A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 15

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 170.--Upper part of the obelisk at Beggig. From the elevation of Lepsius.]

Whatever may have been the origin of this form it never became popular in Egypt. In Nubia alone do we find the type repeated, and that only in the debased periods of art. On the other hand, the obelisks proper seem to have been made in truly astonishing numbers in the time of the Middle and New Empires. Egypt has supplied Rome, Constantinople, Paris, London, and even New York with these monoliths, and yet she still possesses many at home. Of these several are still standing and in good preservation, others are broken and buried beneath the ruins of the temples which they adorned. At Karnak alone the sites of some ten or twelve have been found. Some of these are still standing, some are lying on the ground, while of others nothing is left but the pedestals. At the beginning of the century the French visitors to the ruins of San, the ancient Tanis, found the fragments of nine different obelisks.[162]

[162] _Description_, _Antiquites_, ch. 23.--M. EDOUARD NAVILLE has recently (June 16, 1882) published in the _Journal de Geneve_ an account of a visit to these ruins, during which he counted the fragments of no less than fourteen obelisks, some of them of extraordinary size.--ED.

-- 11. _The Profession of Architect._

It may seem to some of our readers that we have spent too much time and labour on our a.n.a.lysis of Egyptian architecture. Our excuse lies in the fact that architecture was the chief of the arts in Egypt. We know nothing of her painters. The pictures in the Theban tombs often display great taste and skill, but they seem to have been the work of decorators rather than of painters in the higher sense of the word.

Sculptors appear, now and then, to have been held in higher consideration. The names of one or two have come down to us, and we are told how dear they were to the kings who employed them.[163] But the only artists who had a high and well defined social position in ancient Egypt, a country where ranks were as distinctly marked as in China, were the architects or engineers, for they deserve either name.

Their names have been preserved to us in hundreds upon their elaborate tombs and inscribed steles.

[163] The sculptor who made the two famous colossi of Amenophis III. had the same name as his master, Amenhotep. (BRUGSCH, _History_, 1st edition, vol. i. pp. 425-6). Iritesen, who worked for Menthouthotep II. in the time of the first Theban Empire, was a worker in stone, gold, silver, ivory, and ebony. He held a place, he tells us, at the bottom of the king's heart, and was his joy from morning till night. (MASPERO, _la Stele_ C. 14 _du Louvre_, in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, vol. v. part ii. 1877.)

We might, then, amuse ourselves by making out a long list of Egyptian builders, a list which would extend over several thousands of years, from Nefer, of Boulak (Fig. 171),[164] who may have built one of the Pyramids, to the days of the Ptolemies or of the Roman emperors. In the glyptothek at Munich there is a beautiful sepulchral statue of Bakenkhonsou, who was chief prophet of Amen and princ.i.p.al architect of Thebes, in the time of Seti I. and Rameses II. From certain phrases in the inscription, Deveria believes that Bakenkhonsou built the temple of Gournah.[165] In his epitaph he boasts of the great offices which he had filled and of the favour which had been shown to him by his sovereign. Every Egyptian museum contains some statue and inscription of the same kind. Brugsch has proved that under the Memphite dynasties the architects to the king were sometimes recruited among the princes of the blood royal, and the texts upon their tombs show that they all, or nearly all, married daughters or grand-daughters of Pharaoh, and that such a marriage was not looked upon as _mesalliance_.[166]

[164] See _Notice des Princ.i.p.aux Monuments exposes dans le Musee de Boulak_, 1876, No. 458.

[165] DEVeRIA, _Bakenkhonsou_ (_Revue Archeologique_, new series, vi. p. 101).

[166] BRUGSCH, _History of Egypt_ (English edition), vol. i. p.

47. Ti, whose splendid tomb has been so often mentioned, was "First Commissioner of Works" for the whole of Egypt, as well as "Secretary of State" to Pharaoh.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 171.--Limestone statue of the architect Nefer, in the Boulak Museum. Drawn by Bourgoin.]

Similar evidence is forthcoming in connection with the first Theban Empire, but it was chiefly under the three great dynasties that the post of architect to Pharaoh became one of great responsibility, and carried with it great influence and authority.

For the building and keeping in repair of the sumptuous monuments then erected a great system of administration must have been devised, and Thebes, like modern London, must have had its "district-surveyors."[167]

[167] We have here ventured to take a slight liberty with M.

Perrot's local tints.--ED. PAUL PIERRET ("_Stele de Suti et de Har, architectes de Thebes_," in the _Recueil de Travaux_, vol.

i. p. 70), says, "This is said by him who has charge of the works of Amen in Southern Ap." Suti-Har says in his turn: "I have the direction of the west, he of the east. We are the directors of the great monuments in Ap, in the centre of Thebes, the city of Amen."

So far as we can tell there was a chief architect, or superintendent general of buildings, for the whole kingdom; his t.i.tle was _Overseer of the buildings of Upper and Lower Egypt_.[168] For how many scribes and draughtsmen must the offices of Bakenkhonsou or of Semnat, the favourite architect of the great regent Hatasu, have found employment?[169]

[168] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archeologie egyptienne_, p. 59.

[169] See BRUGSCH, _History of Egypt_, 1st edition, vol. i. p.

302.

Who would not like to know the course of study by which the ancient Egyptian builders prepared themselves for the great public enterprises which were always going on in their country? We may admit that the methods employed by their engineers were much more primitive than it has been the fashion to suppose, we may prove that their structures were far from possessing the accuracy of plan that distinguishes ours, but yet we cannot deny that those who transported and raised the obelisks and colossal statues, and those who constructed the hypostyle hall of Karnak, or even the pyramids of Gizeh, must have learnt their trade. How and where they learnt it we do not know. It is probable that they learnt it by practice under a master. Theory cannot have held any great part in their teaching. Their system must have been composed of a collection of processes and receipts which grew in number as the centuries pa.s.sed away. There is nothing in the texts to show that these receipts were the property of any close corporation, but heredity is sure to have played an important part and to have made them, to some extent, the property of a cla.s.s. Architects were generally the sons of architects. Brugsch has given us one genealogical table in which the profession descended from father to son for twenty-two generations. By help of the inscriptions he traced the family in question from the time of Seti I. to that of Darius the son of Hystaspes. But even then he may not have tracked the stream to its source. The rule and compa.s.s may have entered that family long before the time of Seti; their use may also have continued long after the Persian kings had been driven from Egypt.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER III.

SCULPTURE.

-- 1. _The Origin of Statue-making._

The art of imitating living forms by means of sculpture was no less ancient in Egypt than architecture. We do not mean to say that it already existed in those remote ages when the first ancestors of the Egyptian people built their mud cabins upon the banks of the Nile; but as soon as their dwellings became something more than mere shelters and began to be affected by the desire for beauty, the figures of men and animals took a considerable place in their decoration. The oldest mastabas that have been discovered have bas-reliefs upon their walls and statues in their mummy-pits.

The existence of these statues and their relative perfection show that sculpture had advanced with strides no less rapid than those of the sister art. It may even be said that its progress had been greater than that of architecture. Given the particular kind of expressive beauty which formed the ambition of the Egyptian sculptor, he produced masterpieces as early as the time of the Pyramid builders. We cannot say as much of the architect. The latter showed himself, indeed, a master in the mechanical processes of dressing and fixing stone, but the arrangement of his buildings was simple, we might say elementary, and many centuries had to pa.s.s before he had become capable of imagining and creating the sumptuous temples of the New Empire, with those ample porticos and great hypostyle halls which were the culminating achievements of Egyptian architecture.

In order to explain this curious inequality we need not inquire which of the two arts presents the fewest difficulties. It is with nations as with individuals. Some among them succeed with ease in matters which embarra.s.s their neighbours. It is a question of circ.u.mstances, of natural qualifications, and of surroundings. Among the Egyptians the progress of sculpture was accelerated by that national belief in a posthumous life for the body which we have described in connection with their funerary architecture. By the existence of this constant and singular belief we may explain both the early maturity of Egyptian sculpture and the great originality of their most ancient style.

We have already described the arrangements which were necessary to enable the inhabitant of the tomb to resist annihilation. Those arrangements were of two kinds, a provision of food and drink, which had to be constantly renewed, either in fact or by the magic multiplication which followed prayer, and a permanent support for the _ka_ or double, a support that should fill the place of the living body of which it had been deprived by dissolution. This support was afforded to some extent by the mummy; but the mummy was liable to be destroyed or to perish by the action of time. The Egyptians were led to provide against such a catastrophe by the invention of the funerary statue. In the climate of Egypt, stone, and even wood, had far better chances of duration than the most carefully embalmed body. Statues had the additional advantage that they could be multiplied at will. There was nothing to prevent ten, twenty, any number of them, being placed in a tomb.[170] If but one of these images survived all the accidents of time, the _double_ would be saved from that annihilation to which it would otherwise be condemned.

[170] The _serdabs_ of the tomb of Ti contained twenty, only one of which was recovered uninjured. MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee de Boulak_, No. 24.

Working under the impulse of such an idea, the sculptor could not fail to do his best to endow his statue with the characteristic features of the original. "It is easy, then, to understand why those Egyptian statues which do not represent G.o.ds are always portraits of some individual, executed with all the precision of which the artists were capable. They were not ideal figures to which the desire for beauty of line and expression had much to say, they were stone bodies, bodies which had to reproduce all the individual contours of their flesh-and-blood originals. When the latter was ugly, its reproduction had to be ugly also, and ugly in the same way. If these principles were disregarded the double would be unable to find the support which was necessary to it."[171]

[171] MASPERO, in Rayet's _Monuments de l'Art Antique_.

The first Egyptian statue was not so much a work of art as a cast from nature. If photography had been invented in the time of Menes, photographers would have made their fortunes in Egypt. Those sun-portraits, which are supposed to present a perfect resemblance, would have been put in the tomb of a deceased man in hundreds. Wanting such things, they were contented to copy his figure faithfully in stone or wood. His ordinary att.i.tude, his features and costume, were imitated with such scrupulous sincerity that the serdabs were filled with faithful duplicates of himself. To obtain such a likeness the artist cannot have trusted to his memory. His employer must have sat before him, the stone body must have been executed in presence of him whose immortality it had to ensure. In no other way could those effigies have been produced whose iconic character is obvious at first sight, effigies to which a contemporary would have put a name without the slightest hesitation.

This individuality is not, however, equally well preserved in all Egyptian sculpture, a remark which applies to the early dynasties as well as to the later ones, though not in the same degree. In those early ages the beliefs which led the Egyptian to inclose duplicates of his own body in his last resting-place were more powerful over his spirit, and the artist had to exert himself to satisfy the requirements of his employers in the matter of fidelity. Again, those centuries had not to struggle against such an acc.u.mulation of precedents and fixed habits, in a word, against so much conventionality as those which came after. There were no formulae, sanctioned by long custom, to relieve the artist from the necessity for original thought and continual reference to nature; he was compelled to make himself acquainted both with the general features of his race and those of his individual employers. This necessity gave him the best possible training. Portraiture taken up with intelligence and practised with a pa.s.sionate desire for truth has always been the best school for the formation of masters in the plastic arts.

In those early centuries, then, Egypt produced a few statues which were masterpieces of artistic expression, which were admirable portraits. In all countries, however, great works are rare. The sepulchral statues were far from being all equal in value to those of the Sheik-el-Beled, of Ra-Hotep from Meidoum, or of the scribe in the Louvre. This intelligent and scientific interpretation of nature was not reached at a bound; Egyptian sculpture had its archaic period as well as that of Greece.

Moreover, even when the art had come to maturity, there was, as in other countries a crowd of mediocre artists whose work was to be obtained at a cost smaller than that of the eminent men whom they surrounded. The leading sculptors were fully employed by the kings and great lords, by ministers and functionaries of high rank: their less able brethren worked for that great cla.s.s of functionaries of the second order, who composed what may be called the Egyptian middle cla.s.s. It is probable too, that, although his work was to be hidden in the darkness of the serdab, the artist took more care in reproducing the features of a great personage whose appearance might be known from one end of the Nile valley to the other, than when employed by some comparatively humble individual. Before descending into the tomb, the statue must for a time have been open to inspection, and its creator must have had the chance of receiving those praises which neither poet nor artist has been able to do without, from the days of Memphis to those of Modern Europe.

In most cases, however, he had to reproduce the features and contours of some obscure but honest scribe, some insignificant unit among the thousands who served Cheops or Chephren; and his conscience was more easily satisfied. If we pa.s.s in review those limestone figures which are beginning to be comparatively common in our museums, we receive the impression that many among them bear only a general resemblance to their originals; they preserve the Egyptian type of feature, the individual marks of s.e.x and age, the costume, the familiar att.i.tude, and the attributes and accessories required by custom, and that is all. It may even be that, like a certain category of funerary steles among the Greeks of a later age, these inferior works were bought in shops ready carved and painted, and that the mere inscription of a name was supposed to give them that iconic character upon which so much depended. A name indeed is not always found upon these images, but it is always carved upon the tombs in which they were placed, and its appearance there was sufficient to consecrate the statues and all other contents of the sepulchre to the support of the double to which it belonged. Whether it was copied from a sitter or bought ready-made, the statue became from the moment of its consecration an auxiliary body for the double. It preserved more of the appearance of life than the corpse saturated with mineral essences and hidden under countless bandages; the half-open smiling lips seemed about to speak, and the eyes, to which the employment of enamel and polished metal give a singular brilliance, seemed instinct with life.

The first statues produced by the Egyptians were sepulchral in character, and in the intentions both of those who made them and of those who gave the commissions, they were portraits, executed with such fidelity that the double should confidingly attach himself to them and not feel that he had been despoiled of his corporeal support.

As the power and wealth of the Egyptians grew, their artistic aspirations grew also. They rose by degrees to the conception of an ideal, but even when they are most visibly aiming at grandeur of style the origin of their art may still be divined; in their happiest and most n.o.ble creations the persistent effect of their early habits of thought and belief is still to be surely traced.

-- 2. _Sculpture under the Ancient Empire._

The most ancient monument of sculpture to which we can a.s.sign, if not a date, at least a chronological place in the list of Egyptian kings, is a rock-cut monument in the peninsula of Sinai. This is in the Wadi-maghara, and represents Snefrou, the last monarch of the third dynasty, destroying a crouching barbarian with his mace. In spite of its historic importance, we refrain from producing this bas-relief because its dilapidated state takes away its interest from an artistic point of view.[172]

[172] All the monuments in the Wadi-maghara are figured in the _Denkmaeler_ of LEPSIUS (part ii. plates 2, 39, and 61); casts of them have also been made.

There are, besides, other statues in existence to which egyptologists ascribe a still greater age. The Louvre contains three before which the historian of art must halt for a moment.

Two of these are very much alike, and bear the name of a personage called Sepa, who enjoyed the style and dignity of _prophet and priest of the white bull_. The third is the presentment of Nesa, who is called a relation of the king, and was, in all probability, the wife of Sepa (Fig. 172). These statues were of soft limestone. Both man and woman have black wigs with squared ends, which descend, in the case of the former, to the shoulders, in that of the latter, to the b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Sepa holds a long staff in his left hand, and in his right the sceptre called _pat_, a sign of authority. His only robe is a plain _schenti_, a kind of cotton breeches fastened round his waist by a band. His trunk and legs are bare, and the latter are only half freed from the stone in which they are carved. Nesa is dressed in a long chemise with a triangular opening between the b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Upon her arms she has bracelets composed of twelve rings. In each figure the wig, the pupils, eyelids, and eyebrows, are painted black, while there is a green stripe under the eyes. The bracelets are also green.

De Rouge a.s.serted boldly that these were the oldest statues in the world.[173] He believed them to date from the third dynasty, and his successors do not think he exaggerated; they would perhaps give the works in question an even more venerable age.

[173] _Notice des Monuments exposes dans la Galerie d'Antiquites egyptiennes, Salle du Rez-de-chausse et Palier de l'Escalier_, 1875, p. 26.

This impression of great antiquity is not caused by the short inscriptions on the plinths. The well-carved hieroglyphs which compose them are in relief, but this peculiarity is found in monuments of the fourth and fifth dynasties. The physiognomies and general style of the figures are much more significant. They betray an art whose aims and instincts are well developed, although it has not yet mastered its mechanical processes. The sculptor knows thoroughly what he wants, but his hand still lacks a.s.surance and decision. He has set out upon the way which will be trodden with ever-increasing firmness by his successors. He follows nature faithfully. Observe how frankly the breadth of Sepa's shoulders is insisted upon, how clearly the collar-bones and the articulations of the knees are marked. The rounded contours of Nesa's thighs betray the same sincerity. And yet there is a certain timidity and awkwardness in the group which becomes clearly perceptible when we compare it with works in its neighbourhood which date from the fifth dynasty. The workmanship lacks freedom, and the modelling is over-simplified. The arms, which elsewhere are laid upon the knees, or, in the case of the woman, pa.s.sed round the neck of her husband, are too rigid. One is held straight down by the body, the other is bent at a right angle across the stomach. The pose is stiff, the placid features lack expression and will.