Chapter V: Part 5

The whole is composed of about ten pieces, collected in 1860 in one of the halls of the temple of Karnak, and put together with plaster, for good or ill, by one of the workmen belonging to the Museum. The cementing was not always done with rigorous accuracy, and one of the largest fragments, that which forms the centre of the head-dress, is slightly out of the perpendicular. Last year I tried to remedy the awkwardness of the restorer, but without success; if an attempt was made to separate the badly joined pieces, there would be a risk of reducing them to powder. But the irregularities in the joining are sufficiently slight not to injure the general aspect. In its present condition it is just the mutilated bust of a king with the uræus and the double crown on the brow; the broken object that leans against the left side is the end of a staff of office, terminated with a ram’s head, the emblem of Khnoum or Theban Amon. If we would form some idea of what the body was like, it is sufficient to look at any of the statues with the insignia that adorn the museums, that of Ramses II at Boulaq[63] or of Setouî I in the Louvre.[64] The king was standing, with his back against a sort of pillar covered with inscriptions, and holding the staff in his hand: as he looked in certain religious ceremonies when he escorted the ark of Amon-Râ through the halls and court-yards of the temple. What remain of the hieroglyphic legends do not give any name. Mariette was tempted to recognize it as Menephtah, son of Ramses II,[65] but he has not anywhere explained the motives that led him to that identification. The lugubrious tone of the black granite spoils the first impression, but an examination, even if only a superficial one, soon reveals the subtlety of the work. The head, under the enormous pschent, is full of charm and delicacy. The face is young, with an expression of gentle melancholy rare among the Pharaohs of the great Theban period. The nose is straight, thin, and well attached to the forehead; the long eye turns up at the temples. The wide, full lips, somewhat tightened at the corners as if for smiling, are boldly cut with sharply defined edges. The chin is scarcely rendered heavy by the weight of the artificial beard. Every detail is treated with as much skill as if the sculptor had been manipulating a soft stone like limestone, and not one of the materials that offer all the obstacles possible to the chisel. The sureness of the execution is carried so far that the spectator forgets the difficulty of the work in order to think solely of its intrinsic value. It is a pity that Egyptian artists did not sign their works: the name of the master to whom we owe this deserves to have come down to us.

Black granite.]

It remains to see who was the king whose portrait he has transmitted to us. When a Pharaoh ascended the throne, the sculptors of the city where he then was, Memphis, Thebes, Tanis, or another, hastened to make a certain number of copies of his portrait, full face or in profile; these were immediately sent into the provinces, in order that his face might be everywhere substituted for that of the former sovereign on the buildings in course of erection. Thus in the Boulaq Museum we have several series of royal heads, some discovered at Tanis,[66] some in the Fayoum,[67] others at Memphis,[68] which show what was the procedure in such a case. The type, once carefully fixed, did not change during the whole of the reign. Ramses II, who was nearly a hundred years old when he died, after reigning for sixty-seven years, kept the features of a young man even to his latest monuments. The rule contains numerous exceptions, especially when it is a question of statues commissioned in one of the capitals of the country, and executed by artists who could see their subject at close quarters and register the changes time produced in his face. Of the two Chephrên exhibited at Boulaq, one is young and smiling,[69] the other old and saddened by age.[70] But if there are examples of sovereigns who, ascending the throne early, were sometimes represented as they were at different periods of their life, I know of none who were rejuvenated by the sculptors when they reached the throne at a late age. The head of the statue with which we are here concerned is that of a young man, almost a youth, and that is sufficient for me to rule out Menephtah. Menephtah was fifty at least when he succeeded his father,[71] and his portrait, as it is to be seen at Karnak, does not in any way resemble the personage whose image is preserved in the Boulaq statue. The other princes of the XIXth and XXth Dynasties, Setouî II, Siphtah Menephtah, Amenmeses, Setinakht, of whom we have only a few poor portraits, have no more claim to be commended than their great predecessors Setouî I or Ramses II: the disturbed times in which they lived scarcely admitted of works of careful composition. Like Menephtah, Ramses I was too old at his accession, and besides, we have his portrait at Gournah. And, moreover, the style of the piece recalls at first sight that of the Turin statues belonging to the XVIIIth Dynasty, and then we must eliminate _a priori_ a certain number of statues of which we possess the exact description. Neither Ahmôsis I, nor the Thouthmôsis, nor the Amenhotpou have anything in common with our personage; and for even a stronger reason we cannot recognize in him the characteristic physiognomy of Khounaton and Aî. Proceeding from one exclusion to another, we come to restrict the choice to three princes, Touatânkhâmonou, Sânakht, and Harmhabi. Sânakht had only an ephemeral reign; Touatânkhâmonou has only left us insignificant monuments; Harmhabi, on the contrary, appears to have been one of the most important sovereigns of his time. A young man at the accession, he restored the temples of Amon despoiled by his heretic predecessors, and re-established the Egyptian power that had been weakened for a moment in Syria and Ethiopia. Last year and this year I cleared away the rubbish from two of the pylons he had built and decorated at Karnak; his portrait was sculptured on them numerous times, and the outlines are sufficiently well preserved for us to see in the king of the bas-reliefs the original of the Boulaq bust. I attribute the statue of which Mariette found the remains to Harmhabi, the Armaïs of the Greeks.

In conclusion, I may observe that the fragments, when carefully examined, show no trace of having been broken by a hammer; the statue was not destroyed by the hand of man, the case with a certain number of the monuments at Karnak. The great earthquake of the year 27 B.C., which put the temple of Amon almost into the condition in which we see it, brought down the ceilings of the halls; all the objects underneath were injured by the blocks or architraves then violently thrown to the ground and crushed under the weight of the ruins. Our Harmhabi did not escape the common lot: it needed Mariette’s great patience to restore the little we possess of him.

XV

THE COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II AT BEDRECHEÎN[72]

Ramses II, Sesostris, having restored the portions of the great temple of Phtah at Memphis, which bordered the sacred lake on the west and south, had colossi erected in front of the doors, destined to perpetuate his memory and his features for all “who should come after him on the earth, priests, magicians, scribes,” and who should recite a prayer to the gods on his behalf. The sacristans appointed as guides to the profane, and the dragomans who act as showmen of the wonders of Egypt, never fail to draw the tourist’s attention to these statues; it gives them an opportunity to relate some amusing story like those collected by Herodotus and transmitted to us by him as authentic history. One day Darius I wished to consecrate his image in the neighbourhood, but the high priest opposed his purpose: “Sesostris,” he said, “has conquered all the nations that obey you, and the Scythians to boot, on whom you never succeeded in inflicting much harm. There is then no reason why your monument should be placed by the side of that of a Pharaoh whom you have neither surpassed nor equalled!” When Memphis fell and became Christian, the fame of the colossi died away. When it perished and its temple of Phtah was dismantled stone by stone to serve for the building of Cairo, they were thrown down, and for the most part cut up into grindstones, whence they passed into the lime-kiln. One of them, however, thrown from its pedestal and lying face downwards on the ground, was covered with rubbish, and preserved from destruction by that happy chance. Brought to light by Caviglia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had the good luck to please travellers, and owed it to them to have escaped the mania for destruction that possesses the fellahs.

All Europeans in turn who have visited Egypt have admired it. It lies along the side of the path under the palm-trees of Bedrecheîn at the bottom of a muddy ditch. At the period of the inundation, water fills it and covers the statue for some weeks; then it gradually reappears, the shoulder and the leg first, then the bust and face, until it is all high and dry again in its hole. Its Pharaoh was standing, walking, the arms close against the sides. The name of Ramses II is to be read on the cartouche engraved on the buckle of the waistband that fastened his petticoat. Nitre has destroyed one side of the face and body, but what remains suffices to show the excellence of the work. The profile is that of the young Ramses, with low forehead, large aquiline nose, rather a large mouth, and a haughty expression. The base is at some distance off, and farther away still, to the south, a smaller colossus in wood, débris of walls, and fragments of statues point out the position of ancient chambers. The palm forest which flourishes on the site harasses excavation and prevents us from reconstituting the plan. The building or group of buildings that our colossus adorned went along the south bank of the sacred reservoir on which the mysteries of Phtah and the Memphian gods were celebrated on the canonical days. In spite of the long period of time, alluvial matter has not succeeded in entirely filling the lake. The place is marked by a noticeable depression, and the earth which fills it, instead of being planted with date-trees, is sown with corn; it is like a square basin the edges of which are drawn downwards from the surrounding ground. The rise of the river partly restores the original aspect of the spot, but the setting of porticoes and pylons which framed it has vanished; it is replaced by clumps of big trees, under which is situated the village of Tell-el-Khanzîr.

It seems that Mohammed-Ali formerly gave Ramses II to England; the fact is not exactly proven, and to admit it definitely a more serious authority than that of one or several of the “Travellers’ Guides to Egypt” would be required. The English have not availed themselves of the doubtful tradition to remove the colossus: they were satisfied to set it up again. They did not succeed at the first attempt, and two trials made by Messrs. Garwood and Anderson failed ignominiously enough. General Stephenson, who long commanded the army, was more successful. He first had the ambitious project of setting the statue on its feet again, but as the subscription opened for that purpose did not produce sufficient money, he contented himself with raising it up above the level of the inundation. The operations, conducted by Major Arthur Bagnold, of the Engineers, were begun on January 20, 1887.[73] Having drawn off the water, he applied eight lifting jacks of differing force along the body: the effort was directed alternately to the head and the feet: as soon as the whole mass was raised a little more than a foot and a half, huge beams were slipped underneath, and the hollow was filled up with broken potsherds collected in the ruins of the ancient city, reduced to tiny pieces and beaten so as to form a compact bed. The work was finished on April 16th. The colossus now lies on its back, the face to the sky. A pent-house shelters the head; a thick brick wall surrounds it and protects it from the gaze of the inquisitive crowd. Its guardian dwells beside it in a small two-roomed house where Major Bagnold installed him, and he only shows it to visitors on payment of two Egyptian piastres: it costs about sixpence to see it at the bottom of the new funnel in which it is plunged. The “Service des Antiquités” employs a portion of the tax in keeping it in good condition. Another Ramses in granite and a stele of Apries found in the neighbourhood were afterwards placed there, and complete the little open air museum.

The Arabs call the colossus _Abou’l-Hol_, the father of the Terror, like the great Sphinx. I do not know what they think now that it is under lock and key in its enclosure, but they were really frightened of it when it was, so to speak, at large. The ancient Egyptians believed that statues, human and divine, were animated by a spirit, a _double_, detached from the soul of the person they represented. The _double_ ate, drank, even spoke at need, and pronounced oracles; it has survived the religion and civilization of the ancient people, but the changes that have taken place around it seem to have soured its character. It plays evil tricks on those who approach its hiding-place, injures them, at need even kills them: Arab writers have a thousand tales of persons who suffered because they imprudently attacked a monument and the spirit that guards it. The means of rendering the _Afrite_ powerless is to destroy, if not the whole statue, at least its face: that is why so many Pharaohs have their noses broken or faces damaged. The spirit of Ramses II walked in the palm forest at night, and it was therefore imprudent to venture in the vicinity at twilight. Every time that I was obliged to go that way at sunset, my donkey-boy mumbled prayers and urged on his beast. One evening when I asked him if he was afraid of some _Afrite_, he entreated me to keep silence, assuring me that it was ill to speak of such things, and that if I persisted some accident would happen to me. In fact, my donkey stumbled in the middle of the forest and threw me against the trunk of a palm-tree: if the donkey-boy had not caught me and averted the blow, I should have smashed my head. From that time, whenever there was talk of the danger in speaking disrespectfully of the spirit that lives in the statue, what had happened to me was always quoted. The whole of Egypt is full of analogous superstitions, the greater number of which are derived from the ancient beliefs, and have been transmitted from generation to generation from the time of the Pharaohs, the builders of the Pyramids.[74]

XVI

EGYPTIAN JEWELLERY IN THE LOUVRE[75]

So much has appeared in the newspapers about the treasure unearthed at Dahchour last year by M. de Morgan, that every one in Europe knows the number, form, and richness of the objects it comprises; but among those who have described and justly praised them, how many--I do not say Englishmen or Germans, but Frenchmen alone--know that the Louvre possesses a collection of the finest Egyptian jewellery? Mariette was fortunate enough twice in his life to find a number of magnificent ornaments of great artistic value on the royal mummies, at the Serapeum in the tomb of the Apis buried in the reign of Ramses II by the care of one of the sons of the conqueror, Khâmoîsît, high-priest of Phtah, and regent of the kingdom for his father, and at Thebes in the coffin of a queen of the XVIIIth Dynasty, Ahhotpou I, who in her lifetime was the daughter, sister, wife, and mother of Pharaohs. Mariette, artist as he was, very skilfully brought out the interest of his discovery, and the admirable idea it gave of the goldsmiths of the seventeenth and fourteenth centuries B.C., but he went no further. He had brought to light so many monuments of importance for the study of political history and of civilization, that he never had time to dwell much on the secondary result of his works. The jewellery of Ahhotpou is preserved in the Boulaq Museum, where thousands of tourists admire it every winter; that of the Serapeum is placed in the Louvre, and usually obtains only an absent-minded glance from the few visitors who traverse the solitudes of the Charles X Museum.

It fills several compartments of a glass case that stands in the centre of the historic hall. At first we note a large gold mask, unfortunately damaged, and grouped near it gold chains with five and eight strands of extraordinary suppleness and perfection; amulets of various shapes in felspar, red and green jasper, and cornelian; scarabs, a buckle, an olive, a little column, in the name of Khâmoîsît. A little farther on a second series from the same source includes pieces, if not in themselves more finished, more curious and more attractive to a modern eye; the Lord Psarou, who was present with the prince at the funeral of an Apis, did honour to the mummy of the sacred bull. I imagine that the greater number of our contemporaries have but vague notions regarding the way in which the Egyptians wore jewels. Men or women, their costume at first was summary enough: the men protected their loins with a cloth which scarcely reached the knee and left the bust entirely bare; the women crept inside a clinging smock which reached the ankle, went up to the pit of the stomach, disclosed the breast, and was kept in place by two straps over the shoulders. Jewellery served partly to hide what the stuff left uncovered, at least with the women. A necklace of several rows encircled the neck and came down to the rise of the breasts; large rings were round the wrists, the upper part of the arm, and the lower part of the leg. The hair, or rather the wig, clothed the back and half the shoulder; a square plaque suspended by a chain of beads or a leather strap hung down below the necklace into the space between the two breasts. That is what we call the pectoral. It often looks like the façade of a temple, surrounded by a torus, and surmounted by a curved cornice; portraits of gods or sacred emblems were crowded on the surface, and inscriptions scattered everywhere tell us the name of the owner, accompanied generally by pious formulas.

The Louvre.]

The buckle of Psarou must have served to fasten the linen waistband which confined the loin-cloth, or the band which went round the head and kept the head-dress in place. His pectoral is one of the richest that has come down to us. It is fashioned in a plaque of green basalt, polished and sculptured with a precision that is astonishing when we remember how imperfect were the tools at the disposal of the Egyptians. The central scarab is in very high relief against the flat background, and the fidelity of the modelling is marvellous: the smallest details of the head and corslet are rendered with almost scientific truth. The two women who seem to worship it on the right and left are Isis and Nephthys, the two sisters of Osiris. The contours of their bodies are cut in the gold leaf that frames the scarab. Another pectoral of which I give a reproduction is of less delicate workmanship, but the technique presents interesting peculiarities. It has openings cut in it, and the design of the parts is obtained by partitions of a very supple gold, in which are set the scarab and the coloured glass which relieve the uprights and cornice of the naos. The scarab is in lapis lazuli, the dress of the goddesses in brilliant gold, engine-turned to simulate the stripes of the stuff. The mystical meaning of this design would not escape any educated Egyptian. The scarab represents the heart and life of man, where life resides; it is the amulet which ensures to each man, living or dead, the ownership of his heart. That is why it was given to wealthy mummies, if not to all mummies: sometimes it was stuck on to the skin of the corpse with bitumen at the rise of the neck; sometimes it was set in the centre of a pectoral, lost in the thickness of the swathings over the chest. As every Egyptian, when he left this world, was assimilated to Osiris and became Osiris himself, the heart and the scarab passed as the heart and scarab of Osiris, over which Isis and Nephthys watched, as they had watched over Osiris; hence the figures of the two goddesses. They warmed the heart with their hands, they recited the formulas that prevented it from perishing, they kept off evil spirits and the magicians who might have seized it for their dark purposes. Religion provided the artists with a subtle motive of decoration; while they never went far beyond the primary idea, they varied its detail and expression with much skill. The women are sometimes standing, sometimes seated or kneeling; they extend their arms in front of them, or lift them to their foreheads like mourners, or let them hang down in token of grief; the scarab rests on a boat or a lotus flower or an altar, instead of floating in air, as in the jewel of the Serapeum. Comparative study of all the scenes would prove once again the Egyptians’ fertility of imagination and their skill in ringing the changes on the most hackneyed subjects.

The Louvre.]

The Louvre.]

The pectoral in the centre belonged to Ramses II himself, or, at least, was executed by his order, and as a personal gift in honour of the Apis that was buried: the cartouche name _Ousirmârî_ is placed just below the frieze, and serves, so to speak, as a centre for the composition that fills the inside of the frame. There is first a hawk with a ram’s head, with spread wings which curve in order to frame the cartouche: in his claws he holds the seal, the emblem of eternity. Lower, a large uræus and a vulture spread their wings and enfold both the hawk and the cartouche in mutual protection. Two _Tats_ symbolize eternity, and fill up the empty spaces in the decoration in the two lower corners. The hawk with the ram’s head represents the soul of the sun, the uræus and the vulture are the patron deities of the South and the North: together they defend throughout the whole universe the king whose name stands between their wings, and, by the intermediary of the king, the dead man whose mummy wears the jewel.

Here again the figures are designed in panels of gold encrusted with coloured pastes or small pieces of cut stones. The whole is rich, elegant, harmonious. The three principal motives grow in proportion as they descend to the lower part of the picture, according to an admirably calculated progression. The cartouche with its dull gold occupies the centre; below it the hawk forms a first band of iridescent tones, the lines of which, slightly curved back, correct the stiffness of the long sides of the cartouche; the uræus and vulture, one pair of wings seems to serve for both, envelop the hawk and the cartouche in a semicircle of enamels, the tones of which pass from red and green to dark blue, with a boldness and a feeling for colour that does honour to the taste of the workman. If the general aspect makes an impression of heaviness, it is not his fault; the form of the jewel imposed by religious tradition is so rigid in itself that no combination can correct the effect beyond a certain point. The rectangular or square frame, the cornice at the top, the two rams’ heads which fit in below the cornice, form a squat and massive whole. To fill the interior suitably, it is impossible to avoid adding to the heaviness; in manipulating the empty spaces a slender and narrow appearance is procured, as in one at least of the pectorals of Dahchour. The type of the jewels has its origin in the same ideas or notions whence Egyptian architecture and sculpture are derived: it is monumental, and seems to have been conceived for the use of gigantic beings. The usual dimensions of the pectoral are too enormous for the adornment of ordinary men and women. They only come into their own on the breasts of the Theban colossi: the immensity of the stone body on which their image is sculptured lightens them and seems to bring out their exact proportions.

Sometimes the Egyptians left aside the square form bequeathed to them by their ancestors; the sacred bird left his cage when he could. Mariette found two of these simplified pectorals at the Serapeum, both of which represent a hawk: the first has its ordinary head and bends its wings back, the other has assumed the ram’s head and keeps its wings straight. It has the same wealth and the same elegance of line as in the other objects of similar source, but the motive, rid of the enamelled frame in which it was stifled, possesses more charm and is better suited to humanity. The execution is wonderful, and the ram’s head, in particular, surpasses in suppleness of workmanship all that is so far known. It is cut in a little ingot of pure gold, but it is not the material that is of most value: the old chaser knew how to model it broadly, and has given it as faithful an expression as if he had cut it life-size in a block of granite or limestone. It is no longer, as everywhere else, industrial art: it is art pure and simple. Mariette, and he understood, considered that he had never come across anything approaching this among the Egyptian jewellery he had seen. The gold ring also belongs to Ramses II. The two little horses who prance on the bezel were celebrated in history. They were called _Nourit_ and _Anaîtis-contented_, and were harnessed to the royal chariot on the day of the battle of Qodshou, when Ramses II charged in person the Khitas who had surprised him. The Pharaoh remembered the service they rendered him on that memorable occasion. The chiselling, although not so good as that of the hawk with the ram’s head, is very fine: it reproduces very boldly the particular attributes of Egyptian horses, their exaggerated mane, rather thin body, slightly swollen extremities. It is true that the rings, as a rule, are not adorned with subjects in such strong relief: the bezel is composed of a scarab or a metal cartouche turning on a pivot, sometimes engraved with the name of the wearer of the jewel, but more often with a pious formula or a series of symbols of obscure meaning by way of inscription. The larger number of the rings we see in the museums belonged to mummies, and are amulets that give the dead man some sort of power over the inhabitants of the other world: a small number only were used by their owners in their lifetime. They are seals, affixed to deeds like our stamps, just as we affix our signature. They are in every material: gold, electron, silver, bronze, copper, enamel, even in wood, according to the wealth of the individual; some are veritable masterpieces of engraving, but many possess no more artistic value than the common copper seals bought ready prepared at our stationers’.

The largest of these jewels passed through so many hands before reaching the Louvre that they have sensibly suffered: the panels are warped or even broken, the enamels or encrusted plaques are here and there worn off. The Dahchour jewellery, coming direct from the excavation, has preserved an appearance of freshness which has not a little contributed to increase the admiration of the public: the objects seem scarcely to have left the hands of the goldsmith who fashioned them, and the surprise we experience in finding them still so fresh after more than four thousand years renders us indulgent towards the imperfections that a close examination soon reveals. Their extreme antiquity, and quite rightly, counts for much in the appreciation they receive. It is indeed strange to confirm that from the twenty-fifth century B.C. the Egyptians had carried the technique of precious metals and the art of making jewellery to a very high degree of perfection. This was, of course, already known, for it is not infrequent to find rings, fragments of necklaces, isolated pectorals, some of which perhaps go back to the Ancient Empire, while others belong to the Roman period or betray Byzantine influence: our museums possess them by tens, and there is scarcely a private collection that has not a certain number of them. But these isolated objects do not attract the attention of the public; to rouse its curiosity it is necessary that some happy chance should bring to light a considerable treasure in which specimens of all the types usually collected piece by piece are placed together. Fortunately, these finds are not so rare as might be imagined: if Gizeh can boast of possessing the substance of Dahchour and the queen Ahhotpou, the Berlin Museum has the admirable ornaments that Ferlini obtained from one of the Ethiopian pyramids; the Leyden Museum and the British Museum shared the spoils of one of the Antouf kings of the XIth Dynasty; and the Louvre carefully preserves the jewels of the Serapeum, the most beautiful of all.

XVII

THE TREASURE OF ZAGAZIG[76]

I

Once more chance has served us well. Workmen who were making a railway embankment on the site of ancient Bubastis discovered, on September 22, 1906, a real treasure of jewellery and Egyptian goldsmiths’ work in the ruins of a brick house. They hoped to profit by the find themselves, but one of our watchmen had seen them; he took no action, however, at the moment, for fear of being ill-treated: the next day he reported the matter to the native inspector, Mohammed Effendi Chabân, who at once put the police on their track and informed his chief, Mr. Edgar, inspector-general of the antiquities in the provinces of the delta. Investigations were made in likely places, while the police searched the workmen’s houses and recovered some of the pieces that had been carried off. Several that escaped them fell later into the hands of a dealer in Cairo: a gold strainer, three undecorated silver phials, a large chased gold ring which strengthened the neck of a silver vase, fragments of silver cups, all, except the gold ring, of no artistic value. The two most valuable, a silver vase with a goat in gold as handle and a gold goblet in the form of a half-opened lotus, were seized at the house of the fellahs, Moursi Hassaneîn and Es-Sayed Eîd, before they had sold them to a local Greek _bakal_. He immediately claimed them of us as his personal property that, failing our unfortunate interference, he would have acquired for ready money. As no reply was vouchsafed to his summons, he went to law with us. The affair dragged on for some weeks, during which Mr. Edgar had the railway works carefully watched. At last, on October 17th, a workman with a blow of his pick-axe laid bare several fragments of silver vases: he tried to conceal them, but our _ghafirs_ prevented him, and the search proceeded under the protection of the police: the objects lay in a heap, gold between two layers of silver; the same evening they were in safety. The work was carried out so quickly that nothing was lost, and there was no reason for any one to contest our right to the windfall. To bring this story to an end, I may add that on November 4th the court of Zagazig found the two fellahs guilty of theft, and condemned them to imprisonment and to pay half the costs. But the _bakal_ still persisted in his claim, and rumour soon spread among the natives that he had gained his suit in the Court of Appeal: we had been forced to deliver up to him the objects of the litigation under penalty of a considerable fine for each day of delay. The dealers never hesitate to spread lies of this sort among the people: they thereby enhance their prestige with the fellahs, and uphold them in the notion that they have nothing to fear from the “Service des Antiquités.”

The treasure safe, we had to take note of the condition in which it reached us. At the first glance, two very different series were perceived: one, which comprised the jewellery and the gold or silver vases of most skilful workmanship, went back to the XIXth Dynasty; the other was composed exclusively of silver plate, the coarseness of which betrayed a much more recent period. Although it was all found at two separate times, and in two places somewhat distant from each other, did it originally form one collection? As we have seen, the whole made a heap among the débris of two or three jars which were themselves broken in the course of centuries under the continuous pressure of the earth; the objects seemed to have been heaped up irregularly, the most valuable in the middle, the others forming a bed above and below. We had even still adhering to a large fragment of pottery a stem partly of hardened mud and partly of metal, in which we recognized on a precipitate of less ancient earrings and bracelets, the remains of several Pharaonic goblets. How can it be explained that relics of such different epochs should be found in the same place? Many of them are intact, but others have purposely been clipped or broken, and the fragments melted down; they are also mixed with plates of pliant silver and with ingots coming from goldsmiths’ workshops like those that still exist. We know what happens not only in Egypt but in European countries when peasants dig up treasure while ploughing their land: they take it to a jeweller, who buys it of them by weight, throws it into the melting-pot, scarcely ever troubling about the loss thus caused to art or science, and transforms it into modern horrors. It is to some adventure of the sort that we owe the possession of our find. A fellah who lived, I imagine, during the time of the Roman domination, found in the ruins near Zagazig, if not at Zagazig itself, silver objects which he sold to a native goldsmith who destroyed some of them for the needs of his craft, and kept the others either to give to a collector or to use himself in the same way as the first lot when that should be exhausted. Did local sedition or the sack of the city by a hostile army compel him to hide his property in two different places? His goods, once hidden under the earth, were not again drawn forth, and we received them from him, almost without an intermediary, sixteen months ago.

II

I will say nothing of the rubbish of his own fabrication. The types are already those of present-day Egypt, and we could easily swear that most of them were manufactured for sale to the fellahs, at most, twenty years ago: earrings in the form of pendants or oblong rings, to the lower part of which eight or ten metal beads are soldered in bunches; rings with flat bezels, ornamented or left plain for a name to be engraved; bracelets formed of a simple reed of silver foil, thinned at each end and covered with a network of lozenges fixed by two or three marks hollowed out by the chisel and lacking elegance, the ends, cut off straight, nearly meet when the piece is finished, but they do not join, and so facilitate the putting of the bracelet on the wrist. It is the honest work of a man who did not spare his material, but only knew just enough of his craft to please easily satisfied customers; the taste of the good people of Bubastis who bought these things was not of a discriminating sort, or they may have found their market only in the people’s quarters. There are much better things of the kind in the Cairo Museum, and if the new-found treasure had only yielded such objects, it would have been at once despatched to the _salle de vente_ for the delight of tourists.

The contrast is striking as soon as we pass to what comes down from the Pharaonic age. Not that it can be placed among the best we know in that kind. The age of Ramses II is already marked by a less sure taste than that of the ages that preceded it, and I cannot compare it with the Dahchour objects nor with those of Queen Ahhotpou. One of the necklaces is the common breastplate of five rows of little tubes in stone and enamel, decorated with a fringe of gold egg-shaped ornaments encrusted with coloured stone. Another necklace, also of gold, with its eight rows of bottle-shaped pendants hanging to little chains of tiny beads, would be somewhat out of keeping with the others if that was its original form, but the parts had been separated, and we remounted them ourselves in order to preserve them with less risk of loss. Five lenticular earrings are formed of two convex gold pellicles closed at the circumference and joined by a border of filigree, stamped in the centre with a rosette, the leaves of which are grouped round a gold or enamel button; a gold tube soldered to the inside and grooved in the furrow of a screw passed through the lobe, and was fastened to an invisible button which, pressed against the flesh, kept the jewel in its place. There was also a bracelet in minute particles of metal and enamel, like those of Ahhotpou and the princesses of Dahchour, but only the clasp has come down to us, a sliding clasp of a most primitive character, with no value except for the gold. The best thing in the series was undoubtedly the pair of gold and lapis lazuli bracelets on which may be read the cartouche name Ousimares--Osymandyas--of Ramses II.

They form two circular portions of nearly equal size, joined by two hinges, the first turning on a fixed axis, the second a movable bolt taken away when the bracelet was opened. The back part is a mere plate of polished gold about 1½ inches broad, on which eight twists and eight fillets are laid side by side. The twists and fillets alternate, and the ends are bordered with a thin strip parallel to the hinge. On it are placed two rows of minute particles of metal soldered together, and kept in place by two flat double-twisted little chains. The front portion is expanded to the middle, where it is just over 2 inches in height. At the hinges it is edged by a row of egg-shaped ornaments set between two flat chains, and along the curves by a twist flanked by two fillets. A second frame, included in the first, is of a more complicated design: a double _motif_ of little beads and chains goes round the curves, but on the side of the fixed hinge the cartouche name of Ramses II is to be seen, and on the side of the movable hinge two bands of beads and filigree lozenges on a plain background. In the space thus reserved the goldsmith had traced the silhouette of a group of ducks lying flat, by means of a line of beads and a thin thread. The two bodies, which are packed together so as to be combined in one, are formed of a piece of lapis lazuli, cut and highly polished. The ends of the bodies are imprisoned in a gold sheath decorated with a covering of small knobs and lozenges; the tails are joined together, and simulate a fan; they are of lapis, striped with threads of gold to mark the separation of the feathers. Another gold sheath, of similar workmanship, envelops the chest; the two necks escape with a bold movement, and the two heads, twisting round, lie symmetrically on the back of the creatures. Between them and the frame is a smooth ribbon in sharp zigzags on a seed-plot of granules. The whole effect is rather heavy, and it would have been better if the artist had shown a more sober taste; but having stated so much, it is clearly seen that his work was conceived with a perfect understanding of decoration and a mastery of all the secrets of the art.

All the methods that he so well manipulated may be found in the work of the goldsmiths of contemporary Egypt, especially in that of those who, living in remote villages, have come less under European influence than their colleagues in the cities. The models they copy are never of so delicate an imagination or so skilled an execution; but we note for the most part the same devices and the same decorative parts of which we note the employment here; lozenges, zigzags, simple twisted cords, double-plaited small chains, rounded mallets, threads, filigrees in lines or in seeds. The ingots are beaten, stretched, fashioned, polished on the same little anvil. The granules are blown as formerly in charcoal powder, and the skill with which they are put together and soldered to obtain the desired designs is as great as in the time of the Pharaohs. In that, as in many other industries, the Egypt of to-day has inherited from the Egypt of the past, and we have only to look at the artisans in their shops to learn how the subjects of Ramses II set about their work.

III

The gold and silver vases are some years later than the bracelets. On one of them, indeed, may be read the name of Taouasrît, a great-granddaughter of Ramses II who married successively Siphtah and Setouî II, and who enjoyed her hour of celebrity in the last days of the XIXth Dynasty. It is a half-opened lotus, mounted on its stem. The calyx of the flower is formed of thin gold-leaf, not lined, sharply cut at the outer edge. The stalk is smooth except where the cartouche is engraved: it expands and flattens out at the bottom to form a foot, and the widening is decorated with folioles, kept in place by three circular bands. The lines are sufficiently harmonious, but the execution is poor, and the object would scarcely deserve a brief mention in our catalogue if the royal name did not assign it a definite date: here the artistic yields to the archæological value.

It is otherwise with the gold vases that accompany it. They are of medium size, and the smallest of them all measures only about 3 inches from bottom to top; but the harmony of the proportions makes them perfect models of the kind of plate that appeared at banquets on the sideboards or tables of the rich. The bowl is rounded, and surmounted by a straight neck almost as high as the bowl itself, the upper edge of which curves slightly outwards. The front is decorated with a traced ornament simulating that of one of the large necklaces in lotus petals with which the Egyptians adorned themselves on fête-days. The two bands with which it was fastened to the neck fall undulating on the right and left, and two cats--the two cats of the goddess worshipped at Bubastis--look at them inquisitively, with attentive eye, distended back, quivering tail, straight ears, as if asking to play with them. A lotus escapes below, and on the slopes of its corolla two geese glide flapping their wings. The neck is divided into three equal rows, separated by flat cords: first a wreath of lotus buds points downwards, joined together by a band of threads, one on top of the other; then a row of egg-shaped fruits, and lastly a band of round florets hollowed in the centre and the hollow encircled with points like stamens. There is neither handle nor holder, but a small barrel, through which a gold ring was passed and by which the object could be hung up, was fastened by three rivets to the lotus buds on the side opposite to that of the necklace. The barrel is of bluish faïence set in a gold mount with a terminal flower. It shows signs of wear and is dented in several places, but none of the blows it suffered have seriously injured it: it is as perfect as at the moment it issued new from the shop. The choice of motives is elegant, the grouping irreproachable, the composition bold and a little summary: the artist seems to have worked quickly, but he possessed such mastery of his craft that the rapidity of the fabrication in no way injured the charm of the work.

The second vase is larger, for it measures about 4½ inches in height; if the shape is similar, the detail of the decoration is very different. The bottom is flat, and the outer surface is filled by a lotus, drawn so as to cover it entirely. The bowl is not smooth, but three-fourths of it are covered with a regular bossage, which gives it the appearance of an enormous symbolic ear of _dourah_. The method employed to produce it is not repoussé work properly so-called, hammered from the inside to the outside. The general network was first very lightly traced on the metal; then the rounds were outlined with a blunt instrument and hammered into a furrow, which, pressing down the metal round them, left them themselves in relief. The neck was finished by an almost imperceptible rim, obtained by turning the upper edge of the gold plaque outwards. There are four rows instead of the three of the small vase: at the top the line of buds, then lotuses head downwards, with alternate bunches of grapes or undefined flowers hanging between them, then centred florets, and then fruits. The suspensory ring is fastened to the band of petals by a _motif_ in shape of a calf. The beast lies on its belly, the tail folded over the back; the head, turning to the right, is extended and raised, as if to look over the edge of the neck. It seems to have been chiselled in the solid metal, and not engrafted, and then finished with the graver. It is treated broadly, with a sure touch and the knowledge of animal form that is peculiar to the Egyptians; it may be placed beside the couchant calves that serve as perfume caskets and are masterpieces of sculpture in wood: it will lose nothing by the comparison. The whole presents the same characteristics as the preceding vase, and when closely examined we are soon convinced that it comes from the same workshop; indeed, there is little risk of mistake if we attribute both to the same artist.

It is the same with the two silver jugs which accompany the two gold vases: they have a common origin, and an equal importance for oriental toreumatology. One of them, unfortunately, was broken, and we do not possess all the pieces; but we have enough to be sure that it resembled the one that has come to us intact. The bowl is covered to two-thirds of its height with longitudinal rows of fruits, sitting one on the other like the scales of a pine cone. Here again it is not ordinary repoussé work, but the outline of each scale has been marked round and the metal then pressed down from outside to inside. The smooth belt which lies between the embossing and the rise of the neck carries round the whole of the vase a single line of hieroglyphics expressing a wish for the eternal life and prosperity of the royal cupbearer, Toumoumtaouneb, then a vignette and the owner in worship before a goddess, who is pacific and Egyptian on the perfect vase, but bellicose and foreign on the broken vase, armed with lance and buckler. Toumoumtaouneb was a person of importance in his time: not only was he entitled chief cupbearer, but he is proclaimed the king’s messenger in all barbarous lands, and he doubtless brought back his pious regard for the bellicose goddess from one of his journeys in Syria. That is the only exotic element found in the decoration of the two vases. The top of the neck is ornamented with a rim of light gold. It has two rows of subjects, one on top of the other: episodes of hunting or fishing. A fragment of the broken vase shows a troop of wild horses running towards a marsh with lotuses, where birds are flying. The intact vase is unfortunately encrusted in places with oxide, which obscures the detail of the scenes: we distinguish outlines of boats, tufts of aquatic plants, men drawing nets or shooting arrows, beasts at full gallop; in the upper row there are imaginary trees with palm-leaves or volutes, among which griffins fight with lions. If we do not owe the silver vases to the same artist who fashioned the gold vases, he was at least endowed with the same admirable skill. He has greatly simplified the outline of his figures, but the lines are firm, even, sunk in the metal with the precision of a master: the craft had no secrets from him. But that is not the chief merit of his work: twenty others would have been capable of so much among the goldsmiths who worked for the king and the great nobles. What specially distinguishes it is the originality of the design he chose for the handle, and the manner in which he treated it. A kid, attracted by the fumes of the wine contained in the vase, had climbed the bowl, and boldly standing on its hind feet, the legs strained, the spine rigid, the knees leaning against two gold calyxes which spring horizontally from the silver face, the muzzle pressed against the moulding, he looks greedily over the edge: a ring passing through the nostril serves for hanging up the vase. The body is hollow and has been fashioned in two pieces stamped out, and the two halves soldered together longitudinally and touched up with the graver. The horns and ears are inserted: a triangular hole was introduced in the middle of the forehead. The material technique is excellent, but the conception is even superior to the technique: nothing could be truer than the movement that inspires the little creature, nor more ingenious than the expression of greediness emanating from the whole of the body.

(About 6¼ inches in height.)]

Representations of many similar vases may be seen on the monuments of the Theban Dynasties, with foxes, leopards, and human beings for handles, and we had asked ourselves if they really existed anywhere except in the imagination of the painters of the hypogeums. There is now no manner of doubt that they were faithful reproductions of models used by the Egyptians, or by the nations with whom the Egyptians had relations either in war or in commerce. Shall we ever find one of the large table épergnes which show scenes of conquest, with trees, animals, statuettes of negroes or Asiatics in gold or in enamel? They contained such a large amount of metal that they would have been cast into the melting-pot at some moment of want, but we await the chance that may give us depôts similar to that of Zagazig: I do not think, however, that we shall find pieces of a finer inspiration or of a more harmonious composition than that of the vase with the kid.

IV

The silver pateræ have suffered much. Hurriedly piled up in the receptacle where they were hidden, the oxide bound them solidly together, and we have not yet succeeded in separating them all. It has besides eaten into them in so thorough a fashion that we have only ventured to clean two or three: it is doubtful if we shall ever risk touching the rest. It is a misfortune common to most of the silver objects found in Egypt: under the influence of the annual infiltrations, the organic acids, of which the subsoil of the ancient cities is composed, attack them and eat them away without truce or mercy. If the metal was of suitable thickness we might hope that the surface only was injured and the core of the metal unharmed, but most often they consist of a leaf of metal of extreme thinness, which quickly decomposes. Thus the object only endures at all thanks to the oxide crust, and if that support was removed it would be resolved into dust and tiny fragments.