Fig. 150.—Doorway of the Temple of Khons.Description, iii. 54.
Fig. 151.—Doorway of the Temple of Gournah.Description, ii. 42.
One of the doorways we have represented, that in Fig.146, requires to be here mentioned again for a moment. Its lintel is discontinuous. The doorway in question dates from the Ptolemaic period, but there is undoubted evidence that the sameform was sometimes used in the Pharaonic period for the openings in inclosing walls. There is a representation of such a door in a bas-relief at Karnak, where it is shown in front of a pylon and forms probably an opening in a boundary wall.[141]It was this representation that decided us to give a broken lintel to the doorway opposite to the centre of the royal pavilion at Medinet-Abou (Plate VIII.). This form of entrance may have originated in the desire to give plenty of head-room for the canopy under which the sovereign was carried, as well as for the banners and various standards which we see figured in the triumphal and religious processions of the bas-reliefs (Fig.172, Vol. I.).
Fig. 152.—Doorway of the Temple of Seti, at Abydos.
The royal pavilion at Medinet-Abou is the only building in Egypt which has preserved for us those architectural features which we call windows. They differ one from another, even upon this single building, as much as the doors. One of them (Fig.153) is enframed like the doorway at Gournah; but the jambs are merely the ends of the courses which make up the wall, and their salience is very slight. On the other hand a window frame with a very bold relief (Fig.154) is to be found in the same building. This window is a little work of art in itself. It is surmounted by a cornice, over which again appear various emblems carved in stone, making up one of the most graceful compositions to be found in Egyptian architecture.
Figs. 153, 154.—Windows in the Royal Pavilion at Medinet-Abou.
We have described the way in which the Egyptian architects treated doors and windows from an artistic point of view; we have yet to show the method which they adopted for allowing sufficient light to penetrate into their temples, that is, into thosebuildings, which, being closely shut against the laity, could not be illuminated from windows in their side walls. Palaces and private houses could have their windows as large and as numerous as they chose, but the temple could only be lighted from the roof, or at least from parts contiguous to the roof.
Fig. 155.—Attic of the Great Hall at Karnak. Restored by Ch. Chipiez.
Fig. 156.—Claustraof the Hypostyle Hall, Karnak.Description, iii. 23.
The hypostyle hall at Karnak, with its lofty walls and close ranges of columns, would have been in almost complete darkness had it been left to depend for light upon its doors alone. But the difference of height between the central aisle and those to the right and left of it, was taken advantage of to introduce the light required for the proper display of its magnificent decorations. The wall which filled up the space between the lower and upper sections of roof, forming something almost identical with the clerestory of a Gothic cathedral, was constructed of upright sandstone slabs, about sixteen feet high, which were pierced with numerous perpendicular slits. Stone gratings, orclaustraas the Romans would have called them, were thus formed, through which the sunlight could stream into the interior. The slits were about ten inches wide and six feet high. The illustration on page163shows how the slabs were arranged and explains, moreover, the general disposition of the roof. Fig.156gives theclaustrain detail, in elevation, in plan, and in perspective.
The hypostyle halls are nearly always lighted upon the same principle. The chief differences are found in the sizes of the openings. At the Temple of Khons, where the space to be lighted was not nearly so large, the slabs of theclaustrawere much smaller and the openings narrower (Fig.157). In one of the inner halls at Karnak a different system has been used. The light penetrates through horizontal openings in the entablature, between the architrave and the cornice, divided one from another by cubes of stone (Fig.158). In the inside the architrave was bevelled on its upper edge, so as to allow the light to penetrate into the interior at a better angle than it would otherwise have done.
Fig. 157.—Claustrain the Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Khons. Compiled from the elevations in theDescription, iii. 28.
The use of theseclaustra, full of variety though they were in the hands of a skilful architect, were not the only methods of lighting their temples to which the Egyptians had recourse. They were helped in their work, or, in the case of very small chambers, replaced, by oblique or vertical openings contrived in the roof itself. These oblique holes are found in the superior angles of the hypostyle hall at Karnak (Fig.159). After the roofwas in place it was seen, no doubt, that theclaustradid not of themselves give enough light for the huge chamber, and these narrow openings were laboriously cut in its ceiling. One of the inner chambers of the Temple of Khons is feebly lighted by vertical holes cut through the slabs of the roof (Fig.160). Similar openings are to be seen in the lateral aisles of the hypostyle hall in the Ramesseum. The slight upward projection which surroundsthe upper extremities of these holes should be noticed (Fig.161). Finally there are buildings in which these openings are the only sources of illumination. This is notably the case in the Temple of Amada. The upper part of our plan (Fig.162) represents the roof of that temple and the symmetrically arranged openings with which it is pierced.
Fig. 158.—Method of lighting in one of the inner halls of Karnak. Compiled from the plans and elevations of theDescription.
Fig. 159.—Auxiliary light-holes in the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak.Description, iii. 26.
Fig. 160.—Method of lighting one of the rooms in the Temple of Khons.Description, iii. 55.
Fig. 161.—Light openings in a lateral aisle of the Hypostyle Hall in the Ramesseum. From a photograph.
The Ptolemaic Temple of Edfou is much more generously treated in the matter of light. Its flat roof is pierced by two large rectangular openings resembling thecompluviumof a Pompeian house, and making it, in a certain sense, hypæthral. No example of such an arrangement has been met with in the Pharaonic temples. It is possible that its principle was directly borrowed from the Greeks. It is hardly so consistent with the national ideas and traditions as theclaustra.
Fig. 162.—The Temple of Amada.
Fig. 163.—Claustra, from a painting.
Palaces and private houses were, as we have said, better lighted than the temples. The illustrations in the preceding chaptershow private houses with their windows. Some of those houses had windows formed of stoneclaustra. The window copied by Champollion[142]from the walls of a small chamber in the Temple of Thothmes at Medinet-Abou (Fig.163), shows this, as well as an opening in the house illustrated in Fig.19, which we here reproduce upon a larger scale (Fig.164). We do the same for a window belonging to the building shown in Fig.1. It is closed by a mat which was raised, no doubt, by means of a roller and cords (Fig.165).
Fig. 164.—Window of a house in the form ofclaustra.
Fig. 165.—Window closed by a mat.
We cannot bring our analysis of the forms and motives of Egyptian architecture to an end without mentioning a monumental type which is peculiar to Egypt, that of theobelisks. These are granite monoliths[143]of great height, square on plan, dressed on all four faces, and slightly tapering from base to summit. They usually terminate in a small pyramid, whose rapidly sloping sides contrast strongly with the gentle inclination of the main block beneath. This small pyramid is called the pyramidion.
The tall and slender shapes of these monoliths and their pointed summits have led to their being compared, in popular language, with needles and spindles.[144]The first Greeks whovisited the country and found a monumental type so unlike anything they had at home, wished to convey a good idea of it to their compatriots; they accordingly made use of the wordὀβελός, a spindle. It is difficult to understand how their descendants came to preferὀβελίσκος, a little spindle.[145]A diminutive hardly seems the right kind of word under the circumstances; an augmentative would, perhaps, have been better. But it was this diminutive that the Romans borrowed from the Greeks of Alexandria and transmitted to the modern world.
This is not the place for an inquiry into the meaning of the obelisk. It may symbolize, as we have often been told, the ray of the sun, or it may be an emblem of Amen-Generator.[146]It seems to be well established, that in the time of the New Empire at least, it was used to write the syllablemen, which signifiedfirmnessorstability.[147]
The usual situation of the obelisks was in front of the first pylon of the temples. There they stood in couples, one upon each side of the entrance. Those instances where they are found, as at Karnak, surrounded by the buildings of the temple, are easily explained. The two obelisks in the caryatid court were erected during the eighteenth dynasty, at a time when those parts of the temple which lie between the obelisks and the outer wall were not yet in existence. The obelisks of Hatasu, when first erected, were in front of the Temple of Amen as it was left by the early sovereigns of the eighteenth dynasty.
But the obelisk was not the exclusive property of the temples. Some little ones of limestone have been found in the mastabas,[148]and Mariette has described those which formerly stood in front of the royal tombs belonging to the eleventh dynasty, in the Theban necropolis. He has published the inscription which covers the four faces of one of these obelisks, a monolith some ten feet nineinches high.[149]Obelisks seem also to have been employed for the decoration of palaces, as we may conclude from a Theban painting in which one appears before the principal entrance to a villa surrounded with beautiful gardens.[150]Judging by the sizes of people in the same painting, this obelisk must have been about thirteen feet high.
Diodorus speaks of obelisks erected by Sesostris which were 120 cubits, nearly 180 feet, high;[151]and different texts allude to monoliths which were 130, 117, and 114 feet high. We have some difficulty in accepting the first of these figures. The obelisk of Hatasu, at Karnak, which is the tallest known, is 108 feet 10 inches in height.[152]That which is still standing at Matarieh, on the site of the ancient Heliopolis, is only 67 feet 4 inches high. But the fact that it is the oldest of the colossal obelisks of Egypt makes it more interesting than some which surpass it in size (Fig.167). It bears the name of Ousourtesen I., of the twelfth dynasty. As a rule, the inscriptions cut upon the four sides of those obelisks which are complete are very insignificant. They consist of little but pompous enumerations of the royal titles.[153]
Fig. 166.—Funerary obelisk in the Necropolis of Thebes. From Mariette.[154]
The two obelisks erected by Rameses II. in front of the first pylon at Luxor were slightly unequal in height. One was 83 feet 4 inches, the other 78 feet 5 inches. To hide this difference to some extent they were set upon bases also of unequal height, and the shorter was placed slightly in advance of its companion,i.e.slightly nearer to the spectator approaching the temple by the dromos.[155]By these means they hoped to makethe difference between the two less conspicuous. This difference may have been caused by any slight accident, or by the discovery of a flaw in the granite during the operation of cutting it in the quarry. In dealing with huge blocks like these, suchcontretempsmust have been frequent.
The smaller of the two obelisks was chosen for transport to Paris in 1836. In its present situation on the Place de la Concorde it is separated from the sculptured base upon which it stood at Luxor. The northern and southern faces of that pedestal were each ornamented with four cynocephali adoring the rising sun; the other two had figures of the god Nile presenting offerings to Amen (Fig.168).
In order to restore this and other obelisks to the form which they enjoyed in the days of the Pharaohs we should have to give them back their original summits as well as their pedestals. Hittorf has shown that these probably consisted of caps of gilded copper fitted over the pyramidion,[156]in those cases where the latter was not ornamented with carved figures. A curious passage in Abd-al-latif, which has been often cited, proves that the pyramid of Ousourtesen preserved its cap as late as the thirteenth century. "The summit," says the Arab historian, "is covered with a kind of funnel-shaped copper cap, which descends about three cubits from the apex. The weather of so many centuries has made the copper green and rusty, and some of the green has run down the shaft of the obelisk."[157]In the plate attached to his essay, Hittorf gives us a plan and elevation of the pyramidion of the smaller obelisk of Luxor. He shows how its broken and irregular mass implies a metallic covering, a covering whose existence is moreover proved by the groove or rebate, about an inch and a half deep, which runs round the summit of the shaft. His Figs.3and4show that this groove was carefully polished. His conclusions have failed to find acceptance in some quarters. It has been asserted that the rays of the sun, striking upon such a surface, would be reflected in a dazzling fashion, and that thegeneral effect would have been unsatisfactory. The Egyptians had no such fear. They made lavish use of gold in the decoration of their buildings. According to the inscription which covers the four sides of the pedestal under the obelisk of Hatasu at Karnak, the pyramidion was covered "with pure gold taken from the chiefs of the nations," which seems to imply either a cap of gilded copper, like that of the obelisk at Heliopolis, or a golden sphere upon the very apex. An object of this latter kind is figured in some of the bas-reliefs at Sakkarah. Besides this there is no doubt that the obelisk in question was gilded from head to foot. "We remark, in the first place, that the beds of the hieroglyphs were carefully polished; secondly, that the four faces of the obelisk itself were left comparatively rough, from which we should conclude that the latter alone received this costly embellishment, the hieroglyphs preserving the natural colour of the granite."[158]
Fig. 167.—The obelisk of Ousourtesen.Description, v. 26.
Fig. 168.—The obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, restored to its original base. From Prisse.
In that transplantation of which the Ptolemies first set the example, the obelisk at Paris was deprived of its original pedestal, as we have seen; it was erected in an open space of such extent that its dimensions seem almost insignificant; it was placed upon a pedestal which, neither in dimensions nor design, has anything Egyptian about it: and finally it was deprived of its metal finial. It can therefore give but little idea of the effect which the obelisks produced while they still remained in the places for which they were designed. The artistic instinct of Théophile Gautier was quite alive to this fact when he penned his fanciful but charming lines on theNostalgie d'Obélisque.
A curious fact has been ascertained in connection with the obelisks of Luxor. Their faces present a slight convexity, the total protuberance at the base being rather more than an inch and three-tenths. It is probable that the same arrangement would be found in other obelisks if they were carefully examined. Its explanation is easy. If the surfaces had been absolute planes they would have been made to appear concave by the sharpness of the corners. It was necessary, therefore, to give them a gentle entasis which should gradually diminish towards the summit, completely disappearing by the time the pyramidion was reached.[159]
The obelisk at Beggig, in the Fayoum, offers a singular variant upon the type which we have described. It was formerly a monolith about 43 feet high; it is now overthrown and broken into two pieces. It bears the ovals of Ousourtesen I., and would seem, therefore, to be contemporary with the obelisk at Heliopolis.[160]Its peculiarity consists in its shape. It is a rectangular oblong, instead of a square, on plan. Two of its sides are 6 feet 9 inches wide, and the other two about 4 feet. It has no pyramidion. The summit is rounded from front to back, forming a ridge, and the upper part of its principal faces are filled with sculptures in low relief (Fig.170). All this makes it resemble a gigantic stele rather than an obelisk (Fig.169).
Fig. 169.—The obelisk of Beggig. From the elevation of Lepsius.[161]
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 typerepeated, 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]
It may seem to some of our readers that we have spent too much time and labour on our analysis 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. Theirnames have been preserved to us in hundreds upon their elaborate tombs and inscribed steles.
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 principal architect of Thebes, in the time of Seti I. and Rameses II. From certain phrases in the inscription, Devéria 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 asmesalliance.[166]
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]
So far as we can tell there was a chief architect, or superintendent general of buildings, for the whole kingdom; his title wasOverseer 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]
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 passed 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 class. 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 thetime 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 compass 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.
Sculpture.
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 pass 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 withnations as with individuals. Some among them succeed with ease in matters which embarrass their neighbours. It is a question of circumstances, 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 thekaor 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, thedoublewould be saved from that annihilation to which it would otherwise be condemned.
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 gods 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 inthe same way. If these principles were disregarded the double would be unable to find the support which was necessary to it."[171]
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 attitude, 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 accumulation of precedents and fixed habits, in a word, against so much conventionality as those which came after. There were no formulæ, 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 passionate 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 arerare. 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 class of functionaries of the second order, who composed what may be called the Egyptian middle class. 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 pass 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 sex and age, the costume, the familiar attitude, 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 ofthe 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 noble creations the persistent effect of their early habits of thought and belief is still to be surely traced.
The most ancient monument of sculpture to which we can assign, 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]
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 ofprophet and priest of the white bull. The third is the presentmentof 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 breasts. Sepa holds a long staff in his left hand, and in his right the sceptre calledpat, a sign of authority. His only robe is a plainschenti, 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 breasts. 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 Rougé asserted 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.
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 assurance 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 thewoman, passed 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.