Chapter II: The Periods and Schools

Before we can understand any art the first step is to discriminate between the different periods and their various styles, and to observe the characteristics of the several schools. If we consider medieval architecture, we separate the many periods from Saxon to Renaissance; if we turn to painting, we distinguish many stages between Cimabue and Canaletto, yet these variations belong but to a single revolution of civilisation, and are comprised within some centuries; in Egyptian art we have to deal with seven revolutions of civilisation and thousands of years. And not only the period, but also the source and traditions of each local branch of the art are to be recognised, and we discriminate a dozen schools of painting between Rome and Venice, each with its own style. So in Egypt we need to learn the various schools and understand their differences. In this chapter we shall notice the essential characters of each period and school as compared together; while in the following chapters the more technical detail of the statuary, reliefs, and paintings will be considered.

In order to grasp more readily the differences of period and of place, there are given here eight typical examples of different periods (figs. 3 to 10), and four examples of different schools during one reign (figs. 11 to 14). These may be supplemented by reference to subsequent illustrations, but the contrasts will be more readily seen in a simultaneous view.

3. Prehistoric

4. Earliest dynastic

5. Old Kingdom (IV)

6. Middle Kingdom (XII)]

The Prehistoric work (8000-5500 B.C.) shows much more mechanical than artistic ability. The treatment of the hardest materials was masterful; granite and porphyry were wrought as freely as limestone and alabaster; perfectly regular forms of vases were cut entirely by hand without any lathe. But with this there was a very tentative idea of animate forms. The feet and hands were omitted, and limbs ended only in points. The form of an outline was not thought to imply a solid, and it needed to be hatched over with cross lines (fig. 3) to show that it was a continuous body. The noses of animals are frequently shown touching, as in this instance of the dog and addax. In short, the figures are mere symbols of ideas, with little regard to their actual nature and appearance. This symbolic stage of art is found in most countries, and often with a higher sense of form and expression than among the prehistoric people of the Nile; there is nothing of this age in Egypt to compare with the carvings of the cave men of Europe.

There is no sign of progress in art during this time. The slate palettes, cut in the forms of animal outlines, which were made through the whole age, begin with recognisable forms; and these were degraded by copying, until at the end their original types could hardly be guessed. The animal figures on ivory combs are passable in the earlier part of the age, and disappear entirely later on. The human figures, which are frequent in early times, are very rarely found later. The flint working shows degeneration long before historic times. And the pottery loses its fine forms, regularity, and brilliant finish, and becomes rough and coarse. In every direction it seems that the earliest prehistoric civilisation, which was probably connected with Libya, was superseded by a lower race, which was probably from the East.

The first dynasty (5500 B.C.) appears to have brought in entirely new influences. While the material civilisation naturally went on with many of the older elements, yet in all directions a new spirit and moving power is seen. The conquest of the country by a race of invaders is shown on many carvings, most of which are probably of the three centuries of unification, before the start of the dynastic history of the whole country. One of the most typical of these carvings is fig. 4, where the king is represented as a bull trampling upon his enemy. Other examples are given in figs. 51 to 54.

The whole character of the art is changed. Instead of the clumsy and spiritless figures of the prehistoric people, we meet with vigorous forms full of life and character. Perhaps one of the earliest is the hyaena (fig. 51); the slates are rather later, reaching down to the beginning of the first dynasty; and the figures in the round (19 to 22) show what a living and powerful art had suddenly sprung up and was developed under the early kings. The same growth is seen in the advance of glazing for important architectural use on a large scale. And the introduction and rapid development of hieroglyphic writing stamps the new age as the beginning of written history, the start of the conscious preservation by man of a regular record of his past acts.

This new growth of art rejoiced in its fresh found powers. It searched for the truth, it carefully observed anatomy, and--like a learner--it was proud of its knowledge, and emphasised the precise place of the muscles which it had traced out. For that very reason it is essentially a true art, without any of the slovenly substitutes for Nature which are termed conventions. It had no traditions to spoil it or hold it back: it was full of observation as the only method for its work. It is always simple and dignified, and shows more truth and precision than any art of a later age.

After the conscious study of Nature, the greatest step in any art is the deliberate work for the sake of its own beauty, and not merely because it has to tell a story. It may be said that this is the birth of true art; all before that merely consists of representations for another purpose. But work for the sake of beauty alone is art pure and simple, and this stage was reached at the very beginning of the history, in the beautiful carving of the palm tree and long-necked gazelles (fig. 52).

The Pyramid age (4700-4000 B.C.) brought in fresh ideals. The early kings had expanded a chieftainship into a kingdom, without realising all the new conditions of organization which were involved. The great work of the early pyramid kings, Senoferu and Khufu, was the massive organizing of the civil service of the country, the establishment of a social organism which resisted all the invasions and disasters of the land, and survived in parts to our own times. These new ideals were naturally reflected in the art. In place of tombs such as any great chief might have ordered, the most gigantic pyramids were erected, buildings yet unsurpassed in bulk and in accuracy of workmanship. The new social order of the official world followed in the same lines, and dozens of tombs were sculptured in each reign, larger and more elaborate than most of the royal sepulchres of other lands and ages. The host of these tombs which remain constitute a larger treasury of artistic work than there is of any other period in the world’s history.

A typical example of this new order is the figure of a servant of a noble named Ainofer (fig. 5). The high rounded relief, the sense of action, the delicacy of detail and expression, all mark this new time. The greater part of the really fine sculpture that we possess in Egypt comes from this time. The statuary (figs. 23 to 31), the reliefs (figs. 55 to 57), the painting (fig. 68), all show the noble spaciousness and grandeur of the age. Its style is severe and never trifles with superfluities. The smallest as well as the largest work seems complete and inevitable, without being constrained by any limitations of time, or labour, or thought. For the expression of royal energy, dignity, and equanimity the figures of Khufu and Khafra are unsurpassed. In the vivid expression of personal character no age has surpassed the statues of the officials and their wives. The style of other ages may be more scholastic, more amusing, or more graceful, but for all that constitutes great art no period can compare with that of the mighty pyramid kings.

All things pass away, and during the centuries of disruption which followed the VIth dynasty the old style ran down to an incredible coarseness and clumsy copying. At the close of the XIth dynasty a revival took place. Like all great developments of art it rose with extraordinary rapidity, and within a generation or two the new movement was fully grown. Its characteristic was the use of very low relief, with faint but perfectly clear outlines (see fig. 6). It was the style of a school, and not that of Nature. A regular course of artistic training is described by an artist; first was taught the positions of figures in slow action, then the differences of male and female figures, next mythological subjects, and lastly, the attitudes of rapid action. This mechanical training naturally went with elaboration of detail. The minute lining over large masses of hair, the carving of every bead of a necklace, were the outcome of scholastic training. The artificial reduction of figures in the round to a very delicate variation of planes in low relief was according to the same system. The whole works of the XIIth dynasty are beautiful, reserved, and pleasing, with a clearness and finish which appeals to a sense of orderly perfection. They have neither the grandeur of what went before nor the grace of what followed them.

7. XVIIIth dynasty

8. XIXth dynasty

9. Saite (XXVI)

10. Ptolemaic]

The XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties are the most popularly known age of the art. The profusion of remains, their accessibility at Thebes, and the more intimate style of the designs, have led to their general acceptance as typical. This position must not be allowed in a wider knowledge of the subject. The whole level of art of the XVIIIth dynasty is as much below that of the XIIth, as the style of the XIIth is below that of the IVth dynasty. The scholastic work of the XIIth is followed by a treatment which is almost always conventional in the XVIIIth; and the XIXth dynasty shows merely a degradation of what preceded it. At the close of the XVIIth dynasty there emerges from the turmoil of the Hyksos barbarism a rude but lively style of drawing, with sculpture of clumsy figures and badly-formed hieroglyphs. Stepping into the XVIIIth dynasty we meet with stiff and rather heavy statuettes, the female figures, however, showing the dawn of the seductive grace which followed. Little can be said to have changed in ideals since the XIIth dynasty, until the Asiatic conquests altered the civilisation of Egypt. Thothmes I and III brought back thousands of Syrian captives, many of whom were selected for their beauty and their artistic ability; their work and their influence transformed the art, and the ideal became that of a light, graceful, fascinating type which posed much and suggested more.

The art of character had become secondary to the art of emotion. Vivacity and romance led the way, and the older studies of deeper life and fine anatomy were out of date. Fluttering ribbons and prancing horses and galloping calves were represented without the laborious sculpture, but merely painted with a flowing line on the tomb walls, which were plastered smooth over the roughest hewing in the rock. The cheapest road to effect was the favourite way, and the eternal solidity and dignified simplicity of the older ages had vanished. The figure of an official of Kha-em-hat (fig. 7) is typical of the best work of this age. The other examples are shown in figs. 36-42, 60-62, 69-78. This new order of things culminated under Akhenaten, when naturalism, influenced largely from Greece, removed the older principles of Egyptian art; and all the passing incidents of life, the domestic affections of the king and the festivities of his court, became the subjects of even funerary sculptures and painting in the tombs. After that stage there was nothing left to do but to fall back on the old stock subjects and copy and re-copy them worse and worse during the succeeding dynasties. Egyptian art perishes with Akhenaten; all that came after was a bloodless imitation.

The XIXth dynasty art is fairly represented by a figure of one of the king’s sons (fig. 8). Here is seen the baldness of the style. The profile is mechanical, the hair hangs in a heavy and ugly flap, the body has no anatomy, the legs are badly drawn, and the long streamers flying from the waist are out of keeping. The coarse, heavy work of the temples of Abu Simbel, or the great hall of Karnak, is obtrusive in spite of their grandiose conception. In the XXth dynasty the inscriptions also suffered by being cut very deeply, so that the signs appeared as black shadows without any detail. The decay was only arrested by a deliberate copying of the style of the pyramid age.

The XXVIth dynasty tried to recover the early grandeur of sculpture by close imitation, but it is rarely that any fragment of this work does not betray itself by its inane treatment, bad jointing of the limbs, and want of proportion. One of the best examples of the more original work is the figure of an elderly official (fig. 9). The want of detail is hidden by the stiff robe without a fold or curve, leaving only the head and extremities to be represented. Another example is in fig. 64, where the bad jointing and lack of anatomy is too evident.

In the Ptolemaic time these faults are even more apparent, when the bad copy of a copy was the ideal. In fig. 10 is seen the hopelessly wrong proportioning of the parts, the clumsy lumps of flesh and exaggerated muscles, which are the extreme opposite to the over-refined flat relief of the XIIth dynasty. The hair partakes of the same faults, being carved as rows of lumps representing separate curls.

Portraiture, which compelled some attention to Nature, is the latest surviving form of art. In the XXVIth dynasty fairly good heads were occasionally done, but often with some disproportion. The modelled stucco heads of the Roman age are the last stage. Some of them show a real ability and feeling for character (figs. 135 to 137), and one example which can be compared with the skull proves the accuracy of the modelling (fig. 138).

The various Schools of Art should now be noticed. The styles of the different periods that we have considered were of course obvious in all the schools; the character of an age affected all parts of the country. Owing to the absence of any artists’ names, and the extreme rarity of those of architects, it is impossible to trace the personal origin of any works. And as we cannot say how much the artists travelled about the country, mere locality does not prove a conclusive test; probably for royal works the artists went to any city according to orders. Among private tombs we can see great differences of style, as between Memphis, Thebes, and Aswan. But the difficulty of exact dating makes comparison doubtful, as we might set side by side works of the rise and of the climax of a period. The most satisfactory evidence about the schools is from the statuary in different materials. When once a sculptor was trained to the peculiarities of one stone he would not be likely to enter on all the difficulties of a fresh material. A man trained for years to slicing and bruising out granite without the least fear of a crack, would not relish hewing soft sandstones that split, or limestone that could not be trusted with its own weight on a finished surface. Certainly the men who learned sculpture on the softer materials would be helpless on the granite. Then we know that the statues were at least dressed into shape--if not entirely finished--at the quarries, and hence the work in one material would continue in the hands of one local school. It is therefore likely that the stone workers of each material formed an unbroken succession, probably in certain families for the most part, and handed on their traditions for several dynasties successively, perhaps even throughout thousands of years. This would not be so much the case in relief sculpture, as there the blocks were built in and sculptured at the building, wherever that might be.

When we look for differences of treatment we see how strongly one style of work is continued in one material through a long period. We have here contemporaneous examples in four different stones, the statues of Rameses II in black granite, hard limestone, red granite and Nubian sandstone (figs. 11 to 14). In all cases work in black granite is finer than that in the other stones at the same period. The figures of the so-called Hyksos type (fig. 34), of the XIIIth, the XVIIIth, the XIXth and the XXVth dynasties, and the sarcophagi of the XVIIIth dynasty, in black granite, all show far finer forms and finish than those in the other materials. Of briefer use there were two other stones which show equally fine work--diorite, which was hardly ever sculptured except in the IVth dynasty (fig. 27), and green basalt, used in the XVIIIth (fig. 37). The green basalt must be put in the highest place as regards minute handling and freedom of curves; the fine grain and moderate hardness were most favourable to the artist. The black granite work comes next in quality, having fine curves but not quite the same freedom, owing to the coarser grain. The diorite has a beautiful grain for work, but the hardness has influenced the detail of recesses, and it is seldom that inner angles are as truly worked out as in the black granite. The comparison is perhaps hardly just, as there are no contemporary works in these two stones. It seems not improbable that all these hard stones were found in the same region, the Eastern desert, and that they were all worked by one school. That there was a fine technical training there in early times is shown by the splendid bowls and vases of the hardest rocks which were wrought in prehistoric ages and the first dynasty. Such vases were made in the mountain district, as the figures of a warmly-clad race bear them in tribute to the Egyptian king (_Jour. Anthrop. Inst._, xxxi., pl. xix., 13-15). Thus we may look on this black-granite school as belonging really to the border people of the Eastern desert, and not to the Nile plain.

11. Black granite

12. Hard limestone

13. Red granite

14. Nubian sandstone]

The limestone school was expressly that of Memphis and Middle Egypt. It is best known from the host of private statues found in the cemetery of Saqqareh. Work of the finest delicacy was done in this soft and uniform material (see figs. 24, 29-32); and a branch of the same school was that working the harder limestones which were a favourite stone in the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties in upper Egypt, as in the colossus of Rameses II (fig. 12). Both branches of this school excelled in the delicate expression of physiognomy; the proportions of the limbs and the finish of the extremities are usually excellent. The alabaster work is a branch of this same school, with similar proportion and finish. It is a rare material for sculpture till the XVIIIth dynasty, but under Amenhotep II to IV it was often used; and it serves for one of the best works of later time, the statue of Amenardys (fig. 47). The quarries were in the midst of the limestone hills, especially where the hard limestone occurs near Tell-el-Amarna. Thus the same school dealt with this whole group of calcareous rocks.

Another very fine school was that of the quartzite sandstone of Gebel Ahmar, near Cairo. The material was closely limited to a single hill cemented by hot springs; and what is now seen there is only the immense heap of chippings left by workers of all ages: the hill itself has almost vanished. This material was worked in the pyramid times, but only roughly. The XIIth dynasty kings saw its value, and quarried it for sarcophagi and chambers, but seldom used it for sculpture. The XVIIIth dynasty attacked it on an enormous scale; the two great colossi of Amenhotep III, weighing 1175 tons each, were cut and carried up-stream 450 miles to Thebes. Statues are found, royal and private, in all parts of the land, and naturally this stone was largely used at Tanis. The work is usually excellent, almost equal to the limestone sculpture; but it generally falls a little below that of the previous schools in the depth of cutting and the freedom of work in hollows.

The red granite school was at Aswan, where the statues and obelisks are still lying unfinished in the quarries. The artist was much hindered by the coarse grain of the stone, which made fine work difficult. On the obelisks this has been fairly overcome by a great amount of emery cutting, and sharp smooth hieroglyphs were cleanly cut. But for statuary, even in the pyramid age the features are coarsely worked and the detail scanty; and when used later on a large scale, the forms are heavy, the inner angles seldom worked out, and the extremities thick and massive. This is seen in the colossus of Rameses II (fig. 13), as well as in earlier figures.

The Nubian sandstone school was the least artistic. The softness and ready splitting of the stone prevented clean and well-finished work. Detail was almost impossible, and it was a mistake to use a good building stone for the wrong purpose of fine carving. In early times this stone was never used, except locally in its own region. The XIIth dynasty rarely used it, but by the middle of the XVIIIth it became general, and it was the main stone of the XIXth dynasty in Upper Egypt. Its use, however, does not come down to Middle or Lower Egypt. The long avenue of sphinxes at Thebes are the most familiar sculpture in this material, and similar figures were also placed by Amenhotep III in his temple on the Western bank. The great colossi of Abu Simbel are the main example of sculpture in this stone (fig. 14). They show the defects of the other southern school, that of red granite. The limbs are square and heavy, the feet and hands are flat and mechanical, and the muscles are crude ridges. But the face is fairly rendered, as well perhaps as was practicable in such material.

We thus see that there were essential differences between the various schools of Egyptian art, partly due to the various peoples, but mainly resulting from the material used by each school.