Chapter III: Sculpture (1)

§ 1. _The Origin of Statue-making._

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

The existence of these statues and their relative perfection show that sculpture had advanced with strides no less rapid than those of the sister art. It may even be said that its progress had been greater than that of architecture. Given the particular kind of expressive beauty which formed the ambition of the Egyptian sculptor, he produced masterpieces as early as the time of the Pyramid builders. We cannot say as much of the architect. The latter showed himself, indeed, a master in the mechanical processes of dressing and fixing stone, but the arrangement of his buildings was simple, we might say elementary, and many centuries had to 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 with nations 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 the _ka_ or double, a support that should fill the place of the living body of which it had been deprived by dissolution. This support was afforded to some extent by the mummy; but the mummy was liable to be destroyed or to perish by the action of time. The Egyptians were led to provide against such a catastrophe by the invention of the funerary statue. In the climate of Egypt, stone, and even wood, had far better chances of duration than the most carefully embalmed body. Statues had the additional advantage that they could be multiplied at will. There was nothing to prevent ten, twenty, any number of them, being placed in a tomb.[170] If but one of these images survived all the accidents of time, the _double_ would be saved from that annihilation to which it would otherwise be condemned.

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

Working under the impulse of such an idea, the sculptor could not fail to do his best to endow his statue with the characteristic features of the original. "It is easy, then, to understand why those Egyptian statues which do not represent 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 in the same way. If these principles were disregarded the double would be unable to find the support which was necessary to it."[171]

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

The first Egyptian statue was not so much a work of art as a cast from nature. If photography had been invented in the time of Menes, photographers would have made their fortunes in Egypt. Those sun-portraits, which are supposed to present a perfect resemblance, would have been put in the tomb of a deceased man in hundreds. Wanting such things, they were contented to copy his figure faithfully in stone or wood. His ordinary 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 are rare. The sepulchral statues were far from being all equal in value to those of the Sheik-el-Beled, of Ra-Hotep from Meidoum, or of the scribe in the Louvre. This intelligent and scientific interpretation of nature was not reached at a bound; Egyptian sculpture had its archaic period as well as that of Greece.

Moreover, even when the art had come to maturity, there was, as in other countries a crowd of mediocre artists whose work was to be obtained at a cost smaller than that of the eminent men whom they surrounded. The leading sculptors were fully employed by the kings and great lords, by ministers and functionaries of high rank: their less able brethren worked for that great 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 of the double to which it belonged. Whether it was copied from a sitter or bought ready-made, the statue became from the moment of its consecration an auxiliary body for the double. It preserved more of the appearance of life than the corpse saturated with mineral essences and hidden under countless bandages; the half-open smiling lips seemed about to speak, and the eyes, to which the employment of enamel and polished metal give a singular brilliance, seemed instinct with life.

The first statues produced by the Egyptians were sepulchral in character, and in the intentions both of those who made them and of those who gave the commissions, they were portraits, executed with such fidelity that the double should confidingly attach himself to them and not feel that he had been despoiled of his corporeal support. As the power and wealth of the Egyptians grew, their artistic aspirations grew also. They rose by degrees to the conception of an ideal, but even when they are most visibly aiming at grandeur of style the origin of their art may still be divined; in their happiest and most noble creations the persistent effect of their early habits of thought and belief is still to be surely traced.

§ 2. _Sculpture under the Ancient Empire._

The most ancient monument of sculpture to which we can 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]

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

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

Two of these are very much alike, and bear the name of a personage called Sepa, who enjoyed the style and dignity of _prophet and priest of the white bull_. The third is the presentment of Nesa, who is called a relation of the king, and was, in all probability, the wife of Sepa (Fig. 172). These statues were of soft limestone. Both man and woman have black wigs with squared ends, which descend, in the case of the former, to the shoulders, in that of the latter, to the breasts. Sepa holds a long staff in his left hand, and in his right the sceptre called _pat_, a sign of authority. His only robe is a plain _schenti_, a kind of cotton breeches fastened round his waist by a band. His trunk and legs are bare, and the latter are only half freed from the stone in which they are carved. Nesa is dressed in a long chemise with a triangular opening between the 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.

[173] _Notice des Monuments exposés dans la Galerie d'Antiquités
Égyptiennes, Salle du Rez-de-chaussé et Palier de l'Escalier_,
1875, p. 26.

This impression of great antiquity is not caused by the short inscriptions on the plinths. The well-carved hieroglyphs which compose them are in relief, but this peculiarity is found in monuments of the fourth and fifth dynasties. The physiognomies and general style of the figures are much more significant. They betray an art whose aims and instincts are well developed, although it has not yet mastered its mechanical processes. The sculptor knows thoroughly what he wants, but his hand still lacks 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 the woman, 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.

The induction to which we have been led by the style of these figures is confirmed by an observation made during recent explorations in the necropolis of Memphis. The patch of green paint under the eyes has, as yet, only been found in statues from a certain peculiar class of tombs at Gizeh and Sakkarah. These are chambers cut in the rock, in which the roofs are carved into imitations of timber ceilings of palm wood. Some of the texts which have been found in them contain the name of a king whose chronological place has not yet been satisfactorily determined, but who seems to have been anterior to Snefrou. The figures upon which the adornment in question occurs would appear therefore to be contemporary with the oldest tombs in the neighbourhood of the pyramids.[174]

[174] The Boulak Museum also contains specimens of these
figures. See _Notice_, Nos. 994 and 995.

BOULAK MUSEUM

Imp. Ch. Chardon]

Progress was rapid between the end of the third dynasty and that of the fourth. It was during the latter dynasty that the art of the Ancient Empire produced its masterpieces. Mariette attributes the two famous statues found in a tomb near the pyramid of Meidoum to the reign of Snefrou, the predecessor of Cheops. They are exhibited, under glass, in the Boulak Museum (Plate IX).[175]

[175] _Notice des principaux Monuments exposés à Boulak_, No.
973. These figures were discovered in January, 1872. They had a
narrow escape of being destroyed by the pickaxes of the
superstitious fellaheen. Mariette fortunately arrived just in
time to prevent the outrage. _Recueil de Travaux_, vol. i. p.
160.

"One of them represents Ra-hotep, a prince of the blood, who enjoyed the dignity of general of infantry, a very rare title under the Ancient Empire; the other is a woman, Nefert, _the beauty_; her statue also informs us that she was related to the king. We do not know whether she was the wife or sister of Ra-hotep. The interest excited by the extreme beauty of these figures is increased by our certainty of their prodigious antiquity. In the mastaba where they were found everything is frankly archaic, everything is as old as the oldest of the tombs at Sakkarah, and those date from before the fourth dynasty. A neighbouring tomb which, as is proved by the connection between their structures, dates from the same period as that of Ra-hotep, is that of a functionary attached to the person of Snefrou I. We may, therefore, fairly assign the two statues from Meidoum to the last reign of the third dynasty."[176]

[176] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, p. 47.

Each of these figures, with its chair-shaped seat, is carved from a single block of limestone about four feet high. The man is almost nude; his only dress is a ribbon about his neck, and white breeches like those to which we have already alluded. The woman is robed in the long chemise, open between the breasts, which we have seen upon Nesa. Besides this a wide and richly designed necklace spreads over her chest. Upon her head she has a square-cut black wig, which, however, allows her natural hair to be visible in front. Over the wig she has a low flat cap with a decorated border. The carnations of the man are brownish red, those of the woman light yellow.

These statues betray an art much more advanced than that of Sepa and Nesa. The pose is much easier and more natural, but the right arm of Ra-hotep is stiff and held in a fashion which would soon cause cramp in a living man. The modelling of the body is free and true, though without much knowledge or subtlety. The breasts, arms, and legs of Nefert are skilfully suggested under her robe. But the care of the sculptor has been mainly given to the heads. By means of chisel and paint-brush he has given them an individuality which is not readily forgotten. The arched eyebrows surmount large well-opened eyes; the eyelids seem to be edged with heavy lashes and to stand out well from the eyeball. In the case of the latter the limestone has retained its primitive whiteness, giving a strong contrast with the pupil and iris (Fig. 173). The noses, especially that of Ra-hotep are fine and pointed; the thick but well-drawn lips seem about to speak. Her smooth cheeks and soft dark eyes, eyes which are still common among the women of the East, give Nefert a very attractive look. Her smiling and restful countenance is in strong contrast to that of Ra-hotep, which is full of life and animation not unmingled with a little hardness.

The longer we look at these figures the less ready are we to turn away from them. They are portraits, and portraits of marvellous sincerity. If they could be gifted with life to-morrow, if we could encounter Ra-hotep and Nefert working under the sun of Egypt, the man semi-nude, sowing the grain or helping to make an embankment, his companion robed in the long blue chemise of the fellah women and balancing a pitcher upon her head, we should know them at once and salute them by name as old acquaintances. We find none of the marks of inexperience and archaism which are so conspicuous in the statues of Sepa and Nesa. A few later figures may seem to us more delicately modelled and more full of detail, but taking them all in all, we cannot look upon these statues as other than the creations of a mature art, of an art which was already in full command of its resources, and of a sculptor who had a well-marked personal and original style of his own.

We find the same qualities in another group of monuments ascribed by Mariette to no less remote a period.[177] The same eye for proportion, the same life-like expression, the same frankness and confidence of hand are to be found in those sculptured wooden panels of which the museum at Boulak possesses four fine examples. They were found at Sakkarah in the tomb of a personage called Hosi, where they were enframed in four blind doorways. They are on the average about 3 feet 10 inches high and 1 foot 8 inches wide. The drawings which we reproduce give a good idea of the peculiarities of style and execution by which they are distinguished (Figs. 174-176).[178]

[177] "According to all appearance these panels date from before
the reign of Cheops." _Notices des principaux Monuments_, etc.
Nos. 987-92.

[178] There is a panel of the same kind in the Louvre (_Salle
Historique_, No. 1 of Pierret's _Catalogue_), but it is neither
so firm, nor in such good preservation as those at Cairo.

At first sight these carvings are a little embarrassing to the eye accustomed to works in stone. The type of figure presented is less thickset. The body, instead of being muscular, is nervous and wiry. The arms and legs are thin and long. In the head especially do we find unaccustomed features; the nose, instead of being round, is strongly aquiline; the lips, instead of being thick and fleshy, as in almost all other Egyptian heads, are thin and compressed. The profile is strongly marked and rather severe. The general type is Semitic rather than Egyptian. And yet the inscriptions which surround them prove that the originals were pure Egyptians of the highest class. One of them, he who is represented standing in two different attitudes, is Ra-hesi; the other, who is sitting before a table of offerings, bears the name of Pekh-hesi. The decipherable part of the inscription tells us that he was a scribe, highly placed, and in great favour with the king.

The tomb in which these panels were found was not built on the usual plan of the mastaba. Mariette alludes to certain peculiarities which are to be found in it, but he does not describe them in detail. The hieroglyphs are grouped in a peculiar fashion; many of them are of a very uncommon form. The arrangement of the objects borne in the left hand of Ra-hesi is quite unique. Struck by these singularities, Mariette asserts that "the style of these panels is to Egyptian art what the style called archaic is to that of Greece."[179] This assertion seems to us inaccurate. Not that we mean to contest the validity of the reasons which Mariette gives for ascribing these panels to an epoch anterior to the great pyramids; but, whatever may be their age, it seems to be impossible, in view of the style in which they are executed, to call them archaic. They show no more archaism than the statues of Meidoum. The Egyptian artist never carved wood with greater decision or with more subtlety and finesse than are to be seen in these panels. As for the differences of execution which have been noticed between these figures and the stone statues of the same epoch, they may easily be explained by the change of material and by the Egyptian love for fidelity of imitation. Wood is not attacked in the same fashion as soft stone. Its constitution does not lend itself to the ample and rounded forms of lapidary sculpture. It demands, especially when a low relief is used, a more delicate and subtle modelling. Again, these were portraits; all the Egyptians were not like one another, especially in that primitive Egypt in which perhaps various races had not yet been blended into a homogeneous population. Among the contemporaries of Cheops, as in our day, there were fat people and thin people. Men who were tall and slender, and men who were short and thickset. Countenances varied both in features and expression.[180] In time art succeeded in evolving from all these diversities a type of Egyptian manhood and beauty. As the ages passed away the influence of that type became more and more despotic. It became almost universal, except in those cases where there was a rigid obligation to reproduce the personal characteristics of an individual with fidelity. But at the end of the third dynasty that consummation was still far off. And we need feel no surprise that the higher we mount in the stream of Egyptian civilization the more particular are the concrete images which it offers to us, and the more striking the variation between one work of art and another.

[179] MARIETTE, _La Galerie de l'Égypte Ancienne au Trocadéro_,
1878, p. 122.

[180] Thus we find in a tomb which, according to Lepsius, dates
from the fourth dynasty, certain thickset sculptured forms,
which contrast strongly with figures taken from mastabas in the
same neighbourhood, at Gizeh. The body is short, the legs heavy
and massive. LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part ii. pl. 9.

It must not be supposed, however, that the features which we have mentioned as peculiar in the cases of Ra-hesi and Pekh-hesi are not to be found elsewhere. If we examine the profile of Nefert, still more that of Ra-hotep, we shall find that they also have the sloping forehead and aquiline nose. The body of Ra-hotep is rounder and fatter than those in the wooden reliefs, but the lines of his countenance have a strong resemblance to those which have excited remark in the figures on the panels.

In the case of a limestone head, covered with red paint, which stands in the _Salle Civile_, in the Louvre, the cranium is no less elongated, the cheekbones are no less large, the cheeks themselves are as hollow, the chin as protuberant, and the whole head as bony and fleshless. We do not know whence it came, but we have no hesitation in agreeing with De Rougé, Mariette, and Maspero, that this head is a masterpiece from one of the early dynasties. It may be put by the side of the Meidoum couple for its vitality and individual expression. The unknown original must have been ugly almost to vulgarity, but it rouses in the spectator the same kind of admiration as a Tuscan bust of the fifteenth century, and a pleasure which is not diminished by the knowledge that the man whose faithful image is under his eyes passed from the world some five or six thousand years ago (Fig. 177).

The little figure which occupies the place of honour in this same saloon (Plate X.), though more famous, is hardly superior to the fragment just described. It was found by Mariette in the tomb of Sekhem-ka, during his excavation of the Serapeum. Other figures of the same kind were found with it, but are hardly equal to it in merit. They are believed to date from the fifth or sixth dynasty.

This scribe is seated, cross-legged, in an attitude still familiar to those who have visited the East. The most superficial visitor to the Levant must have seen, in the audience-hall of the _cadi_ or _pacha_, the _kiatib_ crouching exactly in the same fashion before the chair or divan, registering sentences with his rapid _kalem_, or writing out despatches. Our scribe is listening; his thin and bony features are vibrating with intelligence; his black eye-balls positively sparkle; his mouth is only closed because respect keeps him silent. His shoulders are high and, square, his chest ample, his pectoral muscles very large. People who follow a very sedentary occupation generally put on much fat on the front of their bodies, and this scribe is no exception to the rule. His arms are free of his sides; their position is easy and natural. One hand holds a strip of papyrus upon which he writes with the other, his pen being a reed. The lower parts of the body and the thighs are covered with a pair of drawers, whose white colour contrasts with the brownish red of the carnations. The breadth and truth with which the knee-joints are indicated should be remarked. The only details that have, to a certain extent, been "scamped," are the feet. Trusting to their being half hidden by the folded legs, the sculptor has left them in a very rudimentary condition.

(LOUVRE)

Imp. Dufrenoy]

The eyes form the most striking feature in this figure. "They consist of an iris of rock crystal surrounding a metal pupil, and set in an eyeball of opaque white quartz. The whole is framed in continuous eyelids of bronze."[181]

[181] DE ROUGÉ, _Notice sommaire des Monuments Égyptiens_, 1865,
p. 68.

This clever contrivance gives singular vitality and animation to the face. Even the Grecian sculptor never produced anything so vivacious. The latter, indeed began by renouncing all attempts to imitate the depth and brilliancy of the human eye. His point of departure differed entirely from that of his Memphite predecessor; his conception of his art led him, where the Egyptian would have used colour, to be content with the general characteristics of form and with its elevation to the highest pitch of nobility of which it was capable. This is not the place for a comparison of the two systems, but accepting the principles of art which prevailed in early Egypt, we must do justice to those masters who were contemporary with the Pyramids. It must be acknowledged that they produced works which are not to be surpassed in their way by the greatest portraits of modern Europe. In later years the Egyptian sculptor ceased to paint the eyes. Even in the time of the Ancient Empire the Egyptian custom in this particular was the same as the Greek, so far as statues in hard stone were concerned. The great statue of Chephren is an instance. In it the chisel has merely reproduced the contours of the eyelids and the salience of the eyeball. No attempt has been made to imitate the iris or to give brightness to the pupil. In none of the royal statues that have come down to our time do we find any effort to produce this kind of illusion, either by the use of paint or by the insertion of naturally coloured substances.

There is a statue at Boulak which may, perhaps, be preferred even to the scribe of the Louvre. We have already alluded to it as the _Sheik-el-Beled_ (Fig. 7, Vol. I.). In its present state (it is without either feet or base) it has no inscription but it is sometimes called Ra-em-ké, because that was the name of the person in whose tomb it was found. It is of wood, and, with the exception of its lower members, is in marvellous preservation. The eyes are similar to those of the scribe, and seem to be fixed upon the spectator while their owner advances upon him. The type is very different from those we have hitherto been describing. The face is round and flat, and so is the trunk. The smiling good humour of the expression and the _embonpoint_ of the person indicate a man well nourished and comfortably off, a man content both with himself and his neighbours.[182]

[182] Another wooden statue of equal merit as a work of art was
found in the same tomb. It represents a woman, standing.
Unfortunately there is nothing left of it but the head and the
torso. _Notice des principaux Monuments du Musée de Boulak_, No.
493.

This statue is dressed in a different fashion from those we have hitherto encountered. The sheik has his hips covered with a kind of petticoat gathered into pleats in front. His legs, torso, and arms are bare. The last named are of separate pieces of wood, and one of them, the bent one, is made in two parts. When the statue was first finished the joints were invisible. The whole body was covered with fine linen, like a skin. Upon this linen a thin layer of plaster was spread, by means of which, when wet, refinement could be added to the contours by the modelling stick; the colours of nature were afterwards added by the brush. Such figures as these have therefore come down to us in a condition which resembles their primitive state much less than that of the works in stone. They have, so to speak, lost their epidermis, and with it the colours which served to distinguish the flesh from the drapery.[183]

[183] The _Description de l'Égypte_ (_Antiquités_, vol. v. p.
33) gives the details of a mummy-mask in sycamore wood, of
fairly good workmanship, which was found at Sakkarah. The
eyebrows and edges of the eyelids were outlined with red copper;
a fine linen was stretched over the wood; over this there was a
thin layer of stucco, upon which the face was painted in green.

It would seem that the sculptor in wood often counted upon this final coat of stucco to perfect his modelling. There are in fact wooden statues which seem to have been but roughly blocked out by the chisel. There are three figures in the Louvre in which this character is very conspicuous. The largest of the three is reproduced in our Fig. 178.[184] Acacia and sycamore wood is used for this kind of work.[185]

[184] The figure in the Louvre is split deeply in several
places, one of the fissures being down the middle of the face.
This latter our artist has suppressed, so as to give the figure
something of its ancient aspect. These fissures are sure to
appear in our humid climate. The warm and dry air of Egypt is
absolutely necessary for the preservation of such works, which
seem doomed to rapid destruction in our European museums.

[185] MASPERO (_Journal Asiatique_, March-April, 1880), _Sur
quelques Peintures Funéraires_, p. 137. See also BRUGSCH, _Die
Egyptische Græberwelt_, No. 87.

Finally, in this epoch or perhaps a little later, under the fifth and sixth dynasties, funerary statues were cast in bronze. This notable fact was first proclaimed by M. de Longperier. We quote the observations which he addressed to the Academy of Inscriptions.[186]

[186] _Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, 1875, p.
345.

"The fact that bronze was employed in Egypt in very ancient times has long been ascertained. The knob from the Sceptre of Papi, a Pharaoh of the sixth dynasty, which exists in the British Museum, is enough to prove this fact. M. Chabas has called our attention to the fact that bronze is mentioned in texts which date from a period anterior to the construction of the great Pyramids.[187]

[187] CHABAS, _Sur l'Usage des Bâtons de Main_, p. 12. (Lyons,
8vo, 1875.)

"That the earliest Egyptian bronzes representing the human figure are much older than was formerly thought, is proved by two statuettes belonging to M. Gustave Posno. One of these is twenty-six inches high, the other nineteen. They merit a short description: 'No 1: A man standing; left foot forward, the left hand closed and raised to a level with the breast. This hand, doubtless, held a spear. The right hand which hangs straight down by the thigh formerly clasped, in all probability, the small sceptre which is represented in many bas-reliefs. The loins are girt with the garment called the _schenti_, the band of which supports a dagger. The hair is arranged into regular rows of small square knobs. The eyes and eyebrows, which were inlaid, have disappeared (Fig. 179).'[188]

[188] Catalogue of the Posno Collection, No. 468.

"'No 2: A man standing; his loins girt with the _schenti_, his left foot forward, his right hand raised to the level of his breast, the left hanging by his left thigh. The inlaid eyes and eyebrows have been abstracted. His hair, which is less abundant than that of his companion and allows the contour of his head to be easily seen, is arranged into very small knobs. A vertical inscription on the left side of his chest gives the name of the personage, in or after which appears the ethnic _Schasou_, which seems to indicate an Oriental origin.' The Schasous are mentioned in several Egyptian texts and seem to have occupied the country which bordered Egypt on the North-East (Fig. 180)."[189]

[189] _Ibid._, No. 524.

"In these two statuettes the muscles of the arms and legs, and the articulation of the knees, are expressed with a care and truth which denote a very remote age. We cannot fail to recognize a phase of art earlier than the Second Empire. But if the first mentioned figure recalls, by its features and the management of the hair, the sculptures in stone of the fifth and sixth dynasties, the second cannot, perhaps, be referred to quite such an early period. In the latter the vertical line of the back and right leg slopes slightly forward, betraying an attempt to express movement; the dorsal line of the first figure is, on the other hand, quite perpendicular.

"Even in the photographs certain details are visible, such as the form of the hair, the features, the rendering of the anatomical contours, which denote a school anterior to that of the eighteenth dynasty.

"Egypt, then, was first in the field in bronze casting, as she was in stone and wood carving. One at least of the Posno statuettes carries us so far back in the history of humanity that it is difficult to see where we can look for earlier works of art, especially of so advanced a style. We have already ascertained that the first named of these two figures is far superior, both in style and modelling, to the Asiatic canephorus of Afadj,[190] a work which was dedicated to a goddess by a king, and must therefore be considered a good example of the art of Western Asia."

[190] DE LONGPERIER, _Musée Napoléon III._ pl. 1.

We agree with M. de Longperier in all but one point, and that one as to which he is careful not to commit himself. According to him the second figure is later than the sixth dynasty and earlier than the eighteenth, so that it would belong to the first Theban Empire. But we do not see why, supposing the Egyptians of the Ancient Empire capable of making the first figure, they should not have made the second. Between the two statuettes there are but slight differences of handling, differences much the same as those to be found in the wooden and stone statues which we have already mentioned. Neither the artists nor their sitters had quite the same capabilities.

The technical skill shown in these bronzes is extraordinary. The most ancient Etruscan and Greek bronzes are solid castings, on the base of which are rough protuberances, sometimes of considerable length, resulting from the fact that the metal was allowed to solidify in the orifice by which it was poured into the mould. Here there is nothing of the kind. No imperfection in the mechanical part of the work is allowed to interfere with its artistic effect. The casting is light, hollow, and in one piece; the method employed must have been excellent in itself and thoroughly understood.[191] They also understood how to add finish by chasing the metal after its relief from the mould. The small circular ornaments on the chest of the second figure, ornaments which are so delicate in execution that they could not be reproduced in our engraving without giving them too much importance, and the hieroglyphs cut in the same figure, are instances of this.

[191] M. Pisani, who mounted the numerous bronzes in M. Posno's
collection, assures me that their insides are still filled with
the core of sand around which they were cast. The outward
details of the casting are repeated inside, showing that the
method used was what we call _fonte au carton_.

That so few bronze statuettes have come down to us seems to show that the use of the metal by sculptors was quite exceptional. They used wood far more than bronze, and stone more than wood. Most of the sepulchral statues are cut in soft limestone (see Figs. 6, 49, 88, 89, Vol. I., and Fig. 172, Vol. II.). Sometimes these statues are isolated, sometimes they form family groups, often consisting of father, mother, and children.

Statues of men are the most numerous. Differences between one and another are many and frequent, but they are, on the whole, less striking than the points of resemblance. Here we find a head bare, there enveloped in either a square or rounded wig. The bodies are never completely nude, and the garment which covers their middles is arranged in a variety of ways. Fashions, both for men and women, seem to have changed in Egypt as elsewhere. In the statues ascribed to the last dynasties of the Ancient Empire the national type seems more fixed and accentuated than in earlier works. These funerary statues are the portraits of vigorous and powerful men, with broad shoulders, well-developed pectoral muscles, thin flanks and muscular legs. Ra-nefer, priest of Ptah and Sokar, stands upright, his arms by his sides, and each hand grasping a roll of papyrus (Fig 181).[192] A dagger is passed through the belt of his drawers.

[192] A sketch of this statue also appears on page 10, Vol. I.
Fig. 6; but as, according to Mariette, it is one of the best
statues in the Boulak Museum, we have thought well to give it a
second illustration, which, in spite of its smaller scale, shows
the modelling better than the first.

The person represented in Fig. 182 is distinguished from Ra-nefer by the fashion in which he wears his hair and by his costume. His loose skirt is arranged in front so as to form a kind of triangular apron. This peculiar fall of the garment was obtained by the use of starch and an instrument similar to our flat-iron. It is better seen in the statue of Ti, the great personage to whose gorgeous tomb we have so often referred.[193] The Albanians obtain the curious folds of their kilts in the same fashion.[194] Ti wears a periwig of a different kind from that of Ra-nefer. The Egyptians shaved their heads from motives of cleanliness. The priests were compelled to do so by the rules of their religion, which made purity of person even more imperative upon them than upon the laymen. It was necessary, however, that the head should be thoroughly protected from the sun, hence the wig. The shaved Mohammedans of our day replace the periwig with the turban.

[193] _Notice des principaux Monuments du Musée de Boulak_, No.
24.

[194] Wooden instruments have been found which were used for the
pleating of linen stuffs. One of these, which is now in the
museum of Florence, is figured in WILKINSON (_Manners and
Customs_, vol. i. p. 185). The heavy and symmetrical folds which
are thus obtained are found, as we shall see, in the drapery of
Greek statues of the archaic period.

One wooden statue at Boulak offers a variety of costume which is at present unique among the remains of Egyptian civilization. It is, unfortunately, in very bad preservation. It represents a man, standing, and draped in an ample robe which covers him from head to foot. His right arm is free; it is held across the body, and meets the left hand, which is thrust through an opening in the robe. The place where this statue was found, the material of which it consists, and the character of the workmanship, all combine to prove that it is a production of the early dynasties (Fig. 184).[195]

[195] _Notice du Musée de Boulak_, No. 770.

A few kneeling statues have also been found. The anonymous personage whose portrait is reproduced in Fig. 185 is upon his knees. His clasped hands rest upon his thighs. His eyes are inlaid; they are formed of numerous small pieces skilfully put together.[196]

[196] _Ibid._, No. 769.

There is no less variety in those groups where the sculptor has been charged to represent a whole family reunited in the tomb. Sometimes the husband is sitting and the wife standing. She has her left arm round his neck, the left hand resting on his left shoulder, while with her right hand she holds his right arm (Fig. 88, Vol. I.). Sometimes a father and mother are seated upon the same bench, but here too the woman confesses her dependence on, and shows her confidence in, her master by the same affectionate gesture (Fig. 186). Both are of the same height, but between them, and leaning against the bench upon which they are seated, appears their child, quite small. His gesture is that to which the Egyptian artist has recourse when he wishes to express early childhood (Fig. 187). We also find the husband and wife standing erect in front of a slab; the relation which they bear to each other is here also indicated by the position of the woman's arms (Fig. 188).[197] Sometimes the woman is altogether absent (Fig. 89, Vol. I.). The head of the family is placed by himself, on a raised seat. In front of this seat, and hardly reaching to their father's knees, are two children, boy and girl, the boy holding the right leg, the girl the left. The boy has the lock of hair pendent over the right ear, which, like the finger in the mouth, is a sign of tender years. He is nude; the girl is dressed in an ornamental robe reaching to her ankles. There is a piquant contrast between these two tender little bodies with their childish heads, and the virile power of the father and protector who towers so high above them.

[197] _Notice_, No. 793. These two people were called
Nefer-hotep and Tenteta. The latter is also described as
_related to Pharaoh_.

These limestone groups do not, as a rule, appear to have been executed with any great care. Their makers do not seem to have taken much pains to give them an individuality of their own; but in spite of this feebleness of execution, they please by their composition. They are well arranged, their attitudes are simple and their gestures expressive. As a whole they have an air of calmness and repose which is thoroughly in accord with the ideas of the Egyptians on the question of life and death.

From the same memphite tombs many limestone statues have been recovered, representing, not the defunct himself, but those who mourn his decease and the crowd of retainers attached to his person. All these are expected to carry on their labours for his benefit and to be ready to satisfy his wants through all eternity. Here we find one seated upon the ground, his hand upon his head in sign of grief (Fig. 189).[198] There a young man, completely naked, advancing with a sack upon his left shoulder which falls down to the centre of his back. He carries a bouquet of flowers in his right hand (Fig. 190).[199] A man seated upon the ground holds a vase between his knees, into which he has plunged his right hand (Fig. 191).[200] Another bends over a wide-mouthed jar of mortar in which he is mixing flour and water (Fig. 192). A young woman, in a similar attitude, is occupied over the same task (Fig. 193). Other women are rolling the paste thus obtained on a plank, or rather upon a stone slab, before which they kneel upon the ground. The muscular exertion necessary for the operation is rendered with great skill (Figs. 193 and 194).[201] Women are still to be encountered at Elephantiné and in Nubia, wearing the same head-dress and carrying out the same operation in the same attitude and with exactly similar utensils. We reproduce two sketches by M. Bourgoin, which show the details of this head-covering, which, among the women of the lower orders, supplied the piece of the wig; it consists of a piece of stuff held upon the head by a ribbon knotted at the back of the neck (Figs. 196 and 197).

[198] _Notice du Musée de Boulak_, No. 768.

[199] _Notice_, No. 771. This is the person represented in
profile in Fig. 47, Vol. I.

[200] _Notice_, No. 766.

[201] The four last quoted figures belong to the series noticed
in the Boulak Catalogue under numbers 757 to 764. The statue
reproduced in Fig. 197 has been already shown in profile in Fig.
48, Vol. I.

Mariette brought all these figures to Paris in 1878, where they excited the greatest interest among artists and archæologists. They were eminently well fitted to enlighten those who are able to see and to do away with many rooted prejudices. What an abyss of difference they showed between Egyptian art as it used to be defined some thirty years ago and the reality. The stiffness and rigidity which used to be so universally attributed to the productions of the sculptors of Memphis and Thebes, were forgotten before their varied motives and free natural attitudes. The whole of these works, in fact, are imbued with a spirit which is diametrically opposed to the unchanging inflexibility which used to be considered the chief characteristic of Egyptian art. They are distinguished by an extraordinary ease of attitude, and by that curious elasticity of body which still remains one of the most conspicuous physical qualities of the race.

"The suppleness of body which distinguished the female fellah is marvellous. She rarely sits down. When she requires rest she crouches with her knees in the air in an attitude which we should find singularly fatiguing. So too with the men. Their habitual posture corresponds to that shown on the steles: the knees drawn up in front of the face to the height of the nose, or on each side of the head and level with the ears. These attitudes are not graceful, but when the bodies thus drawn together are raised to their full height they are superb. They are, to borrow a happy expression of Fromentin, 'at once awkward and magnificent; when crouching and at rest they look like monkeys; when they stand up they are living statues.'"[202]

[202] GABRIEL CHARMES, _Cinq mois au Caire_, p. 96.

This early art never carried its powers of observation and its exactitude of reproduction farther than in the statue of Nem-hotep, which we show in full-face and profile in Figs. 198 and 199. Whether we call him, with Mariette, a cook, or, with Maspero, a master of the wardrobe or keeper of perfumes, it cannot be doubted that. Nem-hotep was a person of importance. One of the fine tombs at Sakkarah was his. He certainly did not make his way at court by the graces of his person. He was a dwarf with all the characteristics that distinguish those unlucky beings. His head was too large, his torso very long, his arms and legs very short; besides which he was marvellously _dolichocephalic_.

The sincerity of Egyptian art is conspicuously shown in its treatment of the foot. Winckelmann noticed that the feet in Egyptian statues were larger and fatter than in those of Greece. The great toes are straight, no articulations being shown. The second toe is always the longest, and the little toe is not bent in the middle but straight like the others. These peculiarities spring from the Egyptian habit of walking bare-foot on the Nile mud; they are very strongly marked in the feet of the modern fellah.[203]

[203] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, vol. ii. p. 270.

The general characteristics of these works in the round are repeated in the bas-reliefs of the mastabas at Gizeh and Sakkarah. Of these we have already given numerous illustrations; we shall therefore be content with reproducing one or two which are more than usually conspicuous for their artistic merit.

The sculptures of Wadi-maghara and the wooden panels from the Tomb of Hosi are enough to prove that work in relief was as old in Egypt as work in the round. In the mastabas sculptures in low-relief served to multiply the images of the defunct. He is figured upon the steles which occupy the principal wall, as well as in various other parts of the tomb. Sometimes he is shown seated before the table of offerings (Fig. 200), sometimes standing upright (Figs. 57 and 120, Vol. I.). But the sculptor did not restrict himself to these two motives. In the preparation and presentation of the funeral gifts he found many themes, to which he was able to give more or less development according to the space at his command.