaccid, somewhat artificial; but the faces of the divinities
and the deceased are not wanting in sweetness; the action of the cow is
good; and the little figure under her protection falls naturally into its
place. Certain other pieces, less known than these, are however far
superior. The Saïte style is easy of recognition. It lacks the breadth and
learning of the first Memphite school; it also lacks the grand, and
sometimes rude, manner of the great Theban school. The proportions of the
human body are reduced and elongated, and the limbs lose in vigour what
they gain in elegance. A noteworthy change in the choice of attitudes will
also be remarked. Orientals find repose in postures which would be
inexpressibly fatiguing to ourselves. For hours together they will kneel;
or sit tailor-wise, with the legs crossed and laid down flat to the ground;
or squat, sitting upon their heels, with no other support than is afforded
by that part of the sole of the foot which rests upon the ground; or they
will sit upon the floor with their legs close together, and their arms
crossed upon their knees. These four attitudes were customary among the
people from the time of the ancient empire.
[Illustration: Fig. 204.--Hathor-cow in green basalt. Saïte work.]
This we know from the bas-reliefs. But the Memphite sculptors, deeming the
two last ungraceful, excluded them from the domain of art, and rarely, if
ever, reproduced them. The "Cross-legged Scribe" of the Louvre and the
"Kneeling Scribe" of Gizeh show with what success they could employ the two
first. The third was neglected (doubtless for the same reason) by the
Theban sculptors. The fourth began to be currently adopted about the time
of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
[Illustration: Fig. 205.--Squatting statue of Pedishashi. Saïte work.]
It may be that this position was not in fashion among the moneyed classes,
which alone could afford to order statues; or it may be that the artists
themselves objected to an attitude which caused their sitters to look like
square parcels with a human head on the top. The sculptors of the Saïte
period did not inherit that repugnance. They have at all events combined
the action of the limbs in such wise as may least offend the eye, and the
position almost ceases to be ungraceful. The heads also are modelled to
such perfection that they make up for many shortcomings. That of Pedishashi
(fig. 205) has an expression of youth and intelligent gentleness such as we
seldom meet with from an Egyptian hand. Other heads, on the contrary, are
remarkable for their almost brutal frankness of treatment. In the small
head of a scribe (fig. 206), lately purchased for the Louvre, and in
another belonging to Prince Ibrahim at Cairo, the wrinkled brow, the
crow's-feet at the corners of the eyes, the hard lines about the mouth,
and the knobs upon the skull, are brought out with scrupulous fidelity. The
Saïte school was, in fact, divided into two parties. One sought inspiration
in the past, and, by a return to the methods of the old Memphite school,
endeavoured to put fresh life into the effeminate style of the day. This it
accomplished, and so successfully, that its works are sometimes mistaken
for the best productions of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties. The other,
without too openly departing from established tradition, preferred to study
from the life, and thus drew nearer to nature than in any previous age.
This school would, perhaps, have prevailed, had Egyptian art not been
directed into a new channel by the Macedonian conquest, and by centuries of
intercourse with the Greeks.
[Illustration: Fig. 206.--Head of a scribe. Saïte work.]
[Illustration: Fig. 207.--Colossus of Alexander II.]
The new departure was of slow development. Sculptors began by clothing the
successors of Alexander in Egyptian garb and transforming them into
Pharaohs, just as they had in olden time transformed the Hyksos and the
Persians. Works dating from the reigns of the first Ptolemies scarcely
differ from those of the best Saïte period, and it is only here and there
that we detect traces of Greek influence. Thus, the colossus of Alexander
II., at Gizeh (fig. 207), wears a flowing head-dress, from beneath which
his crisp curls have found their way. Soon, however, the sight of Greek
masterpieces led the Egyptians of Alexandria, of Memphis, and of the cities
of the Delta to modify their artistic methods. Then arose a mixed school,
which combined certain elements of the national art with certain other
elements borrowed from Hellenic art. The Alexandrian Isis of the Gizeh
Museum is clad as the Isis of Pharaonic times; but she has lost the old
slender shape and straitened bearing. A mutilated effigy of a Prince of
Siût, also at Gizeh, would almost pass for an indifferent Greek statue.
[Illustration: Fig. 208.--Statue of Hor, Graeco-Egyptian.]
[Illustration: Fig. 209.--Group from Naga.]
The most forcible work of this hybrid class which has come down to us is
the portrait-statue of one Hor (fig. 208), discovered in 1881 at the foot
of Kom ed Damas, the site of the tomb of Alexander. The head is good,
though in a somewhat dry style. The long, pinched nose, the close-set eyes,
the small mouth with drawn-in corners, the square chin,--every feature, in
short, contributes to give a hard and obstinate character to the face. The
hair is closely cropped, yet not so closely as to prevent it from dividing
naturally into thick, short curls. The body, clothed in the chlamys, is
awkwardly shapen, and too narrow for the head. One arm hangs pendent; the
other is brought round to the front; the feet are lost. All these monuments
are the results of few excavations; and I do not doubt that the soil of
Alexandria would yield many such, if it could be methodically explored. The
school which produced them continued to draw nearer and nearer to the
schools of Greece, and the stiff manner, which it never wholly lost, was
scarcely regarded as a defect at an epoch when certain sculptors in the
service of Rome especially affected the archaic style. I should not be
surprised if those statues of priests and priestesses wearing divine
insignia, with which Hadrian adorned the Egyptian rooms of his villa at
Tibur, might not be attributed to the artists of this hybrid school. In
those parts which were remote from the Delta, native art, being left to its
own resources, languished, and slowly perished. Nor was this because Greek
models, or even Greek artists, were lacking. In the Thebaid, in the Fayûm,
at Syene, I have both discovered and purchased statuettes and statues of
Hellenic style, and of correct and careful execution. One of these, from
Coptos, is apparently a miniature replica of a Venus analogous to the Venus
of Milo. But the provincial sculptors were too dull, or too ignorant, to
take such advantage of these models as was taken by their Alexandrian
brethren. When they sought to render the Greek suppleness of figure and
fulness of limb, they only succeeded in missing the rigid but learned
precision of their former masters. In place of the fine, delicate, low
relief of the old school, they adopted a relief which, though very
prominent, was soft, round, and feebly modelled. The eyes of their
personages have a foolish leer; the nostrils slant upwards; the corners of
the mouth, the chin, and indeed all the features, are drawn up as if
converging towards a central point, which is stationed in the middle of the
ear. Two schools, each independent of the other, have bequeathed their
works to us. The least known flourished in Ethiopia, at the court of the
half-civilised kings who resided at Meroë. A group brought from Naga in
1882, and now in the Gizeh collection, shows the work of this school during
the first century of our era (fig. 209). A god and a queen, standing side
by side, are roughly cut in a block of grey granite. The work is coarse and
heavy, but not without energy. Isolated and lost in the midst of savage
tribes, the school which produced it sank rapidly into barbarism, and
expired towards the end of the age of the Antonines. The Egyptian school,
sheltered by the power of Rome, survived a little longer. As sagacious as
the Ptolemies, the Caesars knew that by flattering the religious prejudices
of their Egyptian subjects they consolidated their own rule in the valley
of the Nile. At an enormous cost, they restored and rebuilt the temples of
the national gods, working after the old plans and in the old spirit of
Pharaonic times. The great earthquake of B.C. 22 had destroyed Thebes,
which now became a mere place of pilgrimage, whither devotees repaired to
listen to the voice of Memnon at the rising of Aurora. But at Denderah and
Ombos, Tiberius and Claudius finished the decoration of the great temples.
Caligula worked at Coptos, and the Antonines enriched Esneh and Philae. The
gangs of workmen employed in their names were still competent to cut
thousands of bas-reliefs according to the rules of the olden time. Their
work was feeble, ungraceful, absurd, inspired solely by routine; yet it was
founded on antique tradition--tradition enfeebled and degenerate, but still
alive. The troubles which convulsed the third century of our era, the
incursions of barbarians, the progress and triumph of Christianity, caused
the suspension of the latest works and the dispersion of the last
craftsmen. With them died all that yet survived of the national art.[54]
[42] The classic Syene, from all time the southernmost portion of Egypt
proper. The Sixth Dynasty is called the Elephantine, from the island
immediately facing Syene which was the traditional seat of the
Dynasty, and on which the temples stood. The tombs of Elephantine were
discovered by General Sir F. Grenfell, K.C.B., in 1885, in the
neighbouring cliffs of the Libyan Desert: see foot-note p. 149.--
A.B.E.
[43] For an explanation of the nature of the Double, see Chapter III., pp.
111-112, 121 _et seq._
[44] Known as the "Scribe accroupi," literally the "Squatting Scribe"; but
in English, squatting, as applied to Egyptian art, is taken to mean
the attitude of sitting with the knees nearly touching the chin.
--A.B.E.
[45] "The Sheikh of the Village." This statue was best known in England as
the "Wooden Man of Bûlak."--A.B.E.
[46] The Greek Chephren.
[47] I venture to think that the heads of Rahotep and Nefert, engraved from
a brilliant photograph in _A Thousand Miles up the Nile_, give a
truer and more spirited idea of the originals than the present
illustrations,--A.B.E.
[48] That is, the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties.
--A.B.E.
[49] According to the measurements given by Mr. Petrie, who discovered the
remains of the Tanite colossus, it must have stood ninety feet high
without, and one hundred and twenty feet high with, its pedestal. See
_Tanis_, Part I., by W.M.F. Petrie, published by the Egypt
Exploration Fund, 1885.--A.B.E.
[50] Ameniritis, daughter of an Ethiopian king named Kashta, was the sister
and successor of her brother Shabaka, and wife of Piankhi II., Twenty-
fifth Dynasty. The statue is in alabaster.--A.B.E.
[51] A Memphite scribe of the Thirtieth Dynasty.--A.B.E.
[52] In Egyptian _Ta-ûrt_, or "the Great;" also called _Apet_.
This goddess is always represented as a hippopotamus walking. She
carries in each hand the emblem of protection, called "_Sa_." The
statuette of the illustration is in green serpentine.--A.B.E.
[53] _Sebakh_, signifying "salt," or "saltpetre," is the general
term for that saline dust which accumulates wherever there are mounds
of brick or limestone ruins. This dust is much valued as a manure, or
"top-dressing," and is so constantly dug out and carried away by the
natives, that the mounds of ancient towns and villages are rapidly
undergoing destruction in all parts of Egypt.--A.B.E.
[54] For an example of Graeco-Egyptian portrait painting, _tempo_
Hadrian, see p. 291.