not at once noticeable in the engraving: but they are clear to those
who have studied the originals. In a slighter degree all the details
I have noted in Khonsou and Toutânoukhamanou are there: the queen is
not a sick woman, but the different parts of her face are treated
in the same way, and the hand which sculptured them is that which
so delicately chiselled the portraits of the god and the Pharaoh,
its contemporaries. Even when only the queen was known, her strange
physiognomy greatly excited the imagination of scholars. Mariette, who
discovered her, thought her a stranger to Egypt; he identified her
with Tîyi, the wife of Amenôthes III, and declared her to be Syrian,
Hittite, Armenian, and his opinion long prevailed. We know now that
her date is at least a quarter of a century after Tîyi, and that she
represents the wife or mother of Harmhâbi, one of the Pharaohs who
succeeded the heretical sovereigns of the XVIIIth Dynasty. And in fact
the portraits of Tîyi that have recently emerged from the earth have
no point of likeness with that of Mariette’s queen. They present a
woman of a thin bony type, with heavy jaw and long depressed chin, a
low receding forehead, the physiognomy of the Pharaoh Khouniatonou with
which the bas-reliefs and statues of El-Amarna have familiarized us. By
the form and expression of her face our queen is allied to the family
of Harmhâbi or Toutânoukhamanou: the resemblance of her statue to those
of Legrain would sufficiently prove it, if further proof were required.
And now, when the two groups I have just described have been compared,
it is easily admitted that the inspiration and technique of the second
proceed directly from the inspiration and technique of the first. Taste
fluctuated during the five or six generations that divide them, and
the caprices of fashion have influenced the execution: but the general
characteristics remain unchanged, and their persistence allows us once
again to assert the continuity of the school.
[Illustration: STATUETTE IN PETRIFIED WOOD.]
[Illustration: THEBAN KHONSOU.
Granite.]
[Illustration: STATUE OF TOUTÂNOUKHAMANOU.
Red granite.]
[Illustration: THE SO-CALLED TAIA.
White limestone.]
[Illustration: RAMSES II.
Alabaster. Turin Museum.]
[Illustration: RAMSES IV LEADING A LIBYAN CAPTIVE.
Grey granite.]
IV
It maintained its flourishing condition during the XIXth Dynasty, and
the _favissa_ has restored to us works that yield in nothing to those
of the preceding age. In my opinion the best is a mutilated statue of
Ramses II, so like the big Turin statue in pose and execution that it
might be the first rough draft of it, or the exact smaller copy. A few
pieces of the XXth Dynasty are worthy of esteem without rising far
above mediocrity, as in a little group in granite of Ramses VI bringing
a Libyan prisoner to the god Amon: the bearing of the victorious
Pharaoh does not lack pride, the constrained posture of the barbarian
is skillfully noted, and the movement of the miniature lion that glides
between the two is interpreted with the customary naturalness of the
Egyptians when they portray animals.[51] I prefer the priest with the
monkey, or, to give him his name, Ramses-Nakhouîti, the chief prophet
of Amon. In a crouching posture, with calves and thighs flat on the
ground, a roll spread out before him across his legs, bewigged and
petticoated, uncomfortable in his robes of ceremony, with an air of
abstraction he meditates, or silently recites prayers to himself. A
little hairy cynocephalus perches on his shoulders, and looks at him
over his head: it is the god Thot who is revealed in this unusual
position, and it was difficult to co-ordinate the beast and the man in
a manner that should be neither absurd nor simply ugly. The sculptor
has come out with honour. The priest slightly bends his neck, but we
feel that the beast does not weigh on him: the monkey on his part half
shrinks behind the head-dress, and the deep frown of his face prevents
the mischievous effect that the countenance of an animal above a human
face might have produced. Like the group of Ramses VI, it bears the
imprint of the school, but with notable differences of technique: if
the first was sculptured in one of the royal studios, the second comes
from another studio of which the origin can be indicated.
We know how, about a century after the death of Ramses III, the
pontiffs of Amon made themselves masters of the whole of the Thebaïd:
while a new Dynasty established itself at Tanis in the eastern delta,
they exercised supreme authority over Southern Egypt and Ethiopia,
sometimes with the title of high-priest, sometimes with that of king,
and their sacerdotal house was the seat of their government. We do
not know the exact site, but we learn from an inscription that it
was situated near the seventh pylon, not far from the spot where the
_favissa_ was dug out. It is probable that their relatives obtained
the privilege from them, at the moment they assumed domination, of
erecting their statues in the temple. The court-yard between the
seventh pylon and the hypostyle hall contains only a small number of
_ex-votos_: they chose it as the place in which to consecrate their
monuments, and filled it in the course of generations. What has come
down to us does not include all they erected in their own name or to
the memory of those they loved. Many statues were seized or destroyed
during civil or foreign wars, but when the Macedonians conquered the
land enough remained for more than five hundred to be thrown into the
_favissa_. A large number of artists must have been needed to execute
so many commissions, and, besides its royal studio, Thebes long
possessed one or several pontifical studios. To one of those must be
assigned the man with the monkey, and nearly all the statues after the
fall of the Ramessides. For the most part they have a real value, and
scarcely yield to the old royal works, such as the limestone statuette
of Orsorkon II, who drags himself along the ground and offers a boat
to his god, the fragments of which have disappeared. We are forced to
confess, however, that many are, if not bad, of no interest for the
history of art.
[Illustration: THE PRIEST WITH THE MONKEY.]
The usual posture did not lend itself to elegance. They are nearly all
crouching, the thighs up to the chest, the arms crossed on the knees:
what advantage was to be obtained from an attitude that reduced a man
to a mere packet surmounted by a head? Where the model departed from
the hieratical posture, the qualities of the school are revealed. The
Ankhnasnofiriabrê en Hathor has a somewhat strained gracefulness: it
would almost bear comparison with the Amenertaîous so much admired by
Mariette, if it were not leaning against a big ugly pillar. Perhaps
the contrast between the slender waist and the inflated bust and belly
is too marked in the Ankhnas, but the composition of the head is
irreproachable. It is nearly always so at that epoch: if the sculptors
sometimes neglected the bodies or interpreted them ill, they cared
lovingly for the heads. Fine portraits may be counted by the score
among the statues found in the _favissa_. I shall only give two here,
that of Mantimehê and his son, Nsiphtah, who lived under Taharkou and
Psammetichus I. Thebes was then under a curious government. When the
male descendants of the priests failed, the power, and those sacerdotal
functions that could be exercised by women, passed into the hands
of the princesses: one of them was elected, who, wedded to the god
in a mystic marriage, henceforth enjoyed the right of living free as
she pleased. To assist them in the government, these _pallacides_ of
Amon had major-domos, who often filled with them a similar rôle to
that of the chief minister with the queens of Madagascar before the
occupation of the island by the French. Mantimehê and his son are
the best known of these persons, and the artists to whom the care of
sculpturing their portraits was entrusted would certainly be the best
among those of the sacerdotal studio. It is, in fact, nature itself,
and no master of a former age could have expressed better or with a
bolder chisel the bustling vulgarity of the father and the aristocratic
inanity of the son. The second Saïte period and the beginning of the
Greek period are almost entirely unrepresented in the _favissa_; under
the Persians, distress was too general for artistic matters to be
thought of, and the Macedonian rule had only just been consolidated
when the common pit was dug. A granite head, of hasty workmanship but
dignified appearance, shows, however, that the Theban studio followed
the movement that prevailed in the schools of Lower Egypt, and that,
doubtless under the influence of Greek models, it gave attention to
details hitherto neglected: the skull is studied with a greater care
for accuracy, and also the slight accidents of the physiognomy, the
furrows of the forehead, the lines between the eyes and at the rise of
the nose, the falling in or puffing out of the cheeks, the play of the
muscles round the nostrils and mouth. The sculptor desired to note in
his work not only the broad lines of the face, but the small details
that characterize the individual and determine his personality.
[Illustration: OSORKON II OFFERING A BOAT TO THE GOD AMON.]
[Illustration: QUEEN ANKHNASNOFIRIABRÊ.]
[Illustration: MANTIMEHÊ.]
[Illustration: NSIPHTAH, SON OF MANTIMEHÊ.]
[Illustration: HEAD (SAÏTE PERIOD).]
[Illustration: THE COW OF DEIR-EL-BAHARÎ IN HER CHAPEL.]
V
It is a long time since I undertook to distinguish, under the apparent
uniformity with which Egypt is reproached, the varieties of composition
and conception that may serve for the recognition of schools, and,
in the work of the schools, for that of particular studios. I have
not found it difficult to show how the Memphian manner differs from
the Theban, nor what distinguishes both from that which flourished at
Hermopolis, Tanis, Saïs; but for the lack of sufficiently numerous
documents, I had not succeeded in marking out the development of one
same school through a long series of centuries. The find at Karnak gave
me the materials I lacked, and since M. Legrain has been exploiting
it, I have not ceased to search in it for information on that point.
I have obtained much there, sometimes, it is true, of varying value,
and I have still much to learn both about the most ancient periods and
about certain moments of transition in more recent periods. I believe,
however, the results already obtained are sufficiently important and
significant to compel us to remodel the history of Egyptian art. I have
not ventured to do that here, but, short as the present essay is, it
may clearly be seen to what results it has led me. I have confirmed
the fact that the characteristics of Theban art were those I thought
I recognized at the beginning of my studies: I then rapidly noted the
stages that the art passed through from the moment that Thebes awoke to
political life almost to that when it ceased to exist as a great city.
XI
THE COW OF DEIR-EL-BAHARÎ[52]
At two o’clock in the afternoon of February 12, 1906, while Naville
was finishing his lunch, a workman came running up to tell him that
the top of a vault was beginning to emerge from the earth. For several
days certain indications had led him to think that a discovery was at
hand: he went to the spot and at once saw in the mound of sand that
dominated the back porticoes of the temple of Montouhotpou a spectacle
that filled him with joy. The vault was almost half dug out; under it,
in the shade, an admirable cow extended her neck, and seemed to look
about her curiously. A few hours’ work sufficed to set her completely
free. She was intact, but a little figure leaning against her breast
had had its face crushed in distant ages, and the violence of the
blows had caused a crack in the head and shoulders that compromised
its solidity. The chamber that sheltered the cow was built in a
hollow of the rock with slabs of sculptured and painted sandstone.
The semicircular ceiling did not present the usual regular vault with
converging keystones and surfaces; it was composed of a double row of
bent blocks cut in quarters of a circle and buttressed one against
the other at their upper end. It was painted dark blue with yellow
five-pointed stars scattered over it to represent the sky. The three
vertical partitions were decorated with religious scenes: on the one at
the back Thoutmôsis III worships Amonrâ, lord of Thebes, and on the two
sides he makes an offering to Hathor, who is no other than the very cow
shut into the vault.
[Illustration: AMENÔTHES II AND THE COW HATHOR.
(From the right-hand side of the group.)]
[Illustration: AMENÔTHES II AND THE COW HATHOR.
Three-quarters view.]
She was still half buried when some ten inquisitive persons turned
their kodaks on her, thus despoiling Naville, and disputing among
themselves the pleasure of being the first to photograph her. In the
evening nothing else was talked of in the Louxor hotels, and the
tourists did not fail to make up parties to go and admire her the next
day. The fellahs, on their side, related the most marvellous tales. She
had breathed noisily just at the moment that the light of day touched
her, and had shivered in all her limbs. She had directed such a look
on the workman who had perceived her that he broke his leg with an
awkward blow of his axe. She was not, as she seemed to be, of stone,
but of fine gold, disguised by Pharaoh’s magicians in order to keep
off treasure-seekers: a few formulas repeated at a fixed hour with the
prescribed fumigations and rites, a little dynamite, and after the
explosion the fragments would be transformed into ingots of metal. And
as if the sorcerers were not sufficient, dealers in antiquities prowled
about in the vicinity. Doubtless she was too heavy for them to think
of carrying her off whole, but would they have found it very difficult
to detach the head and decamp with it during the night, in spite of
the vigilance of our guards or with their complicity? Unscrupulous
amateurs are never far to seek, ready to pay heavily for a stolen
object, provided they believe it to have an artistic or archæological
value, and the certainty of gaining hundreds of pounds in case of
success largely compensates the honest brokers of Louxor for the petty
annoyance of disbursing a few pence by way of fine or of undergoing
a week’s imprisonment if they are caught in the act. I should have
preferred to leave the monument in its ancient place, but it would have
been tempting fortune, and the only means of saving it was to send it
to Cairo. I entrusted the matter to M. Baraize, one of our engineers,
and he carried it out extremely well: in less than three weeks he had
dismantled the blocks, packed up the cow, and transported the cases
by train across the Theban plain. The chapel is now rebuilt in a good
position at the end of one of the rooms of the Cairo Museum, but the
goddess is not hidden in darkness as at Deîr-el-Baharî. She stands at
the entrance, her body in the full light, the hinder parts a little
under the vault: she comes forth from her house and shows herself
freely to visitors, from the snout to the end of the tail.[53]
[Illustration: THE COW HATHOR.
Cairo Museum.]
II
Our wonder is at first aroused by the mixture she presents of
conventional mysticism with realism. The front view shows only the
head surrounded by accessories, the significance of which is only
appreciated by those who are learned in religious matters. At the top
of the composition, between the tall horns in form of a lyre, the
usual head-dress of goddess-mothers, is the solar disk flanked
by upstanding feathers and stamped with an inflated uræus. This
scaffolding of emblems without thickness and almost without consistence
would run the risk of being broken by the slightest blow if it was not
supported, and so it rests on two tufts of aquatic plants, the stalks
of which, rising from a socket near the hoofs, spring up right and
left of the legs; flowers alternating with buds bend over the back of
the neck and form a fan-shaped support behind the disk and feathers.
Under the snout, and as if framed by the vegetation, is the statuette
of a man standing, his back to the cow’s chest. As I said, the face is
mutilated, the flesh black; he stretches out his hands, palms downward,
in front of him with a gesture of submission, as if avowing himself
the humble servant of Hathor: by the uræus of the crown and the stiff
petticoat spread in a triangle in front of the thighs, we guess him to
be a Pharaoh. He is found again in a less punctilious attitude under
the right flank of the statue. He is kneeling, naked, and his flesh
is red; he presses the teat between his hands, and drinks greedily of
the sacred milk. If we may believe the cartouche engraved between the
lotuses, the two figures, the black and the red, are one and the same
sovereign, Amenôthes II of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and perhaps that is
the case. But it was Thoutmôsis III who built the chapel, and it is
he that the artists have represented twice over, praying in front of
the cow and sucking the udder. It would be strange if, after erecting
the sanctuary, he should have omitted to provide it with his goddess.
It is more probable that the cow was commissioned by him, and shut up
there by his order, but without dedication or cartouche: he considered
doubtless that the neighbouring bas-reliefs would constitute sufficient
title-deeds. Later, Amenôthes II, wishing to associate himself with
his father’s act of piety, and noticing an empty space behind the
coiffure, inscribed his name there.
Such a complexity of figures and attributes does not tend to make
the appreciation of the work easy for us, and we have also to add
the prescriptions of the ritual to the conventions of the craft from
which Egyptian artists were never free, at least when stone was their
material: the belly, tail, legs, all the lower parts of the group, are
enclosed in a stone partition which spoils the effect even while it
preserves them from the chances of breakage. And yet, despite defects
that shock a sculptor of our time, one glance suffices to reveal the
extraordinary beauty of the work. The head differs from that of our
European cows, but it is a question of race, and whoever has seen the
Soudanese cow of the present day will easily distinguish its features
in the Hathor of Deîr-el-Baharî: the fullness of the brow, the subtle
modelling of the temples and cheeks, the gentle widening out of the
snout, the suppleness of the nostrils, and the smallness of the mouth.
Such accuracy of detail will delight the naturalist, but it might be
feared that it would harm the artistic value of the whole. That is not
the case at all, and if at a distance the physiognomy seems to have
only an expression of gentleness and meditative somnolence, as soon as
we go near it assumes an air of intelligent attention. The eye seems
to grow larger and to follow the visitor who arrives, the snout to
contract and palpitate, as if to scent out. The sculptor, instead of
following the tradition and polishing the stone as highly as possible,
has respected the fine furrows of the chisel, and the light playing
on them gives at moments the illusion of a shudder running over the
skin. The body is of equally accurate composition, the chest narrow,
shoulders thin, spine long and saddle-backed, leg long and slender,
the thigh sinewy, the haunches prominent, the udder only slightly
developed. The hinder part is worked with an incredible fidelity.
Contrary to custom, the coat is red-brown, darker on the back, lighter,
of a tawny shade that becomes white, on the belly; it is speckled with
black spots, like flowers with four petals, which we should consider
artificial, if there were not animals of Soudanese origin in the
Egyptian herds of to-day that show similar markings. By those spots
they recognize among the heifers of the year the one in which Hathor
has deigned to become incarnated, and which must be worshipped as long
as she remains on earth.
III
She was, above all, the divinity of the dead. The buildings scattered
about that corner of the necropolis were not exclusively consecrated
to the gods of the living; they were the chapels attached to royal
tombs, some of which, like that of Montouhotpou, were contiguous to the
tomb, while others, like that of Queen Hachopsouîtou, for example, were
relegated to the other side of the mountain, in the Bibân-el-Molouk.
The sovereigns were sometimes praying and bringing offerings to
the gods, sometimes associated with them and taking part in their
sacrifices. Hathor, ruler of the West and lady of the heaven, had
become by a concourse of ideas, the reasons of which can be understood,
the mistress of souls and _doubles_: she played thus a part of great
importance in places where the worship of her vassals was celebrated.
Walk through the halls of the large terraced temple and you will find
her repeatedly with the figure and posture assumed by her in the
oratory discovered by Naville: she is the foster-mother whose milk
Thoutmôsis and Hachopsouîtou are greedily imbibing. The suckling of the
sovereign was not a mere metaphor of language, realized and transcribed
on stone, but a material act borrowed from the customs of Egyptian law,
and the final formality of the ceremonies of the adoption. The woman
who had no son to perpetuate her memory, and desired to have one, after
reading the preliminary passages, had to offer one of her breasts,
in all probability the right, to the youth or man she had chosen; he
would press the teat between his lips for a few seconds, and by this
pretence of feeding would become to her as a son. Among half civilized
peoples where this custom prevails, it is not required that the woman
has been or is still married: only, the young girl who acquires a child
by this method covers her breast with a thin stuff before going through
the ceremony. If, then, Thoutmôsis III, or by usurpation Amenôthes II,
was represented kneeling under the right teat of the Hathor, he wished
thereby to prove that she was his divine mother, and the complacent
manner in which she yields him her milk sufficiently shows that she
admitted the legitimacy of his claim.
[Illustration: AN UNKNOWN FIGURE AND THE COW HATHOR.]