A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 25

[290] In turning over the leaves of Champollion we have found but two exceptions to this rule. In the Temple of Seti, at Gournah, that king is shown, in a bas-relief, in the act of brandishing his mace over the heads of his prisoners. The group is the usual one, but in this case two of the vanquished are shown in full face (pl. 274). At the Ramesseum, also, one man in a long row of prisoners is shown in a similar att.i.tude (pl.

332).

In Egyptian profiles the eye is drawn as if for a full face. It has been a.s.serted that this is the result of profound calculation, that, "in spite of facts, the Egyptian painter chose to give predominant importance to that organ in the human visage which is the window of the soul."[291] We believe that the true explanation is rather more simple. While the lines of the nose and mouth are more clearly marked in the profile than in the front face, it is in the latter only that the eye is able to display its full beauty. When seen from the side it is small, its lines are short and abrupt, and the slightest change in the position of the head affects its contours in a fashion which is very puzzling to the unlearned artist. When a child attempts to draw a head it gives their true form to the lips and the nose, but in nine cases out of ten it draws the eye as if seen in full face; and art in its childhood did as children do still.

[291] CH. BLANC, _Grammaire des Arts du Dessin_, p. 469.

We find a similar want of concord between the trunk and the limbs.

Feet and legs are shown in profile while the body to which they belong stands squarely facing us. Both the shoulders are seen in equal fulness, and the attachment of the arms is often faulty (Fig. 246).

Sometimes they seem to be broken at the shoulder. Again, the hands are nearly always in such a position as to exclude all doubt as to the number of fingers they possess.

It appears, therefore, that the artist chose the aspect which seemed to him the most natural for each part of the body. It was the resulting contradiction that was against nature. The feeling from which it sprang was identical with that which led Egyptian artists, to make what we may call "projections" when they wished to represent buildings. The fixed idea of the draughtsman was to show all the sides of his object at a glance, to exhibit details which in reality were partly hidden by each other. Thus we find that, in certain bas-reliefs, both clothes and the nudity which those clothes were intended to cover are carefully portrayed. In a bas-relief at Tell-el-Amarna, a queen who is waiting on Amenophis IV. is dressed in a long robe reaching to her feet, and yet all her forms are rendered with as much care and detail as if there were no veil between their beauty and the eye of the spectator (Fig. 247).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 246.--Bas-relief from Sakkarah. Fifth dynasty.]

An arbitrary combination of a similar character is employed by the Egyptian artist when he wishes to show a number of persons behind one another on a horizontal plane; he places them vertically one above the other. The great battle pictures at Thebes are an instance of this (Fig. 13, Vol. I.). Enemies still fighting are mingled with dead and wounded into one confused heap in front of Pharaoh's car, and reach from top to bottom of the relief. The same convention is to be found in the ranks of prisoners, workmen, or soldiers, marching over a flat surface; they are arranged in a kind of echelon upon the field of the relief (Fig. 42).[292]

[292] For other conventional methods, of a similar though even more remarkable kind but of less frequent occurrence, see WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. ii. p. 295. The same ruling idea is found in those groups in the funerary bas-reliefs, which show husband and wife together. The wife's arm, which is pa.s.sed round the body of the husband, is absurdly long (LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part 11, plates 13, 15, 91, 105, etc.; and our Figs. 164 and 165, Vol. I.). This is because the sculptor wished to preserve the loving gesture in question without giving up the full view of both bodies to which his notions committed him. One could not be allowed to cover any part of the other, they could not even be brought too closely together. They were placed, therefore, at such a distance apart that the hand which appears round the husband's body is too far from the shoulder with which it is supposed to be connected.

Faulty though these conventions seem to us, they did not disturb the Egyptian spectator. He was familiar with them by long usage, and his intellect easily re-established the true relation between the various parts of objects so strangely distorted. Even as art matured and as, in some respects, the skill of the Egyptian sculptor increased, he never felt himself impelled to abandon these primitive methods of interpretation. Graphic conventions are like those belonging to written and spoken language; when once established, even those which seem most absurd to the stranger are rendered acceptable by habit, and the native does not even suspect the existence of anomalies which bewilder the foreign visitor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 247.--The Queen waiting on Amenophis IV.: Tell-el-Amarna. From Prisse.]

Speaking generally, we may say that there is no perspective in Egyptian paintings and reliefs. And yet we find sincere efforts to render things in a less arbitrary fashion in certain works dating from the Second Theban Empire. Look, for instance, at the attempt made by an artist in the tomb of Chamhati to show five persons walking almost in line. Instead of being one above another they are on one level (Fig. 248). One of the five is rather behind the rest; the head and most of his body are visible. The other four advance to their front. In order that they may all be seen, the sculptor has shown them as they would appear to one standing on their right and slightly in front; the relief, therefore, has four planes. The three farther figures are shown by the contours alone. This is perspective, although it is hardly correct. The retreating line of polls sinks as it should, but so do the elbows, and they ought to rise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 248.--Bas-relief from the eighteenth dynasty. From Prisse.]

This relief gives evidence of considerable progress and, supposing it to be the first of its kind, the sculptor who made it would deserve the credit of having breathed a new life into Egyptian art. But he was not the first; others had made use of the same method, but always within strictly defined limits. It was employed when a few persons had to be brought in who were all in one att.i.tude and making the same gesture,[293] but it was never used as a starting-point for modifications upon the traditional modes of rendering either isolated figures or groups of figures. The Egyptians made use of these until the last days of their civilization without ever appearing to suspect their childish character.

[293] Our Fig. 217 gives another instance of the employment of this method, and even in the time of the Ancient Empire the idea had occurred to the Egyptian artists (Fig. 201).

In the case of animals, a firmly-drawn profile was enough to make them easily recognizable. And yet, even in the time of the Ancient Empire, we find distinct efforts to give some variety to these silhouettes.

Sometimes the oxen turn their heads towards the spectator, sometimes they swing them round to their flanks, as if to chase away the flies: but even then the heads are shown in profile.[294] At Beni-Ha.s.san we find an advance upon this. In a hunting scene, a lion, who has just brought down an ibex, is shown full face,[295] but neither here or anywhere else has an attempt been made to draw the body of the animal otherwise than in profile.

[294] LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part ii. pl. 47 and 61.

[295] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. ii. p. 88.

In his family groups the Egyptian sculptor marked the superiority of the husband and father in a similarly nave fashion. He made him much taller than the persons about him. The same contrivance was employed to mark the distinction between G.o.ds or kings and ordinary men, and between the latter and animals (Fig. 57, Vol. I.). This solution of the problem is universal in the infancy of art. It was adopted by the a.s.syrians, the Persians, the primitive Greeks, and our own ancestors of the middle ages. It is easier to give a figure double or threefold its proper size than to add greatly to the dignity and n.o.bility of its character.

In their desire to evade difficulties, the Egyptians slurred over distinctions upon which a more advanced art would have insisted. For them every man was in the prime of life, every woman possessed of the elegant contours of a marriageable virgin. In their work in the round they proved themselves capable of bringing out individuality, but they restricted their attentions to the face and hardly attempted to show how the pa.s.sage of years affects the contours and the firmness of flesh in both s.e.xes. In their bas-reliefs and pictures, they employed outline only. The substance of their figures was modelled neither materially nor in colour. With such feeble resources as these the artist would have had great difficulty in suggesting all the differences of age. He therefore took a middle course. To each s.e.x he gave that appearance which seemed best calculated to bring out its peculiar beauties. The one he portrayed in the fulness of manhood, the other as a young girl. When it was necessary to determine the age of his subject with some precision he took refuge in such conventional signs as the finger in the mouth and the long lock of infancy (Fig.

249).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 249.--Horus as a child, enamelled earthenware.

Actual size. Louvre.]

The sculptors of the Ancient Empire, who laid such stress upon exact resemblance, seem to have now and then attempted to mark the advancing age of their models. The head of the great statue of Chephren is that of a man still young (Fig. 205); that of another statue of the same king betrays the approach of old age. This example does not seem to have been followed in later ages. We are tempted to think that each sovereign on his accession to the throne employed some artist of note to make his portrait. The latter would set himself to work; would study his model at first hand, for Pharaoh would perhaps condescend to sit to him; would bring out the peculiarities of visage which he saw, and over the whole face and form of the king would spread that air of flourishing vigour and youth which is common to nearly all the royal statues. An image would be thus elaborated which should combine both the truth of portraiture with the conventional semi-divine type. With the pa.s.sage of time, according to the talent of the artist, and perhaps to the character of the royal features, one of these elements would encroach upon the other. But once established this image would become a kind of official and authentic standard of the royal appearance, and would serve as a model for all who might be charged during the rest of the reign with the reproduction of the king's person.

There are many facts which support this hypothesis. Among the countless images of Rameses II. for instance there are some which according to their inscriptions must have been executed when he was at least eighty years old; and yet they show him as a young man.

Almost the same thing takes place in our own times. In monarchical states the sovereign appears upon the coinage as he was at his accession. His features and the delicacy of his skin are unaffected by the years, for the die made in his youth has to serve for his old age.

We may almost say the same of the statues and busts in which the royal features are repeated in the public buildings and public places of the capital. A single portrait which has once been moderately faithful is repeated to infinity. We find it everywhere, upon paper, and canvas, and plaster, and marble, multiplied by every process that science has given to art. It keeps its official and accepted authenticity long after age, care, and disease, have made its original unrecognizable.[296]

[296] M. eMILE SOLDI (_La Sculpture egyptienne_) tells us that during the reign of Napoleon III. such representations of the Emperor as were not taken from the portrait by Winterhalter were forbidden to be recognized officially.

There is one convention peculiar to Egyptian art which is not to be accounted for so easily as the last named. So far as we know, no reason has ever yet been given for the almost invariable habit of making such figures as are supposed to be walking thrust their left legs forward. Almost the only exceptions are in the cases of those figures in the bas-reliefs which are turned to the spectator's left.

The right leg is then thrust forward (Figs. 18, 24, &c., Vol. I.).

Among works in the round there is hardly an exception to the ordinary rule. Are we to look upon it as the effects of caprice? of accident confirmed into a habit? Or was it a result of a superst.i.tion a.n.a.logous, or, rather, contrary to that of the Romans? The latter always took care to cross a threshold with the right foot foremost; in Egypt they may have attached the same ideas to the left foot.

Egyptologists should be able to tell us whether there is anything in the texts to suggest the existence of such a superst.i.tion.

Apart from its ethnic characteristics, the work of the Egyptian sculptor is endowed with a peculiar physiognomy by a certain stiffness and rigidity which it hardly ever succeeds in shaking off, even when it represents figures in motion. A support in the shape of a column at the back is nearly always introduced; the arms are held close to the sides; a huge head-dress often enframes the head and hangs down upon the shoulders in two equal ma.s.ses; a long and narrow beard springs from under the chin and lies upon the chest.

Freedom and variety of att.i.tude is equally absent from the seated statues. The knees are brought together and the hands supported upon them. We never find an arm raised, a hand opened as if to give force to speech, or a leg stretched out to relieve the stiffness of the lines. There is no striving for that suppleness of limb and variety of pose which the Greeks contrived to obtain even in their Iconic figures. The face is often full of animation and individual vitality, the modelling of the trunk and limbs marvellously true and broad, but the body as a whole is too symmetrical in action and entirely without _abandon_. The natural movements which spring from ease and liberty are never employed. Forced and conventional att.i.tudes are universal.

A reason for this has been sought in the supremacy of the sacerdotal caste. The priests, we are told, must soon have adopted such a type, or rather several varieties of such a type, as seemed to them expressive of their own ideas of man when deified by death, of the king as the son of the G.o.ds, of the G.o.ds themselves as the protectors of the Egyptian race. They imposed the perpetuation and constant reproduction of this type upon artists as a sacred duty, and thus the Egyptian style was _hieratic_ in its origin and essence.

Such an a.s.sertion is easily made. _Hieratic_ is one of those convenient adjectives whose vagueness discourages critical examination. What evidence is there that ancient Egypt was ever a theocracy, in the proper sense of the word? Only once, during so many centuries, did the Egyptian priests attempt to encroach upon the privileges of the king. Towards the close of the twentieth dynasty the prophets of Amen, at Thebes, tried hard to subst.i.tute their own authority for that of the last of the Rameses,[297] but the success of their usurpation was very shortlived. In Ethiopia alone, among a people much less highly civilized, sacerdotalism seems to have acquired an uncontested pre-eminence. In Egypt the king was always the first of the priests. With the help of an army of scribes and officials he governed the country and made war; he initiated and carried on great public works; he developed the industry and commerce of his subjects. Trade and conquest brought him into relation with surrounding peoples, and from them he recruited his armies and obtained agents of every kind.

[297] MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p. 272.

The active and warlike heads of a great empire like this were never the slaves of a despotic clergy. Such a society never allowed the mechanical reproduction of orthodox types to be forced upon its artists, until, indeed, its final decadence deprived it of all power to invent new forms. We have seen how great was the variety of plan and decoration in Egyptian religious architecture, from the marked simplicity of the temple near the sphinx, to the sumptuous majesty of the Theban buildings and the elegance of those of Sais. The style and taste of Egyptian sculpture underwent a change at each renascence of art. Why, then, did its pract.i.tioners remain faithful to certain conventional methods of interpretation, whose falsity they must have perceived, while they modified their work in so many other particulars? No text has ever been put before us, I will not say from a Greek, but from an Egyptian source, which suggests that their hands were less free from religious prescription than those of the architects.

We agree with M. emile Soldi, who was the first to throw doubt upon the accepted theories, that the explanation of the apparent anomaly is to be sought elsewhere.[298] The tyranny from which the Egyptian sculptor never succeeded in completely freeing himself was not that of the priests but of the material in which he worked. Aided by his personal experience M. Soldi has put this fact very clearly before us.

Being at once a sculptor, a medallist, and an engraver upon precious stones, he is enabled to judge at first hand of the influence which the material or tool employed may exercise over the style of a work of art. The style of such a work is the complex product of numerous and very different factors. To determine the part played by each of these factors is not always easy; there are too many opportunities for error. We believe, however, that certain of the most peculiar and persistent characteristics of Egyptian sculpture are due to the hardness of their material and the imperfection of the tools employed.

[298] eMILE SOLDI, _La Sculpture egyptienne_, 1 vol. 8vo, 1876, copiously ill.u.s.trated. (Ernest Leroux.)

We know the connection between the funerary statues of the Egyptians and their second life; while those statues endured, the existence of the double was safe guarded. The more solid the statue, the better its chance; if the former was indestructible the life dependent upon it would be eternal. It was under the impulse of this idea that the Egyptians of the Ancient Empire attacked such unkindly materials as granite, diorite, and basalt. Such statues were beyond the reach of private individuals. They were reserved for royalty. Of all the works of the sculptor they were the most carefully and admirably wrought.

They set the fashion, and helped to create those habits which did not lose their hold even when less rebellious substances came into use.

How did they contrive to cut such hard rocks? Even in our time it can only be done by dint of long and painful labour and with the aid of steel chisels of the finest temper. The workman is obliged to stop every minute to renew the edge of his instrument. But it is agreed on all hands that the contemporaries of Chephren had to do without steel chisels. Egyptologists still discuss the question as to whether the Egyptians made use of iron or not, but even those who believe that its name occurs among the hieroglyphs admit that its introduction was late and its employment very restricted.[299] The weapons and tools of the early Egyptians were of bronze when they were not of stone or hardened wood; and it has never been proved that either the Egyptians or any other ancient people understood how to temper that metal in such a fashion that its hardness approached that of steel. Modern science has in vain searched for this secret.[300] In any case it is only in a few rare instances, and upon remains from the New Empire, that the peculiar markings left by the chisel have been discovered. Those statues and sarcophagi which have been cut from igneous rocks still bear traces which may be recognized by the eye of the connoisseur, of the processes which were employed by their makers.

[299] See the note of M. CHABAS, "_Sur le nom du fer chez les Anciens egyptiens._" (_Comptes Rendus de L'Academie des Inscriptions_, January 23, 1874.)

[300] Certain alloys, however, have recently been discovered which give a hardness far above that of ordinary bronze. The metal of the Uchatius gun, which has been adopted by Austria, is mixed, for instance, with a certain quant.i.ty of phosphorus.

"Granite," says M. Soldi, "is most easily worked by hammering its surface. To begin with, a heavy tool called a _point_ is brought into play. This is driven into the material by repeated blows from the hammer, starring the surface of the granite, and driving off pieces on all sides. We believe that this _point_ was the habitual instrument of the Egyptians, not only in roughing out their blocks, but even in modelling a head-dress or sinking a hieroglyph. Such a tool could not trace clear and firm contours like those of the chisel, and the peculiar character of its workmanship is to be easily recognized in the broken and irregular outline of many of the monuments in the Louvre."

Another tool employed upon granite in these days is a kind of hammer, the head of which consists of several _points_ symmetrically arranged.

We may judge of its effects by the appearance of our curb stones, which are dressed by it; there is nothing to show that it was used by the Egyptians. A kind of hatchet with two blades is also used for the same work, and it appears to have been employed by the Egyptians, "who used it hammer fashion, beating the surface of the material, and driving off chips of various sizes according to the weight of the instrument. By these means the desired form could be given with sufficient rapidity and precision to make the chisel superfluous."

Most of the Egyptian statues in hard stone seem to have been modelled by the help of an instrument of this kind.

"The surfaces produced by such tools as these had to be polished, the sketchy roughness left by the _point_ had to be taken down; we find therefore that the Egyptians always polished their statues."

The Egyptians do not seem to have known either the _file_ or the _rasp_, a variety of file which is now greatly employed. The dry markings left by those tools are nowhere to be seen. In the case of broad surfaces it is probable that a polish was given by hand boards sprinkled with powdered sandstone and wetted through a hole in the middle. Flat stones may have sometimes replaced these wooden disks.

When a more brilliant polish was required, emery must have been used.

This substance was found in abundance in the islands of the Archipelago, and must have been brought to Egypt by the Phnicians.

Without it the Egyptian artists could not have produced their engraved gems.

By dint of continually retempering the bronze and renewing its edge, the sculptors of the New Empire succeeded in cutting hieroglyphs upon a certain number of works in the harder rocks. Perhaps, too, iron may by that time have come into more general use, and they may have learnt how to give it extra hardness by tempering. But when granite and kindred materials had to be cut, the work was commenced with point and hammer as above described. In the case of some of those very large figures which had been rather roughly blocked out in the first instance, the final polishing has not quite obliterated the hollows left by those rude instruments in the stone, especially where the journeyman has struck a little too hard. An instance of this may be seen on the red granite sphinx in the Louvre (Fig. 41, Vol. I.).