A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 23

[265] MARIETTE (_Karnak_, p. 15) calculated that this temple, whose major axis from the pylon to the sanctuary hardly exceeded 300 feet in length, must have contained 572 statues, all in black granite, and differing but little in size and execution.

If placed in rows against the walls, and here and there in a double row, their elbows would almost have touched one another.

The first and second courts, and the two long corridors which bound the temple to the east and west, were full of them. One of these figures is represented in our Fig. 39, Vol. I.

[266] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. ii. p. 25.

The position occupied by the statue in the cella of a Greek temple finds something like a parallel, however, in the rock-cut temples of Nubia. We allude to these groups of three or four figures, carved in the living rock, which have been found seated in the farthest recesses at Ipsamboul, Derri, and elsewhere. These figures are now so mutilated that their merit as works of art cannot be decided.

We may safely say that if the temples proper, such as those of Karnak and Luxor, had contained master-statues corresponding in any way to those of the Greeks, they would have been of colossal size. But although the soil of Thebes is almost paved with the fragments of royal colossi, not a single vestige of any gigantic statue of Amen has ever been discovered. All that we know of those few divine statues to which special veneration was paid excludes any idea of size exceeding that of man. The statues of Amen and Khons, at Thebes and Napata, which nodded their approval when consulted by the king as to his future plans, were certainly not colossi.[267] And as for the figure of Khons, which took a voyage into Syria to cure the sister-in-law of one of the latter Ramessids, we can hardly believe it was more than a statuette.[268]

[267] MASPERO, _Annuaire de l'a.s.sociation des etudes Grecques_, 1877, p. 132.

[268] See the often-quoted story of a voyage taken by a statue of Khons to the country of Bakhtan and its return to Egypt. DE ROUGe, _etude sur un Stele egyptienne appartenant a la Bibliotheque Nationale_, 8vo, 1856.

In spite of their number the statues of the G.o.ds must have attracted much less attention than those of the kings. The Pharaoh who built a temple filled it with his own effigies; his colossi sat before the gate, they helped to form those structural units which we call Osiride piers, and figures of smaller size were ranged under the porticos. In that part of the Great Temple at Karnak which dates from the eighteenth dynasty, statues of Thothmes III. alone have been found to the number of several dozens; their broken fragments may be identified in every corner.[269]

[269] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 36. See also his _Abydos, Catalogue General_, -- 2, p. 27.

Among the countless votive offerings with which a great building like that at Karnak was filled, there were a few statues of private individuals. "The right to erect statues in the temples belonged (as we should say) to the crown. We find therefore that most of the private statues found in the sacred inclosures are inscribed with a special formula: 'Granted, by the king's favour, to so and so, the son of so and so....' Permission to place a statue in a temple was only given as a reward for services rendered. The temple might be either that of the favoured individual's native town, or one for which he had peculiar veneration.... Civil and foreign wars, the decay of cities, and the destruction of idols by the Christians, have combined to render statues of private persons from public temples of very rare occurrence in our collections."[270]

[270] MASPERO, in the _Monuments de l'Art Antique_ of Rayet.

The tombs were the proper places for private statues; we have seen that at Memphis they were set up in the courtyards and hidden in the serdabs, that at Thebes they were placed, either upright or sitting, in the depths of the hypogea.[271]

[271] _Description, Antiquites_, vol. iii. p. 41.

Figures in the round, whether G.o.ds, kings, or private persons, were always isolated. They were sometimes placed one by the side of the other, but they never formed groups in the strict sense of the word.

In the whole of Egyptian sculpture there is but one group, that of the father, mother, and children; and this was repeated without material change for thousands of years. The Egyptian artist can hardly be said to have composed or invented it; it was, so to speak, imposed upon him by nature. Those groups which became so numerous in h.e.l.lenic art as soon as it arrived at maturity, in which various forms and opposed or complementary movements were so combined as to produce a just equilibrium, are absolutely wanting in Egypt.

The Greeks were the first of the antique races to love the human form for itself, for the inherent beauty of its lines and att.i.tudes.

Certain traces of this sentiment are to be found in the decorative art of Egypt, in which motives that are at once ingenious and picturesque are often met with, but it is almost entirely absent from sculpture.

Modelled forms are hardly ever anything more than skilful tracings from reality. In the sepulchral system the sculptor supplies relays of bodies, stone mummies which may take the place of the embalmed corpse when it is worn out; in the temples his business is to set up concrete symbols of an idea, emblems of one of the divine powers, or of the majesty of Pharaoh.

The infinite number of combinations which may be obtained by the a.s.sociation of several persons of different ages and s.e.xes in one action, makes the group the highest achievement of an art at once pa.s.sionate and scientific, such as the sculpture of Greece and Florence. To such a height the Egyptians never soared, but they well understood the more or less conventional methods which are at the command of the sculptor. They produced figures in the round by thousands; most of them were smaller than nature, many were life-size, while a few surpa.s.sed it with an audacity to which no parallel can be found elsewhere. Here and there we find a figure, no more than some three or four inches high, to which its maker has contrived to give a freedom of att.i.tude, a breadth of execution, and a n.o.bility of presence which are quite astonishing. Look, for instance, at the reproduction of a little wooden statuette which borders this page (Fig. 234); it is identical in size with the original. Its date is unknown, but we should be inclined to refer it to the Ancient Empire.

The air of this little personage is so proud and dignified that he might well be a reduction from a colossus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 234.--Wooden statuette belonging to M.

Delaroche-Vernet. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

What we call busts, that is, figures which consist of nothing but the head and the upper part of the trunk, were not unknown to the Egyptians. All the descriptions mention the existence in the Ramesseum of two colossal busts of Rameses II., the one in black, the other in a parti-coloured black and red, granite.

It would seem that all the colossi were of stone, especially of the harder kinds. Wood was used for life-size figures and statuettes, particularly the latter. Terra-cotta coated with enamel was hardly used for anything but very small figures. It was the same with bronze, which was seldom employed in large figures. We do not know whether the Egyptians in their days of independence made bronzes as large and larger than life, as the Greeks constantly did. One of the largest pieces known is the Horus in the Posno collection (Fig. 44, Vol. I.).

It is about three feet high. It forms a single casting with the exception of the arms, which were added afterwards. The finish of the head is remarkable, and the eyes appear to have been encrusted with enamel or some other precious material, which has since disappeared.

The hands seem to have held some vessel for pouring libations which, being of silver or gold, must have been detached at a very early period. The execution recalls the finest style of the eighteenth dynasty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 235.--Bronze cat. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

The highest use to which sculpture can be put is the rendering of the human figure, but Egyptian sculptors did not disdain to employ their chisels upon the portraiture of those animals which were objects of devotion in their country. We possess excellent representations of most of these; the figure of a cat which we take from the cases of the Louvre is an average specimen (Fig. 235). The lion was equally well rendered. In the bas-reliefs we sometimes find him turned into a sort of heraldic animal by the addition of emblematic designs upon his flanks and shoulders (Fig. 236); but, even where he is most simplified, his outlines and general movements are truthful in the main. Sometimes we find him in full relief, modelled with singular power and sincerity. This is the case with a bronze lion which must once have formed a part of some kind of padlock, if we may judge from the few links of a chain which are still attached to it.[272] Although this animal bears the ovals of Apries, and therefore belongs to the lowest period of Egyptian art, its style is vigorous in no common degree.

[272] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee_, No. 1010.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 236.--Lion, from a Theban bas-relief; from Prisse.]

The Egyptians were as much impressed as other eastern peoples by the strength and beauty of these animals, which in their days must have abounded in the deserts of Syria and Ethiopia. They were chosen to be the emblems of royal courage;[273] a lion's head was placed upon the shoulders of Hobs, and that of a lioness upon the shoulders of Sekhet.

Finally it was from the lion that the first idea of that fict.i.tious animal which the Greeks called a sphinx, was taken.

[273] At Tell-el-Amarna we find the lion marching by the side of the king (LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, vol. vi. pl. 100).

"At first the sphinx can have been nothing but a lion placed to guard the entrance to a temple. The combination of a man's head, which was always that of a king, with a lion's body, must have been a result of the national love for symbolism. The king himself, as represented by this a.s.sociation of physical with intellectual strength, acted as guardian of the building which he had founded. There was a radical distinction between the Greek sphinx and that of the Egyptians. The latter propounded no enigma to the pa.s.ser-by, and the author of the treatise, _Upon Isis and Osiris_, was in sympathy with his times when he wrote: 'There was nothing behind the mysteries of the Egyptians but their philosophy, which was seen as if through a veil. Thus they placed sphinxes before the gates of their temples, meaning by that to say that their theology contained all the secrets of wisdom under an enigmatic form.' Evidently, the Egyptians did not mean so much as is sometimes thought."[274]

[274] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. ii. p. 9.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 237.--Bronze lion, Boulak. Drawn by Bourgoin.]

We have already reproduced many examples of what may be called the cla.s.sic form of sphinx, his head covered with the _klaft_ and his paws extended before him (Figs. 41 and 157, Vol. I.). But the type included several secondary varieties. Sometimes the forepaws are replaced by human hands holding symbolic objects (Figs. 227 and 238); sometimes the head of a hawk is subst.i.tuted for that of a man. The animals which form many of the _dromoi_ at Karnak are called crio-sphinxes (Fig.

205, Vol. I.), but the name is an unhappy one, because they have nothing in common with a sphinx but the position. They are rams and nothing else.

The Greek word sf??? is feminine. The sphinx with female b.r.e.a.s.t.s is, however, very rare in Egypt. Wilkinson only knew of one, in which the Queen Mut-neter of the eighteenth dynasty was represented.[275]

[275] Upon the significance of the sphinx and its different varieties, see WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. iii.

pp. 308-312. Wilkinson brings together on a single plate (vol.

ii. p. 93) all the fantastic animals invented by the Egyptians.

See also MASPERO, _Memoire sur la Mosaque de Palestrine (Gazette Archeologique, 1879)_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 238.--Sphinx with human hands. Bas-relief; from Prisse.]

The Egyptians were not content with confusing the figures of men and animals in their images of the G.o.ds, they combined those of quadrupeds and birds in the same fashion. Thus we sometimes find wings upon the backs of gazelles and antelopes, and now and then a curious animal compounded of a hawk's head and a nondescript body (Fig. 239). Whether such fantastic quadrupeds were consciously and deliberately invented by the Egyptian artists or not, we have no means of deciding. In a period when there was none of that scientific culture which alone enables men to distinguish the possible from the impossible, they may well have believed in winged and bird-headed animals with four legs.

For the Greeks of Homer's time, and even for their children's children, the chimera and his kindred were real. They knew where they lived, and they described their habits. In a picture at Beni-Ha.s.san, these imaginary beasts are shown flying before the hunter, and mixed up with the undoubted denizens of the mountains and deserts.[276]

Such representations must have been common upon those objects--partly manufactured in Egypt, partly imitated in Phnicia--which the enterprising inhabitants of the latter country distributed all over Western Asia, and the basin of the Mediterranean. They had a large share of that mystic and enigmatic character which has always been an attraction in the eye of the decorator. They may have helped to develop a belief that the curious beings represented upon them existed in some corner of the world, and they certainly did much to form those decorative types which have been handed down through Greece to the modern ornamentist.

[276] MASPERO, _Les Peintures des Tombeaux egyptiens et la Mosaque de Palestrine_, p. 82 (_Gazette Archeologique_, 1879).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 239.--Quadruped with the head of a bird. From Champollion, pl. 428 _bis_.]

-- 7. _The Technique of the Bas-reliefs._

Work in low relief held such an important place in the affections of the Egyptian sculptor that we must study its processes in some detail.

In the first place, it was almost invariably painted. Those bas-reliefs which show no trace of colour may be looked upon as unfinished.

Secondly, the depth of the relief varied as much as it could, from the almost detached figures of the Osiride piers to the delicate salience of the carvings upon the steles and tomb-walls. A few works in very high relief have been found in the mastabas (Fig. 120, Vol. I.),[277]

but they are quite exceptional; the depth is usually from two to three millimetres. It is the same with the Theban tombs. It is only in the life-size figures that the relief becomes as much as a centimetre, or a centimetre and a half in depth; articulations, the borders of drapery, and the bounding lines of the contour, are indicated with much less salience.

[277] See also LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part ii. pl. 11, and a tomb at El Kab (_Eilithyia_). MARIETTE (_Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, plate 6 and page 37) cites, as a curious example of a bolder relief than usual, the scenes sculptured upon the tomb of Sabou, especially the picture showing the servants of the defunct carrying a gazelle upon their shoulders.

The processes used in Egyptian reliefs were three in number, one of those three, at least, being almost unknown elsewhere.

The commonest of the three is the same as that in favour with the Greeks, by which the figures are left standing out from a smooth bed, which is sometimes slightly hollowed in the neighbourhood of their contours. When limestone was used, this method was almost always preferred, as that material allowed the beds to be dressed without any difficulty.