worshipping the emblem of Osiris, tiny vultures, and tiny hawks
extending their wings, each piece claims careful examination, and would
by itself alone bring joy to the heart of a collector. The masterpiece
of the series is, however, the _soul_, the hawk with a human head,
enamelled body and wings, of which both back and front views are here
reproduced. The back follows the usual manner, small rods of bent gold,
curved, soldered on to a gold plaque and encrusted with thin plates
of felspar to simulate feathers; but on the other side, the body,
wings, and claws are modelled with the new purpose of reproducing the
natural form of the bird. The little human head is a marvel of somewhat
weak gracefulness: the eyes are well open, the mouth is smiling, the
nostrils actually palpitate, the ear is cut out and is hollowed broad
and high as is customary, and there is nothing, even to the wrinkles
of the neck and the roundness of a double chin, that does not clearly
stand out under the reflection of the gold. Here again, it is all
chiselled by a master-hand, with a sureness I have only found in the
hawk with a ram’s head in the Louvre,[90] with which this _soul of
Gizeh_ may be compared.
The circumstances of the discovery would not have informed us of the
date, if the style of the jewels had not done so. It is Saïte art
with its lightness, suppleness, somewhat arch charm, its almost too
high relief. A tendency is felt in the direction of the exaggerated
roundness of the Ptolemies, and, in fact, a note furnished by M.
Chassinat permits us to fix the time at which Zannehibou lived. He
belonged to the family of a certain Psammetichus, whose tomb is near
his, which an inscription in the Louvre found by Mariette in the
Serapeum places at the beginning of the fifth century, during the last
years of the reign of Darius I. If, as is likely, he was the grandson
of that Psammetichus, he died at the end of the fourth century, just
when the Saïte kings were resuming their superiority over the Persians,
at most, a hundred years before the Macedonian conquest. The goldsmiths
who fashioned his ornaments had probably seen Greek jewels, and had
perhaps already felt Hellenic influence: in that way the almost
Ptolemaic characteristics of the collection are explained. We know that
Saïte jewels are very rare; the Louvre alone possesses any that are
out of the ordinary run: the two necklace fastenings in form of a ship
bought by M. G. Bénédite a few years ago. The mummy of Zannehibou has
filled up the lacuna in the Gizeh series, and thanks to it, we now know
that the goldsmith’s art yielded in nothing to the other arts at the
time of the last Egyptian renaissance. Let us add that these jewels,
although found on a mummy and made for it, are not, as is too often the
case, jewels of the dead, pleasing in colour and design, but too weakly
mounted to stand the wear and tear if worn by a living person. Like the
jewels of Ramses II in the Louvre,[91] like those of Queen Ahhotpou at
Gizeh, they are real jewels, identical at all points, except perhaps in
the choice of subjects, with the jewels worn every day.
Such is the find that made a happy termination to our Saqqarah
campaign. All the pieces were covered with bitumen, and it is no slight
merit to M. Barsanti that he should have discovered them and separated
them one after the other. Several pits, equally untouched, await us at
the same spot under fifteen or eighteen yards of sand, and I have a
good hope that next year’s excavations may have as glad surprises for
us as those of this year.
XXIV
A BRONZE EGYPTIAN CAT BELONGING TO M. BARRÈRE[92]
This fine bronze cat was purchased at Cairo in 1884 by M. Barrère,
then agent and consul-general of France in Egypt. It belongs to the
innumerable family of cats which suddenly came forth from the ruins
of Tell Bastah in 1878, and were, in a few years, scattered over the
whole world. It measures 1 foot 4⅛ inches in height, and if not the
largest found at that time, it is at least bigger than the average.
But its size is not its chief merit: the Egyptians, who were the
first to tame the cat, studied it so closely that they expressed its
characteristics with extraordinary excellence. M. Barrère’s cat is
firmly seated on her hind-quarters, looking straight in front of her,
in the satisfied attitude of an animal which has done its duty and has
nothing to reproach itself with. The wooden pedestal to which it was
attached is wanting, but the metal tenon which fastened it is still
in its place, and the body is in a perfect state of preservation. It
was moulded in one piece round a core of sand that has disappeared,
then touched up with the burin and the file, and then polished; it has
not suffered from its long sojourn in the earth, and we can judge its
qualities or its defects as clearly as if it had been made yesterday.
It is a fine piece, of very sure design and careful execution. The
artist was not afraid to multiply the details, and he has simplified
the surfaces; but the force of the line, the robust and vigorous
character of the execution, make his work a piece of the first rank. It
is wonderful to note the intelligent skill with which he has expressed
the characteristics and physiognomy of the race. The haunch is broad
and round, the back supple, the neck slender, the head delicate, the
ear straight; it is the Egyptian cat in all its elegance, as we can
still see it among the fellahs, for crossing with foreign species has
not altered it.
[Illustration: BRONZE CAT OF THE SAÏTE PERIOD.
Barrère Collection.]
She is Bastît, a goddess of good family, the worship of whom flourished
especially in the east of the delta, and she is very often drawn or
named on the monuments, although they do not tell us enough of her
myths or her origin. She was allied or related to the Sun, and was now
said to be his sister or wife, now his daughter. She sometimes filled
a beneficent and gracious rôle, protecting men against contagious
diseases or evil spirits, keeping them off by the music of her sistrum:
she had also her hours of treacherous perversity, during which she
played with her victim as with a mouse, before finishing him off with
a blow of her claws. She dwelt by preference in the city that bore her
name, Poubastît, the Bubastis of classical writers. Her temple, at
which Cheops and Chephrên had worked while they were building their
pyramids, was rebuilt by the Pharaohs of the XXIInd Dynasty, enlarged
by those of the XXVIth; when Herodotus visited it in the middle of
the fifth century B.C., he considered it one of the most remarkable
he had seen in the parts of Egypt through which he had travelled. It
stood in the centre of the city, at the end of the market-place. It
was bordered by two canals, each 100 feet wide and shaded by trees;
they flowed without joining, one on the right, the other on the left
of the building, almost making it an artificial island. Travellers
before entering it looked over the enclosure, even into the exterior
court-yards, for Bubastis had undergone the fate of many of the large
cities of Egypt; in the course of ages the ground became raised in
such a way that the foundations of recent houses were on a higher
level than those of the temple. A big wall, decorated with pictures
like the outer wall of the temple of Edfou, enclosed the temenos. The
fêtes of Bastît attracted pilgrims from all parts of Egypt, as at the
present day those of Sidi Ahmed el-Bedaouî draw people to the modern
fair of Tantah. The people of each village crowded into large boats
to get there, men and women pell-mell, with the fixed intention of
enjoying themselves on the journey, a thing they never failed to do.
They accompanied the slow progress of navigation with endless songs,
love songs rather than sacred hymns, and there were always to be found
among them flute players and castanet players to support or keep time
to the voices. Whenever they passed by a town, they approached the bank
as near as they could without landing, and then, while the orchestra
redoubled its noise, the passengers threw volleys of insults and coarse
remarks at the women standing on the bank; they retorted, and when
they had exhausted words, they pulled up their petticoats and behaved
indecently by way of reply. Herodotus was told that 700,000 persons,
equal numbers of men and women, not reckoning little children, went
thus every year to Bubastis. Entry into the temple did not calm them,
far from it. They sacrificed a great number of victims with a sincere
and joyous piety; then they drank deeply from morning to evening, and
from evening to morning, as long as the festival lasted: more wine was
consumed in a few days than in all the rest of the year put together.
The greater number of the pilgrims, before returning home, left a
souvenir of their visit at the feet of Bastît. It was a votive stele
with a fine inscription, and a picture showing the donor worshipping
his goddess; or a statuette in blue or green pottery, or if they were
wealthy, in bronze, silver, or sometimes gold: the goddess would be
standing, seated, crouching with a woman’s body and a cat’s head, a
sistrum or an ægis in her hand. During the Greek period the figures
were in bronze or in painted and gilded wood surmounted by a cat’s
head in bronze. Many were life-size and modelled with elaborate art;
they had eyes of enamel, a gilded necklace round the neck, earrings,
and amulets on the forehead. It sometimes happened that when a cat
he particularly venerated died in his house, the pilgrim embalmed it
according to the rites: he took the mummy with him, and, arrived at
Bubastis, shut it up in one of the figures he offered. These various
objects, at first placed anywhere in the temple, would quickly have
filled it, if some remedy had not been found. They were piled up
provisionally at the end of one of the secondary chambers, then thrown
outside, and there encountered diverse fortunes. I do not think I am
calumniating the Egyptian priests in saying that it must have been a
great grief to them to part with so many precious gifts without trying
to derive some honest profit from them. The gold and silver figures did
not endure; they quickly went into the melting-pot, and few emerge from
the ruins, but the bronze and copper were so abundant that there would
have been little to gain in melting down the cats. So they sorted out
the heap of bronzes, and while they kept some, the finest, doubtless,
or those that bore inscriptions, they sold the rest to new generations
of pilgrims, who, in their turn, offered them in due form. However
frequently this was done, the influx was considerable, and they were
forced to rid themselves quickly of the pieces that had at first been
kept in reserve. They shut them up in cellars, or in pits dug expressly
for them, veritable _favissæ_ similar to those of classical times;[93]
they accumulated by thousands, large and small, in wood and in bronze,
some intact and fresh as when just made, others already out of shape,
rotten, oxidized and of no value. The places of concealment were soon
forgotten, and the stuff in them reposed there beyond the reach of men
until the day when the chances of excavation brought it to light.
One of them restored M. Barrère’s cat. It is not possible to determine
the period at which it was buried: the persons who found it were
seekers of nitreous manure, or dealers in antiquities who took good
care not to divulge the circumstances and the site of their discovery.
But judging from the roundness of certain forms and the aspect of
the bronze, we recognize the style of the second Saïte Period, and
the piece is to be attributed either to the Nectanebos, or the first
Ptolemies, in a general way to the fourth century B.C. or the beginning
of the third century B.C. It was the time when the worship of Bastît
and her subordinate forms, Pakhît, Maît, was most popular, the period
when, near Speos-Artemidos, the most extensive cemetery of cats in
Egypt was established. The execution is pure Egyptian, and in no way
betrays any Greek influence.
XXV
A FIND OF CATS IN EGYPT[94]
It was announced in the English newspapers, and the French followed
suit, that a ship had recently reached London and disembarked 180,000
mummies of Egyptian cats. For a long time manufacturers of different
nationalities have been accustomed to seek out the burying grounds of
animals throughout Egypt, and to export the bones to Europe, where
they are used as manure. A few years ago a necropolis full of monkeys
was sent to Germany to manure beet-root fields. It seems that the
cats of this year were discovered near Beni-Hassan; they were piled
up at hazard in a sort of cavern, into which a fellah in search of
antiquities was the first to penetrate. In fact, at some distance to
the south of the hypogeums of Beni-Hassan, in the place called by
geographers Speos-Artemidos, is a chapel hollowed out in the rock, and
consecrated by the kings of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties to a local
goddess, a woman’s body with a cat’s or lion’s head, called Pakhît.
The depôt recently exploited was found there, and the cats which
reposed in it must have lived in the vicinity, under the protection
of their cousin, the goddess. Cemeteries of the same kind existed
wherever a divinity of a feline type was worshipped, lion, tiger,
or cat. The most celebrated was at Bubastis, in the delta, where the
seekers of antiquities cleared away the rubbish about thirty-seven
years ago.[95] The mummies of cats were buried there in _favissæ_,
deep pits, some merely wrapped in swathings, others enclosed in little
coffins reproducing the image of the animal. Some of these coffins
are entirely of wood covered with white stucco, gilded, painted in
bright colours; some are in bronze, others have the body in wood and
the head in bronze, with gold rings in their ears and encrustations of
gold on the forehead and in the eyes. Statuettes of cats of different
sizes, portraits of the goddess Bastît with a cat’s head, or of the god
Nofirtoumou, are mingled with the mummies. Thence come the thousands of
bronze cats, big and little, with which all the antiquaries of Europe
and Cairo were so abundantly provided from 1876 to 1888. The important
cat illustrated here, and who lives now in one of the glass cases in
the “Salle divine” of the Louvre, is a perfect type of the species,
long, slender in the back, broad in the hind-quarters, with a delicate,
well-set head, rings in the ears, a necklace round the neck, and a
little scarab on the top of the head; the artist who modelled it has
rendered excellently and truthfully the supple bearing and the bold
physiognomy of his original.
[Illustration: BRONZE CAT.
The Louvre.]
The cats represented on the monuments, or the mummies of which are
found in Egypt, were not of the same race as our domestic cat. Scholars
have studied them and are unanimous--Virchow, too, recently--in
recognizing them as the _Felis maniculata_ and the _Felis chaus_. Egypt
had tamed a few individual ones, but had not domesticated the whole
species. They are sometimes to be seen on the bas-reliefs solemnly
seated near their masters. It is commonly asserted that they were
used for hunting birds in the marshes, and Wilkinson quotes in support
a fairly large number of mural paintings where they stalk through the
reeds, routing out little birds. I confess that this interpretation
does not seem to me to be correct. Where others claim to recognize
animals ready for the chase and acting on behalf of man, I only see
animals, tame or not, on marauding bent and scouring the bushes for
their own purposes; just as our domesticated cat chases the sparrows in
our gardens and destroys the nests in our parks without any advantage
to his master. Egyptian artists, very acute observers of what was going
on around them, reproduced their cats’ expeditions, as they noted other
picturesque details of the life of nature.
If we examined the 180,000 cats--neither more nor less--we should
probably come upon a fairly large proportion of ichneumons. In Egypt
the ichneumon and the cat were always associated; wherever there are
mummies of cats it may be safely assumed that mummies of ichneumons are
not far off. Cats or ichneumons, I hope the whole of them will not be
used to manure the ground, but that some fine specimens may be chosen
for the museums of antiquities and of natural history: in sparing a
few hundreds, agriculture will not lose much, and science will gain
considerably. The origin of our tom-cat has long been under discussion;
some refer it to Egypt, others to Europe. It would be a pity not to
profit by such an invasion of Egyptian cats, and to try to obtain a
definite solution of the question.
FOOTNOTES
[1] From the _Journal des Savants_, 1908, pp. 1–17.
[2] F.W. von Bissing, “Denkmäler Ægyptischer Skulptur.” Text, 4to;
portfolio of plates, fol.; Bruckmann, Munich, 1906–8.
[3] It may also be asked if the stele of the King-Serpent is an
original or a restoration of the time of Setouî I.
[4] Bissing, II. _Plate with the name of King Athotis_, note 6.
[5] I even noted the existence of one of these tails in wood in the
Marseilles Museum (_Catalogue_, p. 92, No. 279).
[6] _Musée Egyptien_, vol. ii., Pl. IX-X and pp. 25–30.
[7] Ibid., vol. ii., Pl. XV, pp. 41–45.
[8] Maspero, _Guide to the Cairo Museum_, 1906, pp. 156–7, No. 550.
[9] _Revue de l’Art Ancien et Moderne_, 1906, vol. x., pp. 241–52,
337–48; cf. Chap. X. of the present volume.
[10] _Musée Egyptien_, vol. ii., pp. 90–2.
[11] From the _Revue de l’Art ancien et moderne_, 1912, vol. xxxi., pp.
241–54.
[12] It is mentioned for the first time in Emmanuel de Rougé’s
_Catalogue_, 1855, under No. 6; it is placed on the mantelpiece in the
“Salle civile.”
[13] See good examples in Mariette, “Karnak,” Pl. VIII.
[14] This is no longer true since the discovery of the _favissa_ at
Karnak. The Cairo Museum possesses some hundreds of statues of private
individuals from the Theban temple of Amon (1912).
[15] Mariette, “Sur les tombes de l’Ancien Empire qu’on trouve à
Saqqarah,” 1912, pp. 8–9.
[16] On this theory see Lepage-Renouf, “On the True Sense of an
important Egyptian Word,” in the _Transactions of the Society of
Biblical Archæology_, vol. iv., pp. 494–508, and Maspero, “Mémoires
du Congrès des Orientalistes de Lyon,” vol. i., and _Bulletin de
l’Association scientifique de France_ (1878), No. 594, pp. 373–84.
[17] One of the Egyptian festivals of the dead.
[18] For complete translation of the contract see the _Transactions of
the Society of Biblical Archæology_, vol. vii., pp. 1–9.
[19] The Skhemka group was catalogued for the first time by E. de
Rougé, “Notice sommaire des Monuments égyptiens,” 1855, pp. 50–51,
under the number S. 102. The other two statues of the same person
possessed by the Museum are both entered under the number S.103. One is
in granite, the other in painted limestone.
[20] There are exceptions only in the middle of the XVIIIth Dynasty,
when men and women, and especially women, are painted light pink or
flesh colour.
[21] The pretty painted bas-relief of the tomb of Seti I in the Louvre
(E. de Rougé, “Notice des principaux monuments,” p. 35, B. 7) shows in
large the arrangement of the glass beads on the stuff.
[22] Cf., _e.g._, Lepsius, “Denkmäler,” ii., 47_b_, 74_e_, where the
woman crouching in front of her husband puts her arm round his leg.
[23] Here are some references to plates in Lepsius where the husband
and wife are represented side by side in different positions. The woman
of low stature crouches behind her seated husband (“Denkmäler,” ii.,
71_b_); the wife and husband, both of heroic stature, are seated on
the same armchair, and the wife puts her right arm round her husband’s
neck (“Denkmäler,” ii., 10_b_, 24, 25_b_, 41_b_, 42_a_-_b_, 75_a_,
etc.); the wife of low stature stands in front of her husband, who is
of heroic stature (“Denkmäler,” ii., 38_b_); she stands behind him and
puts her arm round his left arm (“Denkmäler,” ii., 27, 33_a_), or she
puts her arm round his waist (“Denkmäler,” ii., 38_a_); and lastly, the
husband and wife, of the same stature, are standing, the wife behind
her husband and putting her arm round his neck (“Denkmäler,” ii., 13,
20–1, 29_b_, 32, 34_b_, 40_b_, 43_b_, 46, 58_a_, 59_b_), or separated
from him (“Denkmäler,” ii., 73, etc.).
[24] Thus in Lepsius (“Denkmäler,” ii., 74_e_), where the noble
Senotmhît, surnamed Mihi, is seated, of heroic stature, while his wife,
Khontkaous, is represented crouching and of low stature, although she
is a legitimate daughter of the king. In another part of the tomb
(Lepsius, “Denkmäler,” ii., 73) the same persons are represented
standing side by side and of heroic stature, while their children are
of ordinary stature.
[25] See the preceding chapter, pp. 55–59.
[26] See Chapter III, p. 51.
[27] We know now (1912) that the figures described by Mariette as
mourners are cooks, who held the spit in one hand and with the other
protected their faces from the heat of the brazier where the chickens
were roasting.
[28] In examining the eye of the Cheîkh-el-Beled closely, I found that
there was no silver nail in it, but that the luminous spangle was
produced by a scrap of polished ebony placed under the crystal; it
should be the same with the eyes of the Crouching Scribe.
[29] Cf. pp. 55–59.
[30] This article was published in two slightly different forms in the
_Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, 3rd period, 1893, vol. ix., pp. 265–70, and
in the _Monuments Piot_, 1894, vol. i., pp. 1–6: I have combined them
for this volume.
[31] The statue is described in the “Visitor’s Guide to the Cairo
Museum,” 2nd edition, 1912, p. 58, No. 142.
[32] Maspero, “Visitor’s Guide,” 2nd edition, 1912, pp. 57–8, No. 141.
[33] Cf. p. 61.
[34] Cf. what has already been said regarding statues of private
individuals erected by the favour of the Pharaoh, p. 40.
[35] Maspero, “Visitor’s Guide to the Boulaq Museum,” p. 28, and now
“Visitor’s Guide to the Cairo Museum,” 2nd edition, 1912, p. 73, No.
227.
[36] The expression is borrowed from a letter of the _Papyrus
Anastasis_, No. 3. Its position in the Egyptian context leads me to
believe that it was an often-quoted proverb. The idea is repeated in
different forms in the scribes’ correspondence: “Work, or you will
be beaten.” “When the scribe reaches the age of manhood, his back is
broken by the blows he has received.”
[37] Mariette, “Notice des principaux monuments du Musée de Boulaq,”
6th edition, 1876, p. 235, No. 769: “Memphis. Saqqarah--limestone II, 1
foot 2 inches--kneeling figure. His hands crossed on his legs. His eyes
are of mosaic work and formed of several stones curiously combined.”
The statue of the kneeling scribe figures in a group in Plate XX of
Mariette’s work, “Album du Musée de Boulaq,” containing 40 plates,
photographed by MM. Délié and Béchard, with explanatory text edited by
Auguste Mariette-Bey. Cairo, Mourès et Cie, 1871, fol.
[38] Mariette, “Notice des principaux monuments du Musée de Boulaq,”
6th edition, 1876, p. 216, No. 582. The Boulaq Museum possesses a
second statue of the same person (_ibid._, p. 93, No. 28), but of a
less fine execution than the statue No. 582. Cf. what is said of the
two statues on pp. 70–73 of this volume.
[39] Mariette, “Notice,” p. 217: “The sum of the qualities, and study
of the inscriptions on the base of the monument, leave no doubt as
to the epoch to which it belongs. Rânofir evidently lived under the
Ancient Empire. His titles bring him near the Vth Dynasty.” The study
of the inscriptions leads me to be more certain than Mariette was.
Rânofir undoubtedly lived at the end of the Vth Dynasty.
[40] See pp. 60–65.
[41] He is a cook, as I mentioned on p. 61, note 27.
[42] See p. 51.
[43] See p. 61.
[44] See the curious study of Dr. Parrot, “Sur l’origine d’une des
formes du dieu Phtah,” in the “Recueil de travaux relatifs à la
philologie et à l’archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes,” vol. ii.,
pp. 129–33.
[45] Published in the _Revue de l’Art ancien et moderne_, 1906, vol.
xx., pp. 247–52, 337–48.
[46] See pp. 50–51.
[47] See, _e.g._, the stelæ described or referred to in Maspero, “Guide
to the Cairo Museum,” 1903, pp. 73–5, 94–5, 96, etc.
[48] Already published in the _Musée Egyptien_, vol. ii., Pl. IX-X, pp.
25–30.
[49] The head was reproduced by Rougé-Banville, “Album photographique,”
Nos. 111–12; cf. Mariette, “Monuments divers,” Pl. XXI, _a_, _b_, _c_,
and p. 299; the whole is reproduced in the _Musée Egyptien_, vol. ii.,
Pl. XIII, and pp. 34–5.
[50] See article on this group by Legrain in the _Musée Egyptien_, vol.
ii., pp. 1–14 and Pl. I-IV.
[51] The head of the Pharaoh, which was stolen at the moment of
discovery, has been found since this article appeared, and purchased by
the Cairo Museum, 1912.
[52] Published in the _Revue de l’Art ancien et moderne_, 1907, vol.
xxii., pp. 5–18.
[53] She is noted in the “Livre d’entrée” under No. 38575 and the
chapel under No. 38576.
[54] Naville, “Das Thebanische Todtenbuch,” vol. i., Pl. CCXXII.
[55] It comes from Tell Tmai, and is entered in the “Livre d’entrée”
under No. 38930, and in the “Guide to the Museum,” 3rd English edition,
under No. 461, p. 164.