Bissing’s criticisms are always well justified: they testify_Egyptian Art: Studies

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this

file which includes the 107 original illustrations.

See 64387-h.htm or 64387-h.zip:

(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64387/pg64387-images.html)

(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64387/64387-h.zip)

Images of the original pages are available through

Internet Archive. See

https://archive.org/details/egyptianartstudi00maspuoft

Transcriber’s note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).

EGYPTIAN ART

* * * * * *

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

New Light on Ancient Egypt.

Translated by ELIZABETH LEE.

Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth. =12/6= net. Cheap Edition

=6/-= net.

Egypt: Ancient Sites and Modern Scenes.

Translated by ELIZABETH LEE.

With Coloured Frontispiece and 16 other Illustrations.

Demy 8vo, cloth. =12/6= net.

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN

* * * * * *

EGYPTIAN ART

Studies

SIR GASTON MASPERO

Hon. K.C.M.G., Hon. D.C.L., and Fellow of Queen’S College, Oxford

Member of the Institute of France, Professor at the Collège de France,

Director-General of the Service des Antiquités, Cairo

Translated by Elizabeth Lee

With 107 Illustrations

T. Fisher Unwin

London: Adelphi Terrace

Leipsic: Inselstrasse 20

First published in 1913

PREFATORY NOTE

The following essays were written during a period of more than thirty

years, and published at intervals of varying lengths. The oldest

of them appeared in _Les Monuments de l’Art Antique_ of my friend

Olivier Rayet, and the others in _La Nature_ at the request of Gaston

Tissandier, in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, in the _Monuments Piot_,

and chiefly in the _Revue de l’Art Ancien et Moderne_, where my friend

Jules Comte gave them hospitality. As most of these periodicals do not

circulate in purely scientific circles, the essays are almost unknown

to experts, and will for the greater part be new to them. Indeed, they

were not intended for them. In writing them, I desired to familiarize

the general public, who were scarcely aware of their existence, with

some of the fine pieces of Egyptian sculpture and goldsmiths’ work, and

to point out how to approach them in order to appreciate their worth.

Some, after various vicissitudes, had found a home in the Museums of

Paris or of Cairo, and I wrote the notices in my study, deducing at

leisure the reasons for my criticisms. Others I caught as they emerged

from the ground, the very day of or the day after their discovery, and

I described them on the spot, as it were, under the influence of my

first encounter with them: they themselves dictated to me what I said

of them.

Some persons will perhaps be surprised to find the same ideas developed

at length in several parts of the book. If they will carry their

thoughts back to the date at which I wrote, they will recognize the

necessity of such repetitions. Egyptologists, absorbed in the task of

deciphering, had eyes for scarcely anything except the historical or

religious literary texts; and so amateurs or inquirers, finding nothing

in the works of experts to help them to any sound interpretation of the

characteristic manifestations of Egyptian art, were reduced to register

them without always understanding them, for lack of knowledge of the

concepts that had imposed their forms on them. It is now admitted

that such objects of art are above all utilitarian, and that they

were originally commissioned with the fixed purpose of assuring the

well-being of human survival in an existence beyond the grave. Thirty

years ago, few were aware of this, and to convince the rest, it was

necessary to insist continually on the proofs and to multiply examples.

I might of course have suppressed a portion of them here, but had I

done so, should I not have been reproached, and quite rightly, with

misrepresenting and almost falsifying a passage in the history of the

Egyptian arts? The ideas which govern our present conception did not

at once reach the point where they now are. They came into being one

after the other, and spread themselves by successive waves of unequal

intensity, welcomed with favour by some, rejected by others. I had to

begin over again a dozen times and in a dozen different ways before I

obtained their almost universal acceptation. I was at first laughed at

when I put forward the opinion that there was not one unique art in

Egypt, identical from one extremity of the valley to the other except

for almost imperceptible nuances of execution, but that there were at

least half a dozen local schools, each with its own traditions and

its own principles, often divided into several studios, the technique

of which I tried to determine. In the end the incredulous rallied to

my side, and it would have been bad grace on my part to leave out of

the articles which helped to convert them, at least I hope so, the

repetitions which led to their being convinced.

Besides, I am sure that they will render my readers of to-day the same

service that they rendered formerly to my colleagues in Egyptology.

When they have thoroughly entered into the spirit of the Egyptian

ideas concerning existence in this world and the next, they will

understand what Egyptian art is, and why it is above everything

realistic. The question for Egyptian art was not to create a type of

independent beauty in the person of the individuals who furnish the

principal elements of it, but to express truthfully the features which

constituted that person and which must be preserved identical as long

as anything of him persisted among the living and the dead. But why

should I epitomize here in a necessarily incomplete way ideas which

are amply set forth in the book itself? I shall do better in using

the small space left me in thanking the publishers who have kindly

authorized me to reproduce the illustrations which accompanied my

articles, Jules Comte, the directors of _La Nature_, and my old friends

of the firm of Hachette. They have thus collaborated in this book, and

it will owe a large part of its success to their kindness.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFATORY NOTE 5

EGYPTIAN STATUARY AND ITS SCHOOLS 17

SOME PORTRAITS OF MYCERINUS 36

III

A SCRIBE’S HEAD OF THE IVTH OR VTH DYNASTY 49

SKHEMKA, HIS WIFE AND SON: A GROUP FOUND AT MEMPHIS 55

THE CROUCHING SCRIBE: VTH DYNASTY 60

THE NEW SCRIBE OF THE GIZEH MUSEUM 66

VII

THE KNEELING SCRIBE: VTH DYNASTY 74

VIII

PEHOURNOWRI: STATUETTE IN PAINTED LIMESTONE FOUND AT MEMPHIS 79

THE DWARF KHNOUMHOTPOU: VTH OR VITH DYNASTY 85

THE “FAVISSA” OF KARNAK, AND THE THEBAN SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE 90

THE COW OF DEÎR-EL-BAHARÎ 106

XII

THE STATUETTE OF AMENÔPHIS IV 120

XIII

FOUR CANOPIC HEADS FOUND IN THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS AT THEBES 126

XIV

A HEAD OF THE PHARAOH HARMHABI 135

THE COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II AT BEDRECHEÎN 140

XVI

EGYPTIAN JEWELLERY IN THE LOUVRE 145

XVII

THE TREASURE OF ZAGAZIG 154

XVIII

THREE STATUETTES IN WOOD 172

XIX

A FRAGMENT OF A THEBAN STATUETTE 178

THE LADY TOUÎ OF THE LOUVRE AND EGYPTIAN INDUSTRIAL SCULPTURE

IN WOOD 183

XXI

SOME PERFUME LADLES OF THE XVIIITH DYNASTY 190

XXII

SOME GREEN BASALT STATUETTES OF THE SAÏTE PERIOD 195

XXIII

A FIND OF SAÏTE JEWELS AT SAQQARAH 201

XXIV

A BRONZE EGYPTIAN CAT BELONGING TO M. BARRÈRE 208

XXV

A FIND OF CATS IN EGYPT 214

INDEX 217

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

THE MYCERINUS OF MÎT-RAHINEH 38

MYCERINUS (REISNER HEAD) 38

ALABASTER STATUE OF MYCERINUS 40

MYCERINUS, HATHOR, AND THE NOME OXYRRHINCHUS 42

MYCERINUS, HATHOR, AND THE NOME CYNOPOLITE 42

MYCERINUS AND HIS WIFE 44

MYCERINUS, HATHOR, AND THE NOME OF THE SISTRUM 46

MYCERINUS AND HIS WIFE (DETAIL) 46

MYCERINUS AND HIS WIFE (DETAIL) 48

SCRIBE’S HEAD 50

SKHEMKA WITH HIS WIFE AND SON 56

CROUCHING SCRIBE 60

THE NEW SCRIBE OF THE GIZEH MUSEUM 66

STATUE OF RÂNOFIR 72

KNEELING SCRIBE 74

PEHOURNOWRI 80

THE DWARF KHNOUMHOTPOU 86

THE WORKS AT KARNAK IN JANUARY, 1906 92

MONTOUHOTPOU V 94

HEAD OF A COLOSSUS OF SANOUOSRÎT 94

SANOUOSRÎT AND THE GOD PHTAH 94

BUST OF THOUTMÔSIS III 96

ISIS, MOTHER OF THOUTMÔSIS III 96

SANMAOUT AND THE PRINCESS NAFÊROURIYA 98

STATUETTE IN PETRIFIED WOOD 100

THEBAN KHONSOU 100

STATUE OF TOUTÂNOUKHAMANOU 100

THE SO-CALLED TAIA 100

RAMSES II 100

RAMSES IV LEADING A LIBYAN CAPTIVE 100

THE PRIEST WITH THE MONKEY 102

OSORKON II OFFERING A BOAT TO THE GOD AMON 104

QUEEN ANKHNASNOFIRIABRÊ 104

MANTIMEHÊ 104

NSIPHTAH, SON OF MANTIMEHÊ 104

HEAD (SAÏTE PERIOD) 104

THE COW OF DEÎR-EL-BAHARÎ IN HER CHAPEL 104

AMENÔTHES II AND THE COW HATHOR 106

THE COW HATHOR 108

AN UNKNOWN FIGURE AND THE COW HATHOR 112

PETESOMTOUS AND THE COW HATHOR 114

PSAMMETICHUS AND THE COW HATHOR 116

PSAMMETICHUS AND THE COW HATHOR 118

AMENÔPHIS IV 120

KING KHOUNIATONOU 126

KING KHOUNIATONOU 128

KING KHOUNIATONOU 130

QUEEN TÎYI (FULL FACE) 130

QUEEN TÎYI (PROFILE) 130

PRINCESS OF THE FAMILY OF TÎYI (PROFILE) 132

PRINCESS OF THE FAMILY OF TÎYI (FULL FACE) 132

KING KHOUNIATONOU 132

KING KHOUNIATONOU 134

HEAD OF THE PHARAOH HARMHABI 136

THE HALF-BURIED COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II 140

THE COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II EMERGING FROM THE EARTH 140

EGYPTIAN JEWELLERY OF THE XIXTH DYNASTY 146

GOLD PECTORAL INLAID WITH ENAMEL 146

PECTORAL OF RAMSES II 148

PECTORAL IN SHAPE OF A HAWK WITH A RAM’S HEAD 148

SILVER BRACELETS AND EARRINGS 156

GOLD EARRING FROM THE TREASURE OF ZAGAZIG 156

ONE OF RAMSES II’S BRACELETS (OPEN) 158

ONE OF RAMSES II’s BRACELETS (CLOSED) 158

GOLD CUP OF QUEEN TAOUASRÎT 160

SMALLER OF THE TWO GOLD VASES (FRONT VIEW) 160

SMALLER OF THE TWO GOLD VASES (BACK VIEW) 162

MASS OF SILVER VASES SOLDERED TOGETHER BY OXIDE 162

LARGER OF THE TWO GOLD VASES (FRONT VIEW) 164

LARGER OF THE TWO GOLD VASES (BACK VIEW) 164

THE VASE WITH THE KID 164

ONE OF THE SILVER PATERÆ OF ZAGAZIG (SIDE VIEW) 166

SILVER STRAINER 166

THE BOTTOM OF ONE OF THE ZAGAZIG SILVER PATERÆ 168

STATUETTES IN WOOD 172

THE MOND STATUETTE (FRONT VIEW) 178

THE MOND STATUETTE (PROFILE) 180

THE LADY TOUÎ, STATUETTE IN WOOD 184

STATUETTE IN WOOD 186

PERFUME LADLE 190

PERFUME LADLE 192

PERFUME LADLE 194

GREEN BASALT STATUETTES OF THE SAÏTE PERIOD 196

NECKLACE AMULET 202

VULTURE AMULET 202

GOLD PALM-TREE 202

BOAT OF SOKARIS 202

RAM’S HEAD 202

GOLD HAWK 202

HAWK WITH HUMAN HEAD 202

HAWK WITH RAM’S HEAD 202

VULTURE 202

ISIS WITH THE CHILD 202

CROUCHING NEÎTH 202

MONKEYS WORSHIPPING THE EMBLEM OF OSIRIS 204

VULTURE WITH EXTENDED WINGS 204

HAWK WITH EXTENDED WINGS 204

THE SOUL (FRONT VIEW) 204

THE SOUL (BACK VIEW) 204

BRONZE CAT OF THE SAÏTE PERIOD 208

BRONZE CAT 214

EGYPTIAN ART

EGYPTIAN STATUARY AND ITS SCHOOLS[1]

I opened F.W. von Bissing’s work[2] with a certain feeling of

melancholy, for it was a thing that I had hoped to do myself. Ebers

had suggested to Bruckmann, the publisher, that he should entrust the

task to me, and I was on the point of arranging with him when the

preparations for an Orientalist Congress to meet at Paris in 1897

deprived me of the leisure left me by my lectures and the printing

of my “History,” and I was forced to give up the project. Herr von

Bissing, who was less occupied then than I was, consented to hazard

the adventure, and no one could have been better equipped than he

was to carry it through. The seeking of materials, the execution of

typographical _clichés_, the composition of the text and its careful

setting forth exacted eight years of travelling and continuous labour.

Bissing issued the first part at the end of 1905, and five other parts

have quickly followed, forming almost the half of the work, seventy-two

plates folio, and the portions of the explanatory text belonging to the

plates.

The title is not, at least as yet, exactly accurate. Egyptian sculpture

includes, in fact, besides statues and groups in alto-relievo,

bas-reliefs often of very large dimensions which adorn the tombs or

the walls of temples. Now Bissing has only admitted statues and groups

to the honours of publication: the few specimens of the bas-reliefs

that he gives are not taken from the ruins themselves, but have been

selected from pieces in the museums, stelæ, or fragments of ruined

buildings. It is then the monuments of Egyptian statuary that he

presents to us rather than those of Egyptian sculpture as a whole.

Having made that statement and thus defined the extent of the field

of action, it must be frankly admitted that he has always made a

happy selection of pieces to be reproduced. Doubtless we may regret

the absence of some famous pieces, such as the Crouching Scribe of

the Louvre or the Cow of Deîr el-Baharî. The fault is not his, and

perhaps he will succeed in overcoming the obstacles which forced him

to deprive us of them. The omissions, at any rate, are not numerous.

When the list printed on the covers of the first part is exhausted,

amateurs and experts will have at their disposal nearly everything

required to follow the evolution of Egyptian statuary from its earliest

beginnings to the advent of Christianity. The schools of the Greek and

Roman epochs, unjustly contemned by archæologists who have written on

these subjects, are not wanting, and for the first time the ordinary

reader can decide for himself if all the artists of the decadence

equally deserve contempt or oblivion. Bissing has attempted a complete

picture, not a sketch restricted to the principal events in art between

the IVth Dynasty and the XXXth. No serious attempt of the kind had

before been made, and on many points he had to open out the roads he

traversed. For the moment he has stopped at the beginning of the Saïte

period; thus we have as yet no means of judging if the plan he has

imposed on himself is carried out to the end with a rigour and firmness

everywhere equal: but a rapid examination of the parts that have

appeared will show that it has been executed with fullness and fidelity.

Four plates are devoted to Archaic Egypt: the two first are facsimiles

of the bas-reliefs that decorate the stele of the Horus Qa-âou, and

the so-called _palette_ of the king we designate Nâr-mer, since

we have not deciphered his name. It is in truth very little, but

the excavations have rendered such poor accounts of those distant

ages that it is almost all that could be given of them; it might,

however, have been worth while to add the statuettes of the Pharaoh

Khâsakhmouî. Notwithstanding the omission, the objects that appear give

a sufficient idea of the degree of skill attained by the sculptors of

those days. The stele of Qa-âou does not, of course, equal that of

the _King-Serpent_[3] which is in the Louvre; it is, however, of a

fairly good style, and the hawk of Horus is nearer to the real animal

than those of the protocol were later. Similarly the scenes engraved

on the _palette_ of Nâr-mer testify to an indisputable virtuosity in

the manner of attacking the stone. The drawing of the persons is less

schematic and their bearing freer than in the compositions of classical

art, but it is evident that the craftsman had as yet no very clear

idea of the way in which to compose a picture and group its elements.

Let us confess, nevertheless, that the bas-reliefs are far superior to

the statues yet known. We possess about half a dozen of them scattered

over the world. Bissing studied one to the exclusion of the others,

the one in the Naples Museum, and it may be thought to be sufficient

if only æsthetic impressions are desired, for nothing could be rougher

or more awkward. The head and face might perhaps pass, but the rest

is ill-proportioned, the neck is too short, the shoulders and chest

are massive, the legs lack slenderness under a heavy petticoat, the

feet and hands are enormous. The defects cannot be ascribed to the

hardness of the material, for the Scribe of the Cairo Museum, which is

in limestone, displays them as flagrantly as the good people in granite

at Naples, Munich, or Leyden. I must not therefore conclude, however,

that they are constant faults with the Thinites: the statuettes of

Khâsakhmouî are of a less heavy workmanship and more nearly approach

that of later studios. That the ruins have rendered only a few that

possess worth does not prove that there may not have been excellent

ones: we must have patience and wait till some happy chance belies the

mediocrity.

The Memphian Empire has furnished thirteen plates, and I doubt if

they are enough. The number of masterpieces, and especially of pieces

which, without possessing claims to perfection, offer interest on some

count, is so large that Bissing could easily have found, in the Cairo

Museum alone, material enough to double the number. Very probably it

was due to the publisher and a question of economy: but all the same I

regret the absence of half a dozen statues that would have made a good

appearance by the side of the Scribe of the Berlin Museum. The chief

species of the period are at least represented by very good examples:

statues of the Pharaoh seated, receiving homage, are represented by two

of the Chephrên of the Cairo Museum; of the Pharaoh standing, by the

Pioupi in bronze; those of private individuals standing and isolated,

or in groups, by the Cheîkh el-Beled of the Gizeh Museum, by the

Sapouî and the Nasi of the Louvre, or by the pair at Munich; those of

individuals seated by the Scribe of Berlin and by one of the Readers

of Cairo. One of the Cairo statues, of mediocre workmanship, is,

however, curious, because it shows us a priest completely nude, by no

means usual, and circumcized, a fact still less usual. Three fragments

preserved at Munich, portions of three stelæ, a complete stele from

the Cairo Museum, an episode borrowed from the tomb of Apouî, of which

Cairo possesses almost an entire wall, provide specimens of bas-reliefs

for the student to study, without, however, permitting him to suspect

the variety of motives and abundance of detail usually met with in

the necropolises of Saqqarah or of Gizeh. Reduced to these elements,

Bissing’s book will make the impression on its readers of a noble art

exalted by inspiration, minute and skilful in the material execution,

but monotonous, and confined in a rather narrow circle of concepts

and forms of expression. It is only fair to add that the book is not

finished and that, thanks to the system employed of double and triple

plates, it is quite easy to insert new documents among those of the

parts that have already appeared. Some of the lacunæ will assuredly

be filled up, and the additions will place us in a better position to

judge the worth of the ancient Memphian school.

The notices of the first Theban Empire are more numerous, and they

render it possible to study the history of statuary during the long

interval that separates the Heracleopolitan period from the domination

of the Shepherd Kings. For the XIth Dynasty, besides the wonderful

statue of Montouhotpou III, there are bas-reliefs or paintings found

at Gebeleîn in the ruins of a temple of Montouhotpou I. Afterwards, we

have, in the XIIth Dynasty itself, the seated statues of Sanouosrît

I, of Nofrît and of Amenemhaît III, the sphinx of Amenemhaît III that

Mariette declared to be the portrait of a Hyksôs king, an admirable

king’s head preserved in the Vienna Museum, and pieces of lesser

interest, among which a curious bas-relief of Sanouosrît I dancing

before the god Mînou at Coptos should be mentioned. For the XIIIth and

following Dynasties, I only see as yet the Sovkhotpou of the Louvre,

the barbarous head of Mît-Fares, and the Sovkemsaouf of Vienna, but we

must wait for the next parts before deciding to what point Bissing has

made use of the rich store of documents available for that period. The

second Theban Empire, so rich in souvenirs of all kinds, offered an

embarrassing choice: the Cairo Museum alone possesses material enough

for two or three volumes, especially since the fortunate excavations

conducted by Legrain at the _favissa_ of Karnak. The subjects in favour

of which Bissing decided have their special importance: they are each

the actual head of a pillar, the type of a series that he could, in

many cases, have reproduced almost entire, so well has chance served

us in the course of these last years. The statues of Amenôthes, of

Thoutmôsis, of the Ramses, of the Harmais are celebrated, and it is

unnecessary to enumerate them one after the other: the reader will

see them again with pleasure as he goes along, and will admire the

marvellous skill with which the photographer has reproduced them, and

the printer has responded to the photographer’s skill. The pictures of

the volume are often perfect, and plates like those of the head of one

of the sphinxes of Amenemhaît III are so successful that in looking at

them we have almost the sensation of the original. In a few, however,

the printing is too heavy and the thickness of the ink has distorted

and coarsened the modelling. As a general rule the larger number of

the defects I have noted are due to this tiresome question of inks. I

know too well from my own experience the difficulties caused by the

obstinacy of the workmen on that point, so I am able to make excuses

for both Bruckmann and Bissing.

So much for the illustrations: the portion of the text as yet published

greatly increases their interest, and assures the work permanent

value. It contains information as to the origin of the object, its

migrations, its actual home to-day, its state of preservation and, at

need, the restorations it has undergone: descriptions showing careful

research, and extended bibliographies complete the suggestions made

by the picture, and inform us of previous criticisms. The shortest of

the notices fills two compact quarto columns, and are reinforced by

numerous footnotes; many of them are veritable essays in which the

subject is examined on every side and as exhaustively as is possible.

Vignettes are inserted which exhibit the object in a different light

from that of the plate, or show the reader some of the analogous

motives referred to in the discussion.

Repetition of similar types has sometimes prevented Bissing from

developing his views as a whole, and we are compelled to look under

several rubrics before learning his full opinion. This is a serious

drawback unless it is remedied in the introduction: we shall perhaps

find all the observations brought together there into one system, with

justificatory references to each of the notices in particular.

Bissing’s criticisms are always well justified: they testify to a

mature taste or a sure tact, and there are very few with which experts

would not willingly agree. Here and there, however, I must make some

reservations, for example, with regard to the Chephrên of Gizeh. After

discussing at length Borchardt’s reasons for attributing it to a Saïte

school, and refuting them, Bissing declares that it is perhaps a late

copy of a work contemporary with the Pharaoh. I recently had occasion

to study it closely in order to determine the position in the Museum

best suited to it, and to decide the height of the plinth on which

it should be placed. I went over Borchardt’s arguments and Bissing’s

hypotheses one after the other and came to the conclusion that the

date assigned by Mariette at the moment of its discovery is the only

admissible one. The archæological details belong to the Memphian age,

and the peculiarities of style which Bissing points out, and which

actually exist, are not sufficiently strongly marked to justify its

attribution to a later epoch. I only see in them the divergences which,

in every age, mark works coming from different and perhaps rival

studios. The artists who cut the _doubles_ in diorite destined for the

pyramid of the Pharaoh, did not certainly have the same masters as

those to whom we owe the Chephrên in alabaster and the royal statuettes

of Mitrahineh: the difference of origin sufficiently explains why

they do not resemble each other. I fear that in criticizing certain

sculptures Borchardt and others were governed in spite of themselves

by the ideas that long prevailed on the uniformity and monotony of

Egyptian art. It seemed to them that at one and the same period the

composition and inspiration must always remain identical, and wherever

they did not harmonize, the fact was attributed solely to an interval

in time. But we must accustom ourselves to think that things did not go

differently with the Egyptians than with the moderns. In a city like

Memphis there was more than one studio, and they all possessed their

traditions, their affectations, their style, which distinguished them

from each other, and which are found in their work like a trade-mark.

Some errors of classification will be avoided in the future if we can

be persuaded to recognize that many of the peculiarities that we begin

to note on statues and bas-reliefs may be the mannerisms of the school

to which they belong, and are not always indications of relative age.

The care that Bissing has taken to render what is due to each of the

experts who discovered a piece or spoke of it, deserves the more praise

since many Egyptologists of the present generation have adopted the

attitude of ignoring what has been said or written before them. They

seem to insinuate to their readers that archæology, religion, grammar,

history, nothing indeed that they touch on, has ever been studied

before, and that the bibliography of a subject begins with the first

essay they have devoted to it. Although the past of Egyptology is so

short, it is a difficult subject to know, and it is not surprising

if Bissing has misrepresented some features or ignored others. For

example, he attributes the merit of recognizing in the animal’s

tail that the kings attach to their back, not a lion’s tail but a

jackal’s[4] to Wiedemann; I do not know if I was the first, but I think

that I certainly stated this before Wiedemann.[5] A little farther on,

I regret that Bissing was not acquainted with my notice of the statue

of Montouhotpou in the _Musée Egyptien_:[6] I am curious to know if he

accepts my explanation of the disproportion between the feet, legs, and

bust. It seems to me that it was not intended to be on the same level

as the spectator, but that it ought to be placed in a naos, on a fairly

high platform which could be reached by a staircase in front: seen from

below, foreshortened, the effect of the perspective would redeem the

exaggeration of form and re-establish the balance between the parts.

It seems also that Bissing was not acquainted with the part of the

_Musée_ in which this Montouhotpou is discussed, for he does not refer

to it again with regard to the Amenemhaît III discovered by Flinders

Petrie at Fayoum.[7] Farther on again, it would have been in keeping

to note that Legrain found the debris of a statuette in black granite

in the mud of the _favissa_ at Karnak, which so closely resembles the

admirable Ramses II of Turin that it might almost be the replica or a

sort of original rough model.[8] Unfortunately the head is wanting, but

we have been almost entirely successful in restoring the body: if it is

not by the same sculptor who took such pleasure in modelling the Turin

statue, it comes from the same royal studio. The few differences to be

noted between them arise solely from the inequality of the stature: it

was necessary to simplify certain details or to suppress them in the

smallest of the statues.

These examples show that there is nothing very serious in the omissions

and negligences: we are surprised not that there should be some, but

that among such a mass of references there are not more. I might

perhaps disagree with some of the theories or points of doctrine

Bissing constantly advances, but I will wait to do so until he has

elaborated into a system the elements so abundantly spread through

the notices. But there is one criticism I will make now: he scarcely

mentions the schools into which Egypt was divided, so that we are

tempted to conclude that, like so many contemporary archæologists,

he believes in the existence of one sole school, which worked in an

almost uniform manner over the whole of Egypt at one time. It is,

however, certain that there were always several schools on the banks

of the Nile, each of which possessed its traditions, its designs, its

method of interpreting the costume or the pose of individuals, the

works of which have a sufficiently special physiognomy to admit of

their being easily separated into their different groups. Here, again,

it seems to me that sometimes varieties of execution which are the

result of the teaching are taken to be signs of age, and that pieces

which are contemporary within a few years, but which proceed from

distinct schools, are spread over centuries. I have not discovered

Bissing in such errors: his natural insight and his knowledge of the

monuments preserved him from making them. I wish, however, that he had

touched on the matter more definitely than he has, and, after letting

it be seen in several places that he admits the existence of those

schools, he should have defined their characteristics in accordance

as the progress of his book brought their work before the reader. He

has briefly touched on the matter in regard to the sphinxes of Tanis

and the statue of Amenemhaît III, but he might, for example, have

seized the opportunity of the Montouhotpou in order to demonstrate the

tendencies of Theban art at its birth; he could have followed them in

their evolution, and the Amenôthes I of Turin might perhaps have served

to teach us how those tendencies were developed or modified between the

beginning of the first Theban Empire and that of the second. A passage

in the notice of the so-called Hyksôs sphinxes leads me to hope that he

will do this for the Tanite school in regard to the celebrated _Bearers

of offerings_: I greatly wish that I may not be disappointed in my hope.

III

As far as I can judge there were at least four large schools of

sculpture in the valley of the Nile: at Memphis, Thebes, Hermopolis,

and in the eastern part of the delta. I have attempted farther on to

sketch the history and define the principal characteristics of the

Theban school;[9] I shall only refer to it as far as it is necessary to

make clear in what it is distinguished from the three others.

And to begin with, it is probable that the first of those in date,

the Memphian, is merely the prolongation and continuation of a

previous Thinite school. If I compare the few objects of real

art that have come to us from the Thinites with parallel works

of which the necropolises of Gizeh, Saqqarah and the Fayoum have

restored to us so many examples, I am struck by the resemblances in

inspiration and technique that exist between the two. We have no

statues originating from Thinis itself, but the stelæ, the amulets

in alto-relievo, the fragments of minute furniture discovered in the

tombs of Omm-el-Gaâb find their exact counterpart in similar pieces

that come from the excavations of Abousîr-el-Malak or of Meîdoum and

from the sub-structure of Memphian residences. I think I see that at

the beginning there were mediocre workmen in the plain of the Pyramids

capable, however, of sculpturing, ill or well, a statue of a man

seated or standing: to those men I attribute the statue No. 1 in the

Cairo Museum, the Matonou (Amten) of Berlin, the Sapouî (Sepa) of the

Louvre, and a few other lesser ones. The same defects are to be seen

in all: the head out of proportion to the body, the neck ungraceful,

the shoulders high, the bust summarily rough-hewn and without regard to

the dimensions of each part, the arms and legs heavy, thick, angular.

Their roughness and awkwardness compared with the beautiful appearance

of the two statues of Meîdoum, which are almost contemporary with them,

would astonish us if we did not think that the latter, commissioned

for relatives of Sanofraouî, proceed from the royal workshops. The

transference of the capital to Memphis, or rather to the district

stretching from the entrance into the Fayoum to the fork of the delta,

necessarily resulted in impoverishing Thinis-Abydos; the stone-cutters,

architects, statuaries, and masons accompanied the court, and planted

the traditions and teaching of their respective fatherlands in their

new homes. According to what is seen in the tombs of Meîdoum, the

latest Thinite style, or rather the transition style of the IIIrd

Dynasty, presents exactly the same characteristics as the perfect style

of the IVth, Vth, and VIth Dynasties, but with a less stiff manner.

The pose of the persons and the silhouettes of the animals are already

schematized and encircled in the lines which will enclose them almost

to the end of Egyptian civilization, but the detail is freer, and keeps

very close to reality. The tendency is perceived only in the roundness

and suppleness that prevails from the time of Cheops and Chephrên.

The Memphites sought to idealize their models rather than to make a

faithful copy of them, and while respecting the general resemblance,

desired to give the spectator an impression of calm majesty or of

gentleness. Their manner was adopted at Thinis by a counter-shock, and

it may be said that from the IVth to the XXVIth Dynasty Abydos remained

almost a branch of the Memphian school, which, however, grew out of it.

The productions only differ from those of the Memphites in subordinate

points, except during the XIXth Dynasty, when Setouî I and Ramses

II summoned Theban sculptors there, and for some years it became,

artistically, a fief of Thebes.

If we would indicate in one word the character of this Thinito-Memphian

art, we should say that it resides in an idealism of convention as

opposed to the realism of Theban art. Thanks to the fluctuations of

political life which alternately made Memphis and Thebes the capitals

of the whole kingdom, the æsthetics of the two cities spread to the

neighbouring towns, and did not allow them to form an independent

art: Heracleopolis, Beni-Hassan, Assiout, Abydos took after Memphis,

while the Saîd and Nubia, from Denderah to Napata, remained under the

jurisdiction of Thebes. An original school arose, however, in one

place, and persisted for a fairly long time, in Hermopolis Magna, the

city of Thot. We observe there, from the end of the Ancient Empire,

sculptors who devoted themselves to expressing with a scrupulous

naturalism, and often with an intentional seeking after ugliness,

the bearing of individuals and the movement of groups. We should

observe with what humour they interpreted the extremes of obesity and

emaciation in man and beast, in the two tombs called _the fat and the

lean_. The region where they flourished is so little explored that

it is still unknown how long their activity practised a continuous

style: it was at its best under the first Theban Empire, at Bercheh,

at Beni-Hassan, at Cheîkh-Saîd, but the period at which it seems to

me to be most in evidence was at the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty,

under the heretic Pharaohs. When Amenôthes IV founded his capital

of Khouîtatonou, if, as is probable, he settled some Theban masters

there, he would certainly have utilized the studios of Hermopolis.

The scenes engraved on the tombs of El-Tell and El-Amarna are due to

the same spirit and the same teaching as those of the _fat and lean_

tombs; there are similar deformations of the human figure bordering

on caricature, the same suppleness and sometimes the same violence

in the gestures and attitudes. In a number of portraits the Theban

importation prevails, but the cavalcades, processions, royal audiences,

popular scenes, must be attributed to the Hermopolitans, for their

inspiration and execution present so striking a contrast to those of

analogous pictures that adorn the walls of Louxor or Karnak. The fall

of the little Atonian Dynasty stopped their activity; deprived of the

vast commissions which opened a new field for their enterprise, they

fell back into their provincial routine, and we have not yet enough

documents to tell us what their successors became in the course of the

centuries.

In the delta two fairly different styles may be seen from the

beginning. In the east, at Tanis and in its neighbourhood, there is,

at the beginning of the first Theban Empire, a veritable school, the

productions of which possess such an individual physiognomy that

Mariette did not hesitate to attribute them to the Shepherd Kings:

since the works of Golenischeff it is known that the so-called Hyksôs

sphinxes are of Amenemhaît III, and that they belong to the second half

of the XIIth Dynasty. This Tanite school is perpetuated through the

ages; it was still flourishing under the XXIst and XXIInd Dynasties,

as is proved by the fine group of bearers of offerings in the Cairo

Museum. The predominant features are the energy and harshness of the

modelling, especially of the human face: its masters have copied a

type, and modes of coiffure belonging, as Mariette formerly pointed

out, to the half-savage populations of Lake Menzaleh, the _Egyptians in

the marshes_ of Herodotus. It seems to me that their manner is still

to be noted in the Græco-Roman period in the statues of princes and

priests that we have in the Cairo Museum: the technical skill, however,

is less than in the sphinxes and the bearers of offerings. The centre

and west of the delta, on the other hand, came under the influence

of Memphis, as far as we can judge from the rare existing fragments

belonging to the Ancient Empire. Under the Thebans the dependence is

clear, and all that comes from those regions differs in nothing from

what we have from the Memphian necropolises. Only in the Ethiopian

period, and under the influence of the successors of Bocchoris, is a

Saïte school revealed to us, which, borrowing its general composition

from the Memphian school, comes closer to nature and impresses an

individual stamp on certain elements of the human figure that until

then had been handled in a loose, so to say, an abstract fashion.

The modelling of the face is as full of expression as in the fine

works of the Theban school, but with greater finish and less harsh

effects; the ravages of old age, wrinkles, crows’-feet, flabbiness of

flesh, thinness, are all reproduced with a care unusual in preceding

generations; the skull, indeed, is so minute in detail that it might

almost be called an anatomical study. This impulse towards skilled

realism, begun by instinct in the heart of the school, became

accentuated and accelerated by contact with the Hellenes, who from the

time of Psammetichus I swarmed in the provinces of the delta. Certain

bas-reliefs of Alexandria and Cairo, the date of which is assigned to

the reign of Nectanebo II, which I should like to place in that of

one of the first Ptolemies,[10] may be regarded as extant witnesses

of a kind of composite art analogous to that which was developed two

centuries later at Alexandria or at Memphis, and of which the Cairo

Museum possesses some rare examples.

It should be clearly understood that I do not claim to put the complete

result of my study of the schools, the presence of which in Ancient

Egypt is now confirmed, in these few lines. I am only anxious to

point out the part played by them in historic times, and the errors

into which those who have written the history of Egyptian art without

suspecting their existence, or without taking into consideration what

we do know of them, have fallen. Bissing does not ignore them, and is

doubtless waiting to criticize them in his Introduction. He has so much

material that it will be easy for him to rectify my hypotheses, and to

confirm them where necessary; in that way his book will gain by being

no longer a mere collection of monuments each described as an isolated

piece, but a veritable treatise on sculpture, or at least on Egyptian

statuary.

I shall be sincerely sorry if he fails in that particular, but even

so, I should feel it right to declare that he has come honourably

out of an enterprise in which he had no predecessors. The few plates

that I inserted a quarter of a century ago in the _Monuments de

l’Art Antique_, and the notices contained in the parts of the _Musée

Egyptien_ that have already appeared, afforded both experts and

amateurs a foretaste of the surprises that Egypt has in store in the

matter of art; they have been too few, and have related to subjects

too scattered in point of time, to produce a body of doctrine. But

here, on the contrary, nearly two hundred pieces are available,

classified according to the order of the Dynasties, and for the most

part unpublished, or better reproduced than in the past. Each will

be accompanied by an analysis in which the researches previously

connected with it will be set forth and discussed; for the first

time Egyptologists and the general public will have the artistic and

critical apparatus required for judging the value of the principal

pieces of Egyptian statuary before their eyes and in their hands. Those

who know the amount of the literature existing on Egyptology, and how

scattered it is, can easily imagine the patience and bibliographical

_flair_ that Bissing must have needed for gathering from libraries

the information so generously scattered on every page of his notices.

But that was only the least part of his task; the appreciation of

the objects themselves demanded of him an ever alert attention and a

continuous tension of mind which would promptly have exhausted a man

less devoted to the minutiæ of artistic observation. In other branches

of the science, the materials have for the most part been so often and

so repeatedly kneaded that nearly always half of the work has been

already done; here, nothing of that sort exists, and in many cases

Bissing has dealt with objects that he was the first to know, and of

which no previous study had been attempted. That he is sometimes weary,

and that here and there his opinions may be controverted, he willingly

confesses. But what surprises me is how very rarely it is necessary to

upset them, even partially.

I hope then that we shall not have to wait too long for the completion

of this admirable work. May I venture to add that after the present

edition, which is an _édition de luxe_, a popular edition would be

welcome? Egyptologists like myself are condemned to pay such large sums

for our books that the price of these “Denkmäler” does not alarm us,

but the fact has greater importance for others. A reproduction in a

smaller _format_, and less expensive, would greatly help to spread the

knowledge of Egyptian art among classes of readers whom the book in its

present form will not reach.

SOME PORTRAITS OF MYCERINUS[11]

It has long been a debatable question if the Egyptian statues of kings

and private individuals can be regarded as faithful portraits or as

merely approximate to their originals. No one has ever denied that

their authors desired to make them as like as possible, but we hesitate

to believe that they succeeded in doing so. The air of uniformity lent

them by the repeated employment of the same expressions and the same

postures encouraged the notion that, judging themselves incapable of

exactly transcribing the details of bodily form or physiognomy proper

to each individual, the sculptors decided that such details were not

necessary for the kind of service to which the statues were destined:

they considered that the task entrusted to them was sufficiently

fulfilled if the soul or the _double_ for which these statues provided

an imperishable body recognized in them enough of the perishable body

to enable them to attach themselves to it without hurt in the course of

their posthumous existence. The study of the monuments has dissipated

those doubts. Any one who has carefully handled one of the Saïte

heads, the skull and face of which present such clearly individual

characteristics, must acknowledge that so many details noted with such

felicitous care indicate an absolute intention of transmitting the

exact appearance of the model to posterity. And if, proceeding forward,

we reach the second Theban period, we shall soon, thanks to the chances

which have delivered to us the well-preserved corpses of about fifty

princes and princesses, recognize the success with which the royal

studios perpetuated in stone the effigies of their contemporaries. The

profile of Setouî I photographed in his coffin would coincide line for

line with that of his bas-reliefs of Karnak or Abydos were it not for

the thinness resulting from embalmment. Let us go back eight or ten

centuries and see how the master sculptors of the first Theban period

treated their Pharaohs. The statues of Amenemhaît III and of Sanouosrît

have so personal a note that we should be wrong to imagine they could

be anything but a sincere, almost a brutal likeness. The two Chephrên

of the Cairo Museum were not long ago alone in suggesting to us the

conviction that the Memphian times yielded nothing in this matter of

resemblance to ages farther removed from us; the recent discovery of

ten statues of Mycerinus prevents any further doubt.

Most of them have not left Egypt. The first that came to us was

acquired by purchase in 1888, with four statuettes of Naousirrîya,

of Mankahorou, of Chephrên, and perhaps of Cheops. According to the

information collected at the time by Grébaut, they were found together,

two or three weeks before, by fellahs of Mît-Rahineh under the ruins of

a little brick building situated at the east of what was formerly the

sacred lake of the temple of Phtah at Memphis. That was certainly not

their original place; they had probably each adorned first the funerary

chapel annexed to the pyramid of its sovereign: their transference to

the town and their reunion in the place where they were discovered are

not earlier than the reign of the last Saïtes or the first Ptolemies.

It was then, in fact, that hatred of foreign domination having exalted

the love of all that was peculiarly Egyptian in the eyes of the people,

reverence for the glorious Pharaohs of former ages revived: their

priesthoods were reorganized, and they again received the worship

to which centuries of neglect had disaccustomed them. None of our

figures are life-size, and the Mycerinus in diorite, which is not one

of the smallest, is scarcely 21⅛ inches in height. It is enthroned

on a cubical block with the impassibility that the Chephrên has made

familiar to us; the bust is stiff, the arms rest on the thighs, he

looks straight before him, his face expressionless, as was imposed on

Pharaoh by etiquette, while the crowd of courtiers and vassals filed

past at his feet: if his name, engraved on the sides of his seat to the

right and left of his legs, had not told who he was, we should have

guessed it from his bearing. The composition, although not the best

imaginable, is good: but the head makes a poor effect in relation to

the torso, a defect always at first ascribed to the heedlessness of the

sculptor. But it is to be noted that the face somewhat recalled that of

two of the other Pharaohs, a fact to be explained by the relationship,

the second, Chephrên, being the father of Mycerinus, and the third,

probably Cheops, his grandfather. That is a reason for presuming

that they are portraits, but are they authentic portraits? Several

Berlin Egyptologists whose natural ingenuity encouraged them to revise

Mariette’s criticisms on art, thought to discern in certain details of

the costume and ornamentation a proof that if they were not figures

of pure imagination, they were at least copies of ancient originals

freely executed under one of the Saïte Dynasties, and their theory,

although opposed by experts who had a longer experience, disconcerted

the majority. It was soon upset by facts, but, as often happens, the

consequences deduced from it survived by force of habit. Many of us

feared for some years after to be asserting too much, to declare openly

that our Mycerinus was what we had entitled him on the faith of his

inscription, the real Mycerinus.

[Illustration: THE MYCERINUS OF MÎT-RAHINEH.

Diorite. Cairo Museum.]

[Illustration: MYCERINUS (REISNER HEAD)

Alabaster. Cairo Museum.]