A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 31

In some tombs gold is found in its pure state. During the excavations at the Serapeum, Mariette opened the tomb of Ka-em-nas, a son of Rameses II. When the mummy chamber was entered, the lower parts of the walls and of the mummy cases shone with gold in the candle-light. The floor was strewn with sc.r.a.ps of the same metal, and as many as four books of gold leaf were found in the tomb. Mariette was then in want of funds, and in order that the excavations might proceed, he obtained authority from the French consul to sell this gold, to which of course, no scientific interest was attached. The thick gold mask of the prince and the fine jewelry which adorned his mummy are now in the Louvre.

The mummy's toe-nails, bracelets, and lips, and the linen mask over its face, were very often gilt. The feet are sometimes entirely gilt.

So too is the shroud. Those of princes and great personages are sometimes covered with gold from head to foot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 289, 290.--Tables for offerings; from the paintings in a royal tomb.]

The Egyptian artisans understood these delicate operations at a very early date. Even in the tombs at Beni-Ha.s.san we find the process of gold-beating ill.u.s.trated in full. We need hardly say that a decorative industry which disposed of such complete resources, thoroughly understood what we call _graining_, the imitation of the veins and textures of wood, and also those of the different kinds of granite, upon other substances. In more than one instance we find the commoner kinds of stone thus made to look like rarer and more costly materials.

CHAPTER V.

THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

-- 1. _Definition and Characteristics of Industrial Art._

The expression, _industrial art_, has sometimes been severely criticised, but yet it answers to a real distinction founded upon the nature of things, and we do not see that it could be dispensed with.

When the artist sets about making a statue or a picture his only aim is to produce a fine work. He does not take _utility_, in the unphilosophic sense of the word, into account. The task which he sets before himself is to discover some form which shall truly interpret his own individual thoughts and feelings. This done, his end is accomplished. The resulting work of art is self-contained and self-sufficient. Its _raison d'etre_ is to satisfy one of the deepest and most persistent desires of the human mind, the _aesthetic sentiment_, or _instinct for the beautiful_.

In the industrial arts it is different. When a cabinet-maker or a potter sets to work to produce an easy chair, or a vase, his first idea is to make a chair in which one may sit comfortably, or a vessel to which liquids may be safely entrusted and from which they may be easily poured. At first, the artisan does not look beyond fulfilling these wants, but a time comes, and comes very soon, when he feels impelled to ornament the furniture or pottery upon which he is at work. He is no longer content to turn out that which is merely useful; he wishes everything that comes from his hands to be rich and beautiful also. He begins by adding ornament made up of dots and geometrical lines; this he soon follows up with forms borrowed from organic life, with leaves and flowers, with figures of men and animals; and from an artisan he springs at once to be an artist. But his productions are strictly works of industrial art, and although they may deserve a high place in right of their beauty, that beauty is only in some sort an excrescence, it does not affect the primary object of the matters to which it is applied, although it may greatly increase their value and interest.

In view of this definition, it may be a.s.serted that architecture itself is one of the industrial arts. The first duty of the constructor is to make his building well fitted for the object it has to serve. The house must afford a proper shelter for its inhabitants, the tomb must preserve the corpse entrusted to it from all chance of profanation, the temple must shield the statue or the symbol of the G.o.d from curious glances, and afford convenient s.p.a.ce for ritual celebrations. These requirements may be fulfilled by edifices which have no pretensions to beauty. With a roof and a certain number of naked walls, it is always possible to cover and enclose a given s.p.a.ce, and to divide it into as many portions as may be desired. Such a process has nothing in common with art. Art steps in when the builder attempts to endow his work with that symmetry which does not exclude variety, with n.o.bility of proportion, and with the charm of a decoration in which both painter and sculptor play their parts. The constructor then gives place to the architect. The latter, of course, always keeps the practical end in view, but it is not his sole preoccupation. The house, as he builds it, has to respond to all the wants, intellectual as well as corporeal, of civilized man; the tomb must embody his ideas of death and a future life; the magnificent dimensions and the gorgeous decorations of the temple must give expression to the inexpressible, must symbolize the divine majesty to the eyes of men, and help to make it comprehensible by the crowds that come to sacrifice and pray.

In all this, the _role_ played by art is so preponderant that it would be unjust to cla.s.s architecture among the industrial arts. The ambition of those who built the temple of Amen, at Karnak, or that of Athene, on the Acropolis, was to produce a work which should give faithful expression to the highest thoughts which the human mind can conceive. In one sense, architecture may be called the first of the arts. In those great compositions whose remains we study with such reverence, whose arrangements we endeavour with such care to re-establish, it was the architect who determined what part the painter and the sculptor should take in the work, who laid out for them the s.p.a.ces they were called upon to fill.

Although we shall not include architecture among the industrial arts, the distinction which we have established loses none of its practical importance. We must acknowledge, however, that there are certain cla.s.ses of objects which lie upon the border-line between the two categories, so that we have some difficulty in deciding whether they belong to fine or to industrial art. The work of some Cellini of ancient times, or of your own day, may be cla.s.sed, for instance, by its general form and ostensible use, among the more or less utilitarian productions of the goldsmith or silversmith; but, on the other hand, it may be adorned with figures executed in such a fashion that we are tempted to place it among works of sculpture. Rigorous and inflexible definitions have, in fact, to be confined to the exact sciences, such as geometry. In the complexity of life, definitions and cla.s.sifications can only be adhered to with a reservation. They help the historian to find his way amid the infinite diversity of phenomena, but he is the first to acknowledge that they are far from having an absolute value. They must be taken for what they are worth, simply as methods of exposition, as approximations which are useful and convenient, though more or less imperfect.

We have no intention of writing a history of Egyptian industry. We refer those who require an account of it to the voluminous work of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, where they will find abundant details upon the trades of Egypt and the materials which they employed. We shall be content with selecting a few examples from the chief industries upon which the wealth of Egypt depended, in order to show how her artisans, like those of Greece, sought to give a certain amount of artistic value to every object that left their hands. Forms and motives which we have encountered in the higher branches of art are there again to be found. When civilization is in its first infancy, and the plastic instinct just struggling into life, it is from those handicrafts which may be called elementary or primitive that art borrows its first combinations of line and colour. But afterwards, when art has developed itself and created a style expressive of the national genius, the process is reversed, and the handicraftsman borrows in turn from the artist. In our modern society the use of machines and the division of labour have put a great gulf between the workman and the artist. Among the ancients it was very different. The workman was responsible for his work from inception to completion, and he expended upon it all the inventiveness, taste, and skill, that he possessed. He was not the slave of a machine turning out thousands of repet.i.tions of a single object with inflexible regularity. Every day he introduced, almost without knowing it, some variation upon his work of the day before; his labour was a perpetual improvisation. Under such conditions it is difficult to say where the artist began and where the handicraftsman left off. In spite of the richness and subtlety of their idioms, the cla.s.sic languages were unable to mark this distinction. In Greek, as in Latin, there was but a single term for two positions which seem to us by no means equal in dignity.

-- 2. _Gla.s.s and Pottery._

The potter's is, perhaps, the oldest of all the crafts. Among the relics of the cave-men and lake-dwellers of the West, the remains of rough pottery, shaped by the hand and dried either by the sun or in the neighbourhood of the domestic hearth, have been found. The Egypt of the earliest dynasties was already more advanced than this. The vases found in the mastabas show by their symmetrical shapes that the potter's wheel was already in use, and by their quality, that, although the Egyptians were content to dry their bricks in the sun, they fired their pottery in kilns and thoroughly understood the process.[362]

[362] The oldest representation of the potter's wheel yet discovered is in one of the paintings at Beni-Ha.s.san. It is reproduced in BIRCH'S _Ancient Pottery_, p. 14.

Egypt afforded an abundant supply of excellent potter's earth, and her inhabitants, like those of ancient Greece and Italy, employed terra-cotta for purposes to which we should now apply gla.s.s, wood, or metal. A good idea of the varied uses to which the material was put may be obtained from the early chapters of the work in which Dr. Birch has traced the history of ancient pottery, with the help of numerous ill.u.s.trations.[363]

[363] S. BIRCH, _A History of Ancient Pottery, Egyptian, a.s.syrian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman_, 1 vol. 8vo, 1873. London, Murray.

We shall not dwell upon common earthenware. It is represented by numerous vessels from the most ancient tombs in the Memphite necropolis; they are of a reddish or yellowish colour, and, in spite of the absence of all glaze, they hold water perfectly well. Like Greek vessels of the same kind they have sometimes three ears or handles (Fig. 291). Examples of coupled vessels, like those found in Cyprus, have also been discovered. They communicate with one another by a tube and are kept together by a common handle (Fig. 292). Of all the representative specimens of earthenware from the mastabas given by Lepsius, there is but one which does not seem to belong to the category of domestic pottery. It is a kind of aryballus, and is gracefully ornamented with interlacing circles.[364] In later times many of these unglazed vases were decorated with the brush, but they were not remitted to the oven after that operation.[365] The colour was therefore without l.u.s.tre or solidity, and the designs were always very simple. To this group belong the vases shaped in the form of men, women, or animals, which are common enough in museums.[366]

Sometimes a head, recalling that of the G.o.d Bes, is sketched in low relief upon a vase, and in a few instances a pair of small arms complete the fanciful design (Fig. 293).

[364] LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part ii. pl. 153.

[365] BIRCH, _Ancient Pottery_, p. 37.

[366] BIRCH, _Ancient Pottery_, Figs. 23 and 25.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 291.--Pitcher of red earth. British Museum.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 292.--Red earthenware. British Museum.]

Another kind of pottery, that known as _Egyptian porcelain_, must be noticed in greater detail. This designation is inexact. The proper name would be _Egyptian faience_. It consists of white sand, gently fused, and overspread with a glaze of coloured enamel. This enamel is composed of flint and soda, with the addition of a colouring matter.

This faience has been fired with such care that it is able to support the high temperature of a porcelain kiln without damage. Vases of many different kinds, enamelled tiles, statuettes (Fig. 294), sepulchral _figurines_ (Figs. 96 and 97, Vol. I.), neck ornaments and other articles for decorating the person, amulets (Fig. 295), scarabs, rings, and many other articles were made in this material.

Vases were generally either blue or apple green. A very small number of them were ornamented with figures of men or animals, always treated in a purely decorative fashion. No vase has yet been discovered with any attempt to portray an incident upon it. The figures are never united by a subject. Bouquets of lotus around some central motive are of most frequent occurrence (Fig. 296). Sometimes these flowers are combined with mystic symbols, like the eyes in Fig. 297. These designs, which are in black, are produced by inlaying coloured enamel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 293.--Gray earthenware. Boulak.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 294.--The G.o.d Bes. Enamelled earthenware.]

Two of the vases which we reproduce (Figs. 296 and 297) are similar to those shown in the bas-reliefs, in scenes of libation to the G.o.ds or to the dead. Their form is that of the Greek f???? and the Latin _patera_. Numerous bottles have also been found whose general shape exactly resemble that of the Greek ???a???? (Fig. 298).

The blue with which these objects are covered has often preserved a brilliance and transparency which could not even now be surpa.s.sed.

Yellow, violet, and white glazes are also met with, but less frequently. The hieroglyphs which many of them bear prove that the manufacture of these little articles was in full swing under the three great Theban dynasties, that it continued through the Saite period, and that under the Ptolemies, and even later still, it was not extinct. To the same branch of industry belong those tiles of enamelled faience which seem to have been used by the Egyptians from very early times. They were also used by the a.s.syrians, as we shall see hereafter. "These tiles were used very extensively in eastern and southern countries, and are found both in palaces and in private dwellings. In the towns of Turkey and of Modern Egypt, in the towns and villages of Algeria and of all the African coast as far as the Straits of Gibraltar, thousands of examples are to be found. The freshness which seems to result from their use and the enduring brilliancy of their colours make these tiles very popular with the inhabitants of hot climates."[367]

[367] BRONGNIART, _Histoire de la Ceramique_, vol. ii. p. 95.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 295.--Pendant for necklace. Louvre.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 296.--Enamelled earthenware. British Museum.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 297.--Enamelled earthenware. British Museum.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 298.--Enamelled faience. British Museum.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 299.--Doorway in the Stepped Pyramid at Sakkarah.]

We do not know whether these tiles were used for the floors and walls in the dwellings of rich Egyptians or not, but it appears certain that their manufacture was understood even as early as the Ancient Empire.

The doorway of a chamber in the stepped pyramid of Sakkarah is enframed with enamelled plaques. A sketch of Perring's, which we reproduce, gives a good idea of this arrangement (Fig. 299).[368] Some of these plaques are now in London, but a still larger number are in the Berlin Museum, where the doorway as a whole has been restored, the missing parts being replaced by copies. Our Figures 300-302 show the back, the front, and the profile, of a single plaque. The obverse is slightly convex, and covered with a greenish-blue glaze; the reverse has a salient tenon which was held securely by the mortar. Through a small hole in this tenon a rod of wood or metal may have pa.s.sed which, by uniting all the plaques in each horizontal row, would give additional solidity to the whole arrangement.[369] On the backs of several plaques there are marks which seem to be rotation numbers.

They are figured in the centre of Perring's sketch. Other bricks from the same doorway are covered with an almost black enamel. They form the horizontal mouldings between the rows of upright bricks, and are decorated with a sort of arrow-head pattern.

[368] See also LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part ii. pl. 2, and the _Verzeichniss der aegyptischen Alterthumer_ of the Berlin Museum, 1879, p. 25.

[369] We owe our ability to give these curious details to the kindness of M. Conze and the officers of the Egyptian museum at Berlin. One of the original fragments brought home by Lepsius was lent to us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 300-302.--Enamelled plaque from the Stepped Pyramid.]

This fashion endured throughout the Theban period. The most important relic of it which we now possess is from the decoration of a temple built by Rameses III. to the north-west of Memphis, near the modern Tell-el-Yahoudeh, upon the railway from Cairo to Ismailia. The building itself was constructed of crude brick, the walls being lined with enamelled tiles. The royal ovals and t.i.tles were cut in the earth before it was fired, and afterwards filled up with an enamel so tinted as to stand out in strong relief from the colour of the brick. Other tiles represent African and Asiatic prisoners. The figures are in relief; the enamel is parti-coloured, the hair of the prisoners being black, their carnations yellowish-brown, and certain details of their costume being accentuated by other hues. Dr. Birch reproduces some of these painted reliefs and compares them to the _figurines rustiques_ of Bernard Palissy.[370] The princ.i.p.al fragments of this decoration are in the store-rooms of the Boulak Museum. They deserve more publicity than they have received. Most of them are purely decorative in character and bear designs of which an idea may be gained from three pieces of faience which are now in the British Museum. Two have graceful rosettes, while the third is covered with a pattern resembling a spider's web (Figs. 303-305).[371]

[370] BIRCH, _Ancient Pottery_, p. 50.

[371] I am told that a circular base, like that of a column of a table for offerings, was discovered in the same building. It is entirely covered with this same faience.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 303-305.--Enamelled earthenware plaques in the British Museum.]