A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 27

Neither at Memphis nor at Thebes do the tombs of this late period contain any novel elements, but they are distinguished by their size and the luxury of their decoration. In some, the wells are much wider than usual; in others it is upon the external courts and upon those double gateways which play a part similar to that of the successive pylons before a Theban temple, that extra care is bestowed. Vaults are frequently employed and help to give variety of effect. Private tombs become as large as those of sovereigns, and similar tendencies are to be found in the sculpture. The Egyptian genius was becoming exhausted, and it endeavoured to compensate for its want of invention and creative imagination by an increase in richness and elegance.

A chronological cla.s.sification is only possible in the cases of those tombs which bear inscriptions and figures upon their walls. At Memphis, as at Thebes, the remains of thousands of tombs are to be found which give no indication of their date. Sometimes they are deep mummy pits, slightly expanding at the bottom; sometimes, as at Thebes, the rock is honeycombed with graves between the border of the cultivated land and the foot of the Libyan chain. In the mountains themselves there are hundreds of small chambers, with bare walls and often extremely minute in size, cut in the sides of the cliffs.

Finally, there are the vast catacombs, in each chamber of which the mummies of labourers and artisans were crowded, often with the instruments of their trade by their sides.[282] Pits full of mummified animals are also found among the human graves. Rhind saw some hundreds of the mummies of hawks and ibises taken from a tomb at the foot of the Drah-Abou'l-Neggah. They were each enveloped in bandages of mummy cloth, and beside them numerous small boxes, each with a carefully embalmed mouse inside it, were found. The lids of these boxes had each a wooden mouse upon it, sometimes gilt.[283]

[282] RHIND, _Thebes_, etc. p. 51. BELZONI, _Narrative of the Operations_, etc. p. 167.

[283] RHIND, p. 52. Among the mummified animals found at Thebes, Wilkinson also mentions monkeys, sheep, cows, cats, crocodiles, etc. See BELZONI, _Narrative_, p. 187.

We have endeavoured to notice all that is of importance in the funerary architecture of Egypt, because the Egyptian civilization, as we know it through the still existing monuments, carries us much farther back than any other towards the first awakening of individual thought and consciousness in mankind. The primitive conceptions of those early periods were, of course, different enough from those to which mankind was brought by later reflection, but nevertheless they were the premises, they contained the germ of all the development that has followed; and to thoroughly understand the origin and const.i.tution of this development it was necessary to follow it up to its source, to the clearness and transparency of its springs.

The art of Egypt is the oldest of all the national arts, and the oldest monuments of Egypt are its tombs. By these alone is that earliest epoch in its history which we call the Ancient Empire known to us.

In later ages the country was covered with magnificent temples and sumptuous palaces, but, even then, the tomb did not lose its pre-eminent importance. The chief care of the Egyptian in all ages was his place of rest after death. Rich or poor, as soon as he arrived at full age he directed all his spare resources towards the construction and decoration of his tomb, his happy, his eternal "dwelling," with which his thoughts were far more preoccupied than with that home in the light, upon which, whether it were a miserable mud hut or a vast edifice of brick or wood, he looked with comparative indifference, regarding it as an encampment for a day or a mere hotel for a pa.s.sing traveller. The tombs, when not hollowed from the living rock, were built with such solidity and care that they have survived in thousands, while the palaces of great sovereigns have perished and left no trace, and the temples which have been preserved are very few in number.

Being mostly subterranean and hidden from the eye of man, sepulchres preserved the deposits entrusted to them much better than buildings upon the surface. Those among the latter which were not completely destroyed, were, in very remote times, damaged, pillaged, stripped, and mutilated in a thousand ways. All that subsists of their decoration--shattered colossi and bas-reliefs often broken and disfigured--tells us nothing beyond the pomps and triumphs of official history. The tombs have suffered much less severely. The statues, bas-reliefs, and paintings which have been found in them, seem, in many instances, to have been the work of the very men whose footprints were found in the sand which covered their floors when they were opened.[284] The pictures offered to our eyes by the walls of the private tombs are very different from those which we find in the temples. All cla.s.ses of the people appear in them in their every-day occupations and customary att.i.tudes. The whole national life is displayed before us in a long series of scenes which comment upon and explain each other. Almost all that we know concerning the industrial arts of Egypt has been derived from a study of her tomb-houses. In every hundred of such objects which our museums contain at least ninety-nine come from those safe depositories.

[284] When Mariette discovered the tomb of the Apis which had died in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Rameses II., the fingers of the Egyptian mason who laid the last stone of the wall built across the entrance to the tomb were found marked upon the cement, and "when I entered the sarcophagus-chamber I found upon the thin layer of dust which covered the floor the marks made by the naked feet of the workmen who had placed the G.o.d in his last resting place 3,200 years before." (Quoted by RHoNe in _L'egypte a Pet.i.tes Journees_, p. 239.)

In order to give a true idea of the national character of the Egyptians and to enable the originality of their civilization to be thoroughly understood, it was necessary to show the place occupied in their thoughts by the antic.i.p.ation of death; it was necessary to explain what the tomb meant to them, to what sentiments and beliefs its general arrangements and its princ.i.p.al details responded; it was necessary to follow out the various modifications which were brought about by the development of religious conceptions, from the time of the first six dynasties to that of the Theban Empire.

The brilliant architectural revival which distinguished the first and second Theban Empires was mainly due to this development of religious thought. Almost all the peculiarities of the Memphite tomb are to be explained by the hypotheses with which primitive man is content. But when mature reflection evolved higher types for the national G.o.ds, when polytheism came to be superimposed upon fetishism, the hour arrived for the temple to take its proper place in the national life, for majestic colonnades and ma.s.sive pylons to be erected on the banks of the life-giving river. The temple was later than the tomb, but it followed closely upon its footsteps, and the two were, in a fashion, united by those erections on the left bank of the Nile, under the Theban necropolis, which partook of the character of both. The temple is the highest outcome of the native genius during those centuries which saw Egypt supreme over all the races of the East, supreme partly by force of arms, but mainly by the superiority of her civilization.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SACRED ARCHITECTURE OF EGYPT.

-- 1.--_The Temple under the Ancient Empire._

No statue of a G.o.d is known which can be confidently referred to the first six dynasties. Hence it has sometimes been a.s.serted that at that early period the Egyptian G.o.ds were not born, if we may use the expression, that the notions of the people had not yet been condensed into any definite conception upon the point. Some writers incline to believe that Egyptian thought had not yet reached the point where the polytheistic idea springs up, that they were still content with those fetishes which retained no slight hold upon their imaginations until a much later period. Others affirm that the absence of G.o.ds is due to the fact that the Egyptian people were so near to the first creation of mankind that they had not yet forgotten those religious truths which were revealed to the fathers of our race. They believe that Egypt began with monotheism, and that its polytheistic system was due to the gradual degradation of pure doctrine which took place among all but the chosen people.

We shall not attempt to discuss the latter hypothesis in these pages.

It is a matter of faith and not of scientific demonstration. But to the first hypothesis we shall oppose certain undoubted facts which prove it to be, at least, an exaggeration, and that Egypt was even in those early days much farther advanced, more capable of a.n.a.lysis and reflection, than is generally imagined. M. Maspero, in his desire for enlightenment upon this point, searched the epitaphs of the ancient empire, and found in their nomenclature most of the sacred names which, in later phases of the national civilization, designate the princ.i.p.al deities of the Egyptian pantheon.[285] The composite proper names often seem to express individual devotion to some particular deity, and to indicate some connection between the latter and the mortal who bore his name and lived under his protection. These divinities must, then, have already been in existence in the minds of the Egyptians. The most that can be said is that they had not yet arrived at complete definition; art, perhaps, had not yet given them those unchanging external features and characteristics which they retained to the last days of paganism. It is quite possible that they were, more often than not, represented by those animals which, in more enlightened times, served them for symbols.

[285] We may take a few of those in the Boulak Museum at random: Ra-Hotep (No. 590), Hathor-En-Kheou (588), Ra-Nefer (23), Ra-Our (25), Sokar-Kha-Ca-u (993), Noum-Hotep (26), Hathor-Nefer (41), Ptah-a.s.ses (500), Ptah-Hotep, &c. The names of several deities are to be found in the inscription upon the wooden coffin or mummy-case of Mycerinus, now in the British Museum. (MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p. 75). A priest of Apis is mentioned upon a tomb of the fourth dynasty; Osiris is invoked in the steles of the sixth dynasty. (Boulak Catalogue, No. 41.)

Amen, or Ammon, is never mentioned on the monuments of the Ancient Empire; his first appearance is contemporary with the twelfth dynasty. (GReBAULT, _Hymne a Ammon-Ra_, Introduction, part iii. p. 136.) This is natural enough. Amen was a Theban G.o.d, and Thebes does not seem to have existed in the time of the Ancient Empire.

If the inscription and the figured representations still existing upon a certain stele which was found a short distance eastward of the pyramid of Cheops[286] are to be taken literally, we must believe that that monarch restored the princ.i.p.al statues of the Egyptian G.o.ds and made them pretty much what we see them in monuments belonging to times much more recent than his. The upper part of the stele in question shows the G.o.d of generation, Horus, Thoth, Isis in several different forms, Nephthys, Selk, Horus as the avenger of his father, Harpocrates, Ptah, Setekh, Osiris, and Apis. These statues would seem to have been in gold, silver, bronze and wood. Mariette, however, is inclined to think that this stele does not date from the time of Cheops, that it is a restoration made during the middle, or, perhaps, even during the New Empire. On attempting to restore so venerable a relic of the author of the greatest architectural work in their country, the scribes may have allowed themselves to add figures treated in the style of their own day to the ancient text. It is equally doubtful, moreover, whether the text itself dates back to the earlier period, and we need, perhaps, accept as fact only this: that Cheops restored an already existing temple, a.s.signed to it certain sacred offerings as revenues, and restored the statues of gold, silver, bronze, and wood, which adorned the sanctuary.

[286] _Notice des princ.i.p.aux Monuments exposes dans les Galeries provisoires du Musee d' Antiquites egyptiennes a Boulak._ (Edition of 1876, No. 582.)

It may be that the divine effigies were abundant even in those early days, but that they have failed to survive to our day. The portraits of so many private individuals have been preserved because, in their desire to afford a proper support to their _double_, they multiplied their own images to as great an extent as their means would allow.

Between the third and the sixth dynasties the multiplication of these portrait statues went on at a prodigious rate, and their number may be judged from the fact that twenty were taken from the _serdab_ alone of the tomb of Ti. The greater their number, the greater was the chance that one of them would escape destruction.

The ingenuity of man combined with the process of nature to preserve these figures to generations in the remote future, to a time when they could excite interest enough to save them from destruction and to ensure them a chance of eternal existence. To the thick walls of the mastabas, to the well-concealed serdabs, and, more than all, to the constantly increasing mask of sand laid upon the cemeteries of Gizeh and Sakkarah by the winds from the desert, did they owe their preservation through the troublous times which were in store for Egypt.

In their more exposed situations in the temples and private houses, the images of the G.o.ds ran far greater risks than the private statues.

The material of those which were of gold, silver, or bronze, would excite dangerous cupidity, while the wooden ones were pretty sure, sooner or later, to be destroyed or damaged by fire. The stone statues might be overthrown and broken and replaced by others of a later fashion, besides which a vast number of them have perished in the lime-kilns.

We see, then, that supposing Cheops and Chephren to have paid their devotions before statues of Isis and Osiris, Ptah and Hathor, there is nothing very astonishing in the total disappearance of those figures.

To argue from their absence that in those early days the G.o.ds of the Egyptians were not yet created, and consequently that there were no temples erected in their honour, is to hazard a gratuitous a.s.sertion which may at any time be disproved by some happy discovery, such as that which gave us, twenty years ago, the statue of Chephren now in the Boulak Museum. Before that statue was found it might similarly have been contended that the series of royal effigies only commenced with the first Theban Empire.

We possess, moreover, at least one divine effigy which, in the opinion of all contemporary archaeologists, dates from the time of the ancient monarchy, namely, the great Sphinx at Gizeh (Fig. 157). We learn from epigraphic writings that this gigantic idol, combining the body of a crouching lion with the head of a man, represents Hor-em-Khou, or 'Horus in the shining Sun,' corresponding to the Harmachis, or rising sun, of the Greeks. According to the stele above quoted, it was carved, long before the time of Cheops, out of a natural rock which reared its head above the sand in this part of the necropolis; here and there the desired form was made out by additions in masonry.[287]

[287] The total height of the Sphinx is 66 feet; the ear is 6 feet 4 inches high; the nose is 6 feet, the mouth 7 feet 9 inches, wide. The greatest width of the face across the cheeks is 14 feet 2 inches. If cleared entirely of sand the Sphinx would thus be higher than a five-storied house. For the history of the Sphinx, the different restorations which it has undergone, and the aspect which it has presented at different epochs, see MARIETTE, _Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles_. Our plan (Fig. 204) shows the wide flight of steps which was constructed in the time of Trajan to give access to a landing constructed immediately in front of the fore-paws.

Between these paws a little temple was contrived, where the steles consecrated by several of the Theban kings in honour of the Sphinx were arranged. Caviglia was the first to bring all these matters to light, in 1817, but the _ensemble_, as it now exists, only dates back to the Roman epoch. It is curious that neither Herodotus, nor Diodorus, nor Strabo, mention the Sphinx.

Pliny speaks of it (N. H. x.x.xvi. 17); some of the information which he obtained was valuable and authentic, but it was mixed with errors; it was said to be, he tells us, _the tomb of the king Armais_, but he knows that the whole figure was painted red. The _Denkmaeler_ of Lepsius (vol. i. pl. 30) gives three sections and a plan of the little temple between the paws. The same work (vol. v. pl. 68) contains a reproduction of the great stele of Thothmes relative to the restoration of the Sphinx.

As primitive Egypt had G.o.ds she must have had temples. Few traces of them are to be found, however, and their almost total disappearance is mainly owing to causes which merit careful notice.

Before they began to erect stone buildings, the early Egyptians made constant use of wood for many ages. Various bas-reliefs and paintings prove that this latter material was never entirely abandoned, but after stone and brick came into general use it was reserved for special purposes; it was usually employed in those lighter and more ephemeral edifices in which rapidity of construction was the chief point required. When, in the remains of the early dynasties, we see the characteristics of wooden constructions so closely imitated in stone, we are constrained to believe that wood then played a much more important part than under the Theban princes. Either brick or stone was absolutely necessary for a tomb, because they alone had sufficient durability, but it is quite possible that most of the temples were of wood. With the help of colour and metal, wood could be easily made to fulfil all the conditions of a temple. The shrine which enclosed either a statue or some symbolic object, the portico which surrounded the inner court, the furniture, the doors, the high palisade which enclosed the sacred precinct, might all have been of wood. When destroyed by accident or damaged by time, such a structure could be quickly and easily restored.

We may admit, however, that from the epoch of the Pyramids onwards, such cities as Thinis, Abydos, Memphis, and others, constructed their temples of stone, which, in the then state of architectural skill, they could have done without any serious difficulty. The chief cause of the disappearance of the early temples was the construction of those that came after them. The national taste changed with the centuries, and the time came when the comparative simplicity of the primitive erections was unable to satisfy the longing of the people for magnificence and splendour. New temples, more vast and sumptuous than the old, were constructed, and the substance of their predecessors was, as a matter of course, employed in their construction. Sometimes a fragmentary inscription or a piece of sculpture betrays the restoration; and, here and there, inscriptions on the later building go so far as to preserve the name of the architect of the first. An instance of this occurs at Denderah.

Champollion discovered that the Ptolemaic temples almost always replaced structures dating from the great Theban or Sait dynasties.

The island of Philae, however, affords an exception to this rule.[288]

These temples he calls "second editions." But in some cases they were third or even fourth editions.

[288] CHAMPOLLION, _Lettres d'egypte et de Nubie_, pp. 125, 143, and 166. Under both the temples at Ombos, Champollion discovered remains of a building of the time of Thothmes III. The same thing occurred at Edfou and at Esneh. We except Philae, because there is good reason to believe that in the time of the Ancient Empire that island did not exist, and that the cataract was then at Silsilis.

But in spite of all these rearrangements and restorations, a few sacred buildings of the early period were still in existence during the Roman occupation of the country, and were then shown as curiosities. This we may gather from a pa.s.sage in Strabo. After having described, with much precision, the disposition of certain buildings which are easily recognized as temples built under the princes of the New Empire, he adds: "At Heliopolis, however, there is a certain building with several ranges of columns, which recalls, by its arrangement, the barbarous style; because, apart from the great size of the columns, their number and their position in several long rows, there is nothing graceful in the building, nothing that shows any power of artistic design; effort, and impotent effort, is its most striking characteristic."[289] Lucian, too, was thinking of the same building in his treatise upon the Syrian G.o.ddess, when he said that the Egyptians had, in ancient times, temples without sculptured decorations.[290]

[289] STRABO, xvii. 128: ??d?? ??e? ?a??e? ??d? ??af????, etc.

[290] LUCIAN, -- 3: ??????? ????, etc.

One of these 'barbarous' temples, as Strabo calls them, is supposed to have been discovered in the small building disinterred by Mariette in 1853, at about 50 yards distance from the right foot of the Sphinx in a south-easterly direction. Mariette cleared the whole of the interior, and by means of a flight of steps well protected from the sand, he provided easy access to it. But he left the external walls buried as he found them, and so they still remain.

The entrance is by a pa.s.sage about 66 feet long and 7 wide, which runs almost in an easterly direction through the ma.s.sive masonry which const.i.tutes the external wall. About midway along this pa.s.sage two small galleries branch off; that on the right leads to a small chamber, that on the left to a staircase giving access to the terrace above. At the end of the pa.s.sage we find ourselves at one of the angles of a hall, running north and south, and about 83 feet long by 23 wide. The roof is supported by six quadrangular piers. These are monoliths 16 feet 6 inches high and 3 feet 4 inches by 4 feet 8 inches in section. Several of their architraves are still in place.

These are stones about 10 feet in length.[291] From the eastern side of this hall another opens at right angles. This second hall is about 57 feet long and 30 wide, and its roof was supported by ten columns similar to those we have already mentioned.

[291] The piers are not quite equidistant; their s.p.a.cing varies by some centimetres. Exact symmetry has been sacrificed in consequence of the different lengths of the stones which formed the architrave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 202.--The Temple of the Sphinx (from an unpublished plan by Mariette).]

From the south-west angle of the first hall there is a short corridor which leads to six deep niches in the masonry, arranged in pairs one above the other, and apparently intended for the reception of mummies.

In the middle of the eastern wall of this same large chamber there is a short and wide pa.s.sage which leads to a third and last hall, parallel to the one with six columns; it has no supporting pillars, but there is, in the centre of the floor, a deep well which Mariette cleared from the sand with which it was filled. There had been water in it, because it was sunk below the level of the Nile. At the bottom nine broken statues of Chephren were found; they were not copies, one from the other, but represented the king at different periods of his life. Several stone cynocephali were also found.

At each end of this hall there is a small chamber communicating with it by short corridors. One of these, that in the northern angle of the temple, seems to have communicated with the outward air by an irregular opening in the masonry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 203.--Interior of the Temple of the Sphinx (from a sketch by M. Ernest Desjardins).]

The materials employed in the interior of this building are rose granite and alabaster. The supporting piers are of granite, the lining slabs of the walls and the ceiling, alabaster. Both these materials are dressed and fixed with care and knowledge, but in no part of the temple is the slightest hint at a moulding or at any other sort of ornament to be found. The pillars are plain rectangular monoliths; the walls are without either bas-reliefs or paintings, and there is not a trace of any inscription on any part of the building. The external walls are constructed of the largest limestone blocks which are to be found in Egypt. In these days none of their outward faces are visible, but according to Mariette, who, doubtless, had inspected them by means of temporary excavation, nothing is to be seen but "smoothly polished surfaces, decorated with long vertical and horizontal grooves skilfully interlaced; in one corner there is a door, the only one, and that very small."[292]