in height, and the dimensions of the head show that it was probably
half the natural size. It reproduces the characteristics proper to
dwarfs without exaggerating them. The head, of a suitable size, is
long-shaped and flanked by two large ears. The expression of the
face is heavy and stupid, the eyes narrow and raised at the temples,
and the mouth wide and ill-formed. The chest is strong and well
developed, but the artist has employed his ingenuity in vain in order
to dissimulate the hind-quarters by covering them with a vast white
petticoat; notwithstanding, we feel that the torso is not in proportion
to the arms and legs. The stomach forms a round projection, and the
hips recede in order to counterbalance the stomach. The thighs only
exist in a rudimentary state, and the whole individual, mounted as he
is on little deformed feet, seems about to fall face downwards on the
ground. The flesh was painted red, the hair black, but the colour has
peeled off or been effaced in places. The two legs were broken formerly
at the ankle, then stuck on again when the statue was transported to
the Museum. It is very possible that the accident happened during the
execution of the statue, for the limestone used by the Egyptians is so
fragile that the sculptor did not venture to detach the arms from the
body: too hard a blow of the mallet while freeing the legs may have
caused the unfortunate fracture that spoils the bottom of the monument.
Khnoumhotpou is, so far, the only dwarf that has come to light who is a
nobleman. Similar dwarfs were not lacking in Egypt, but they nearly all
belonged to the class of jugglers and buffoons. The Pharaohs and the
princes of their court bestowed the same affection on these deformed
creatures as did Christian or Mussulman kings in mediæval times; their
household would not have been complete without two or three of them
of an aspect more or less grotesque. Ti possessed one that figures by
her in her tomb: the poor wretch holds in his right hand a kind of
large wooden sceptre terminated by a model of a human hand, and leads
a greyhound almost as tall as himself in a leash. Elsewhere dwarfs
are represented crouching on a stool at the feet of their masters, by
the side of the favourite monkey or dog. We know from the pictures
of Beni-Hassan that two of them belonged to the prince of Minieh’s
suite; one, despite his small size, does not lack elegance, but the
other enjoys with the exiguity of his stature the pleasure of being
club-footed. The Egyptian heaven did not escape the prevailing mania
any more than the court of the Pharaohs, and it included several
dwarfs, of whom two at least had an important rôle: Bîsa, who presided
over arms and the toilet, and the Phtah, who for a long while has,
without reason, been called embryonic Phtah.[44] Perhaps Knoumhotpou
joined to his functions of keeper of the wardrobe the office of court
buffoon; perhaps he was of noble birth, and preserved by his origin
from the disagreeables to which his brethren of low extraction were
exposed.
[Illustration: THE DWARF KHNOUMHOTPOU.
Cairo Museum.]
But we have no need to know what he was: merely in leaving us his
portrait, he has rendered signal service to science. Let us recall the
part played by the statues of the tombs in the theological conceptions
of the Egyptians: they were the indispensable support of the _double_,
the body without which the soul of the dead person could not exist
in the other world. It might be thought that in passing from life in
this world to that beyond the tomb, the people to whom beauty had been
chary might not have been sorry to assume a new appearance; if we are
to be re-born, it is better to be re-born less ugly. The care that
poor Khnoumhotpou has taken to reach us deformed shows that the old
Egyptians did not hold our views on the subject: they desired to remain
always as nature created them at the moment of conception. It was not
absence of coquetry on their part, but necessity: their idea of the
soul compelled them so to act. From the moment that their personality
was indissolubly bound up with the existence of the body, the first
condition imposed on them for remaining identical with themselves after
death, as before, was to preserve their earthly form intact. In order
that the Khnoumhotpou who dwelt in the hypogeum of Saqqarah might not
be a different being from the Khnoumhotpou who walked through the
streets of Memphis, it was necessary that his disincarnated _double_
should find there the support of a statue of a dwarf. Give him the fine
proportions of Ti or Rânofir, the proud bearing and haughty mien of the
Cheîkh-el-Beled, even the more common type of the Crouching Scribe,
he would not have known what to do. His substance, poured, so to
speak, into the exiguous and deformed mould of the dwarf, could never
have adapted itself to the new mould into which the artist would have
tried to cast it. Khnoumhotpou beautified would no longer have been
Khnoumhotpou; his tomb, without the statue of a dwarf, would only have
sheltered a double and a support strangers to each other.
It was then the likeness, and the absolute likeness, that the artist
had to seek to reproduce, and the seriousness and scrupulousness with
which he rendered the deformity of his model is thus explained. The
Egyptians were scoffers by nature, and liked to mingle the comic with
the serious, not only in literature but in the arts. To take only
one example: the painter who, at Thebes, pictured the interment of
Nofrihotpou, has drawn, by the side of the large boats laden with
mourners and all the apparatus of grief, the contortions of two
sailors whose shallop was brutally struck by the oars of the funerary
barque. If the sculptor who chiselled Khnoumhotpou had been free to
follow his natural inclination, he would probably have exaggerated
certain features and given the unfortunate creature a slightly absurd
physiognomy. His religious conscience would not permit him to risk
anything of the kind: a statue uglier than nature would have been as
inconvenient to the soul of the original as a statue more beautiful
than nature. A body of stone identical at all points with the body
of flesh was what the Egyptian demanded, and that is exactly what
the sculptor fashioned for the little Khnoumhotpou. We see here that
what we call the question of art is subsidiary: a stone-cutter who
understood his business sufficed for all that was required.
It must not, however, be concluded from what precedes that I regard
the portrait of Khnoumhotpou as the work of a mere artisan. It has
been too often repeated that statuary in Egypt was a mechanical craft;
sculptors were taught to fashion arms, legs, heads, and torsos, and
to join them, according to the formula, in imitation of two or three
models always the same. That opinion, repeated by the Greeks, is fairly
difficult to uphold in the presence of the statue of Knoumhotpou; it
might be possible to set up patterns for bodies of ordinary formation,
but all varieties of deformed bodies could not possibly be foreseen.
The unknown master whose work we have at Boulaq proceeded in exactly
the same manner as a modern sculptor, the necessities of whose work
confronted him with a deformed model: he produced a work of art, not
the task of a mechanic.
X
THE FAVISSA OF KARNAK AND THE THEBAN SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE[45]
I
A large pool among the ruins, and at the southern end two batteries
of _chadoufs_, one on top of the other, working to exhaust the water
continually renewed by the infiltrations. On the banks are blocks and
muddy statues, round which half-naked workmen are busily occupied,
beams, levers, coils of rope, and the beginnings of a Decauville line;
remains of storied walls dominate the workshops, and the modern village
of Karnak stands out clearly on the horizon beyond their irregular tops.
When the first Ptolemies decided at the beginning of the third century
B.C. to restore the Theban temple of Amon, they found it encumbered
with _ex-votos_. Everywhere, in the halls, the corridors, the
court-yards, there were stelæ, stone statues, little wooden or bronze
figures, sacred or royal insignia, heaped up one on the other, and in
such quantities that there was no space for new ones. It was a legacy
of extinct Dynasties or of noble families who had died out, to whom the
Pharaohs had granted the privilege of consecrating their image in the
house of the god, and to sell or destroy any of them would have been
to commit sacrilege.[46] They were dealt with according to the custom
of the contemporary peoples: a vast pit was dug between the seventh
pylon and the hypostyle hall, and then they were buried pell-mell in
holy ground. Twenty centuries later, in 1883, hastily made soundings
revealed the richness of the site to me, but, lacking money, I could
not venture to undertake anything. It was not until 1901, when the
regular progress of clearing away brought the workmen to the spot, that
I advised M. Legrain to dig more deeply than usual, so that nothing
which was hidden beneath the earth might escape observation. The
excavations yielded just what I had foreseen, royal colossi in granite,
limestone, sandstone which were restored to their ancient places along
the pylon; a little below came fragments of a fine limestone building
of Amenôthes I that Thoutmôsis III had used for banking up when he
enlarged the temple; and at the very bottom, at a depth of over six,
twelve, fourteen yards, what none of us had thought of, an intact
_favissa_ in which hundreds of statues and small objects awaited in the
mud the hour of their deliverance.
For four years M. Legrain has been exploring the spot foot by foot,
and I think he has succeeded in entirely emptying it. We must now draw
up the inventory of the treasures it has bestowed on us. The greatest
benefit conferred by them is assuredly on political history. All epochs
are not represented in equal abundance--the first Theban Empire is, so
to speak, merely mentioned, and the two great Dynasties of the second
are represented only by about a hundred pieces--but from the fall of
the Ramessides to the Persian conquest the series of the high priests
of Amon reappears almost complete, with their wives, sons, brothers,
the children or latest descendants of their brothers, and from the day
when the male line failed, the princesses who inherited its rights,
with the noble persons who wielded the power in their name. However,
the large find all at once of statues and inscriptions serves not only
to give information about the revolution that transformed the military
kingdom of Thebes into a theocracy, but also furnishes documents for
the study of the progress of art during the twenty centuries and more
that the revolution took. The artistic merit of the objects is very
unequal, and many of them are only interesting to the archæologist;
some, however, stand out distinguished above the mass, and take their
rank worthily beside the best known productions of Egyptian art. As
they come from the same temple, and have been erected by different
members of the same families, it is natural to see in them the work of
one school, established at Thebes in far-off antiquity. Indeed, a unity
of character common to all is easily discerned, which, perpetuating
itself without notable change from generation to generation, fixes
undeniable affinities of conception and technique.
[Illustration: THE WORKS AT KARNAK IN JANUARY, 1906.]
II
Setting aside a few stelæ in which the arrangement is bad and the
composition coarse,[47] the most ancient monuments we possess of that
school are those discovered by Carter and Naville between 1900 and
1906 in the tomb of Montouhotpou V at Deîr-el-Baharî. The bas-reliefs
of the chapel belonging to the pyramid are as correct in design and
as firm in touch as the fine Memphian bas-reliefs of the Vth or VIth
Dynasty; but the relief is more accentuated, the outline bolder and
freer, the man more thick-set, and more firmly placed on the ground,
the woman of a more slender figure, with larger hips and a more ample
bosom. The statue of the king which is in the Cairo Museum[48] was
cut in the sandstone with a bold, firm chisel. The feet and knees
are thick, the hands massive, the bust indicated in summary fashion,
the face boldly modelled. The colour is harsh, the flesh black, the
costume white, the cap red, according to the ritual of the ceremonies
for which it was destined; the whole has an aspect of barbarism, but
a premeditated barbarism, having regard to the religious effect to be
produced. If a Memphian sculptor had treated a similar subject, he
would not have failed to harmonize the lines and soften the colour:
unconsciously he would have fused its type with the softer type
of human physiognomy that prevailed in his school, at the risk of
enfeebling its energy. The Theban sculptor, on the contrary, exerted
himself above all to reproduce the truth as it revealed itself to him,
and that preoccupation is dominant to the end with all of his school.
They sought the likeness with the intention of exaggerating rather than
of softening the individual features of the subject, and in order to
attain it, did not shrink from roughness of execution nor violence of
colour: they often fell into barbarism, but scarcely ever into banality.
When, under the XIIth Dynasty, Thebes became one of the capitals of
Egypt, its kings sometimes employed local artists, sometimes called
in sculptors imbued with the Memphian tradition from Heracleopolis
or the Fayoum. Chance has preserved for us two colossal heads, one of
Sanouosrît I (Ousirtasen),[49] discovered by Mariette in the ruins of
Abydos, the other of Sanouosrît III, extracted by M. Legrain from the
pit at Karnak. The handicraft is excellent in both cases, and seldom
has this unpromising stone been worked with greater skill, but the
inspiration of the whole is different. Here are two persons of the
same race, and the general resemblance is sufficient to set aside any
doubt: for if it were not there, we should be tempted to see in each
a sovereign of a different Dynasty. The first belongs to a school
inspired by the Memphian tradition: the sculptor has idealized or, if
preferred, symbolized his model, and has given it the short full oval,
the smiling good-humoured face that the school adopted for official
statues of the Pharaohs. The second, on the other hand, copied the
features without softening a single one; the face is long and thin,
the brow narrow, the cheek-bones prominent, the jaw bony and heavy. He
has hollowed the cheeks, surrounded the nose with two deep furrows,
tightened the lower lip and projected it into a contemptuous pout; he
has realized a strong work, whereas the other, penetrated by opposite
principles, has only evolved from the stone an agreeable composition,
but one lacking individuality.
[Illustration: MONTOUHOTPOU V.
Painted sandstone.]
[Illustration: HEAD OF A COLOSSUS OF SANOUOSRÎT.
Pink granite.]
The contrast between the two methods is less striking in the
bas-reliefs than in the statues. Among the fragments used by Thoutmôsis
III for filling up is a square pillar emanating from a limestone
building of Sanouosrît I. The Pharaoh is seen on one of the
sides accompanied by Phtah. They are there, the sovereign and the
god, face to face, breathing each other’s breath, according to the
etiquette of greeting between persons equal in rank. The style greatly
resembles that of the Memphian school, but when examined more closely,
peculiarities of the Theban school are to be distinguished. The
contours are firmly fixed, the relief is less flat, and consequently
the shadows less thin, and thus the outline of the figures stands out
more strongly against the background than in the pictures of Gizeh
or Saqqarah: a Memphian would perhaps have displayed more elegance,
but would have remained true to convention. The scenes engraved on
the other three sides also present the characteristics of Theban art,
and it is a pity that the fragment is so far unique. If the rest of
the temple was decorated in the same happy fashion, the XIVth Dynasty
encouraged at Thebes a work comparable to the finest of the XVIIIth or
XIXth on the porticoes of Deîr-el-Baharî, in the sanctuary of Gournah,
and in the Memnonium erected by Setouî I at Abydos.
[Illustration: SANOUOSRÎT AND THE GOD PHTAH.
Fine sandstone.]
III
It is with the statues of the XVIIIth Dynasty discovered at Karnak
by M. Legrain as with those of the XIIth: directly we look at them
we notice distinctive signs of the school, with modifications that
are explained when we consider the position of Thebes at that period.
The favourite residence of the Pharaohs and permanent seat of their
government, its prosperity was continually increased by the booty
gained in Syria or Ethiopia, and as wealth increased, so did the taste
for building. Not only did the kings never tire of embellishing the
city, but, following their example, private individuals built sumptuous
palaces and tombs there. For so much activity a large supply of artists
was needed: studios multiplied, sculptors came from all parts of the
country to supplement the few Theban sculptors. Those strangers did
not join the local school without exercising some influence on it: it
was subdivided into several branches, each of which, while preserving
a common ground of precepts and habits, soon assumed its personal
physiognomy. We already know two or three of them, but how many must
there have been during the three centuries that the Dynasty lasted, all
the work of which is lost for us or confused with the mass?
[Illustration: BUST OF THOUTMÔSIS III.
Grey Schist.]
I like to attribute to the same studio, besides a certain number
of pieces recently acquired by the Cairo Museum, three of the best
fragments extricated by M. Legrain from the _favissa_, the Thoutmôsis
III, the Isis, and the Sanmaout. The Thoutmôsis III is in a very supple
schist that allows the most delicate chiselling, and no engraving
can do justice to the delicacy of the modelling: the play of the
muscles is discreetly noted, but with extraordinary sureness, and, the
imperceptible shadows it produces varying in proportion as we walk
round the figure, the aspect of the physiognomy seems to change from
moment to moment. Isis was not of royal birth, and perhaps came from
one of the lower strata of society: five-and-twenty years ago her
existence was not suspected, and the Karnak statue in pink granite
is the first portrait we have of her. It is through her, however,
that Thoutmôsis III possesses the features by which he differs from
his predecessors, the large aquiline nose, wide-opened, almost
protruding eyes, full mouth, rounded face. The heavy wig he wears
made the sculptor’s task difficult; so much the greater then is the
merit in conceiving a work before which we pause, even by the side of
the preceding one. It contains all the characteristics of the Theban
school, the seeking after the personal expression, the sincerity of
the rendering, the width of the shoulders and, as a set-off, the
intentional smallness of the waist between the ample breasts and broad
hips. Study of the composition compels us to attribute it to the
same studio, if not to the same artist to whom we owe the statue of
Thoutmôsis III. I think the same about the group representing Sanmaout
and the little princess Nafêrourîya whose steward he was: nothing could
be less conventional than the free, firm gesture with which he holds
the child, or the posture of trusting abandon with which she leans
against his breast. The frankness of the movement well harmonizes with
the spiritual gentleness of the face and the smile that animates the
eyes and the full lips. Sanmaout was Queen Hachopsouîtou’s major-domo,
and his sovereign had authorized him to erect his statues in the temple
of Amon. After examining those that remain to us, it cannot be doubted
that they all come from one of the royal studios, most probably the one
whence came later the statues of Thoutmôsis and his mother Isis.
[Illustration: ISIS, MOTHER OF THOUTMÔSIS III.]
And we have direct proof that the Theban sculptors of that period tried
above everything to make sure of the likeness. They drew their subject
over and over again before definitely making the rough sketch, and the
dry climate of Egypt has preserved many of their cartoons. Cartoon
is not exactly the term, since they used fragments of limestone for
their studies, but the word _ostraca_ by which they are designated
is not much better, and, further, is only intelligible to expert
Egyptologists. Hundreds of them have found their way to the Cairo
Museum, and they show the attempts of the artist, his hesitations
and corrections, the variations of his thought and of his hand, down
to the moment when he became absolute master of his model. More than
once, too, the chances of excavation have brought the model itself to
light, and provided us with the means of comparing the portrait with
the original. That is the case with Thoutmôsis III. His mummy was found
in 1881 in the _favissa_ of Deîr-el-Baharî and is exhibited with the
others in the Gallery of Sovereigns in the Cairo Museum. The face has
certainly greatly changed in course of mummification, and the shrunken
flesh, the sunken eyes, the flattened nose, and the discoloured
skin make him very different from what he was formerly. But if the
superficies has changed, what is beneath has endured: if we compare the
profile of the face with the mask of the statue, we must admit that
they are identical, with the addition of the life, the expression of
which was perpetuated by the sculptor.
[Illustration: SANMAOUT AND THE PRINCESS NAFÊROURÎYA.
Black granite.]
Let us skip a century and a half, and transport ourselves to the
last years of the Dynasty: they have bequeathed us several pieces
that must be related to a common origin: the fine woman’s head that
Mariette called Taia, the Khonsou and the Amon of Harmhâbi,[50] the
Toutânoukhamanou, and perhaps also the statuette in petrified wood
extracted from the _favissa_ by Legrain in 1905. Is not a portrait
of Aî to be recognized there? It is broadly treated despite its
restricted dimensions, but the unfortunate material employed did not
allow the artist to go far as regards execution: the likeness remains
uncertain. But it preserves the mark of the school, and various details
in the nose, mouth, the cut of the eyes, the inset of the eyebrows,
lead me to think that we shall probably be right in attributing
it to the group of artists to whom we owe the Khonsou and the
Toutânoukhamanou. I am certain that they come from the same hand, and
an instant’s examination will prove it. The two figures might almost be
superimposed: the eye is hollowed out in an identical amount in both,
the attachment of the nose is similar, and so is the way of slightly
inflating the nostrils and of dilating the middle of the lips and
compressing the corners. The physiognomy has something ailing in it,
but the indications of ill-health, the obliquity and bruised appearance
of the eyes, the thinness of the cheeks and neck, the prominence of
the shoulder-bones, are more perceptible in the Khonsou than in the
Toutânoukhamanou; we might say that the model of the Khonsou, if it
is not Toutânoukhamanou at a more advanced age, had a more visible
tendency to consumption. A doctor should study them both: he alone
could decide, if, as I imagine, they represent a sick man, and possibly
he could, according to the external aspect of the subject, establish
the exact diagnosis of the disease.