III
As far as I can judge there were at least four large schools of sculpture in the valley of the Nile: at Memphis, Thebes, Hermopolis, and in the eastern part of the delta. I have attempted farther on to sketch the history and define the principal characteristics of the Theban school;[9] I shall only refer to it as far as it is necessary to make clear in what it is distinguished from the three others.
And to begin with, it is probable that the first of those in date, the Memphian, is merely the prolongation and continuation of a previous Thinite school. If I compare the few objects of real art that have come to us from the Thinites with parallel works of which the necropolises of Gizeh, Saqqarah and the Fayoum have restored to us so many examples, I am struck by the resemblances in inspiration and technique that exist between the two. We have no statues originating from Thinis itself, but the stelæ, the amulets in alto-relievo, the fragments of minute furniture discovered in the tombs of Omm-el-Gaâb find their exact counterpart in similar pieces that come from the excavations of Abousîr-el-Malak or of Meîdoum and from the sub-structure of Memphian residences. I think I see that at the beginning there were mediocre workmen in the plain of the Pyramids capable, however, of sculpturing, ill or well, a statue of a man seated or standing: to those men I attribute the statue No. 1 in the Cairo Museum, the Matonou (Amten) of Berlin, the Sapouî (Sepa) of the Louvre, and a few other lesser ones. The same defects are to be seen in all: the head out of proportion to the body, the neck ungraceful, the shoulders high, the bust summarily rough-hewn and without regard to the dimensions of each part, the arms and legs heavy, thick, angular. Their roughness and awkwardness compared with the beautiful appearance of the two statues of Meîdoum, which are almost contemporary with them, would astonish us if we did not think that the latter, commissioned for relatives of Sanofraouî, proceed from the royal workshops. The transference of the capital to Memphis, or rather to the district stretching from the entrance into the Fayoum to the fork of the delta, necessarily resulted in impoverishing Thinis-Abydos; the stone-cutters, architects, statuaries, and masons accompanied the court, and planted the traditions and teaching of their respective fatherlands in their new homes. According to what is seen in the tombs of Meîdoum, the latest Thinite style, or rather the transition style of the IIIrd Dynasty, presents exactly the same characteristics as the perfect style of the IVth, Vth, and VIth Dynasties, but with a less stiff manner. The pose of the persons and the silhouettes of the animals are already schematized and encircled in the lines which will enclose them almost to the end of Egyptian civilization, but the detail is freer, and keeps very close to reality. The tendency is perceived only in the roundness and suppleness that prevails from the time of Cheops and Chephrên. The Memphites sought to idealize their models rather than to make a faithful copy of them, and while respecting the general resemblance, desired to give the spectator an impression of calm majesty or of gentleness. Their manner was adopted at Thinis by a counter-shock, and it may be said that from the IVth to the XXVIth Dynasty Abydos remained almost a branch of the Memphian school, which, however, grew out of it. The productions only differ from those of the Memphites in subordinate points, except during the XIXth Dynasty, when Setouî I and Ramses II summoned Theban sculptors there, and for some years it became, artistically, a fief of Thebes.
If we would indicate in one word the character of this Thinito-Memphian art, we should say that it resides in an idealism of convention as opposed to the realism of Theban art. Thanks to the fluctuations of political life which alternately made Memphis and Thebes the capitals of the whole kingdom, the æsthetics of the two cities spread to the neighbouring towns, and did not allow them to form an independent art: Heracleopolis, Beni-Hassan, Assiout, Abydos took after Memphis, while the Saîd and Nubia, from Denderah to Napata, remained under the jurisdiction of Thebes. An original school arose, however, in one place, and persisted for a fairly long time, in Hermopolis Magna, the city of Thot. We observe there, from the end of the Ancient Empire, sculptors who devoted themselves to expressing with a scrupulous naturalism, and often with an intentional seeking after ugliness, the bearing of individuals and the movement of groups. We should observe with what humour they interpreted the extremes of obesity and emaciation in man and beast, in the two tombs called the fat and the lean. The region where they flourished is so little explored that it is still unknown how long their activity practised a continuous style: it was at its best under the first Theban Empire, at Bercheh, at Beni-Hassan, at Cheîkh-Saîd, but the period at which it seems to me to be most in evidence was at the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty, under the heretic Pharaohs. When Amenôthes IV founded his capital of Khouîtatonou, if, as is probable, he settled some Theban masters there, he would certainly have utilized the studios of Hermopolis. The scenes engraved on the tombs of El-Tell and El-Amarna are due to the same spirit and the same teaching as those of the fat and lean tombs; there are similar deformations of the human figure bordering on caricature, the same suppleness and sometimes the same violence in the gestures and attitudes. In a number of portraits the Theban importation prevails, but the cavalcades, processions, royal audiences, popular scenes, must be attributed to the Hermopolitans, for their inspiration and execution present so striking a contrast to those of analogous pictures that adorn the walls of Louxor or Karnak. The fall of the little Atonian Dynasty stopped their activity; deprived of the vast commissions which opened a new field for their enterprise, they fell back into their provincial routine, and we have not yet enough documents to tell us what their successors became in the course of the centuries.
In the delta two fairly different styles may be seen from the beginning. In the east, at Tanis and in its neighbourhood, there is, at the beginning of the first Theban Empire, a veritable school, the productions of which possess such an individual physiognomy that Mariette did not hesitate to attribute them to the Shepherd Kings: since the works of Golenischeff it is known that the so-called Hyksôs sphinxes are of Amenemhaît III, and that they belong to the second half of the XIIth Dynasty. This Tanite school is perpetuated through the ages; it was still flourishing under the XXIst and XXIInd Dynasties, as is proved by the fine group of bearers of offerings in the Cairo Museum. The predominant features are the energy and harshness of the modelling, especially of the human face: its masters have copied a type, and modes of coiffure belonging, as Mariette formerly pointed out, to the half-savage populations of Lake Menzaleh, the Egyptians in the marshes of Herodotus. It seems to me that their manner is still to be noted in the Græco-Roman period in the statues of princes and priests that we have in the Cairo Museum: the technical skill, however, is less than in the sphinxes and the bearers of offerings. The centre and west of the delta, on the other hand, came under the influence of Memphis, as far as we can judge from the rare existing fragments belonging to the Ancient Empire. Under the Thebans the dependence is clear, and all that comes from those regions differs in nothing from what we have from the Memphian necropolises. Only in the Ethiopian period, and under the influence of the successors of Bocchoris, is a Saïte school revealed to us, which, borrowing its general composition from the Memphian school, comes closer to nature and impresses an individual stamp on certain elements of the human figure that until then had been handled in a loose, so to say, an abstract fashion. The modelling of the face is as full of expression as in the fine works of the Theban school, but with greater finish and less harsh effects; the ravages of old age, wrinkles, crows’-feet, flabbiness of flesh, thinness, are all reproduced with a care unusual in preceding generations; the skull, indeed, is so minute in detail that it might almost be called an anatomical study. This impulse towards skilled realism, begun by instinct in the heart of the school, became accentuated and accelerated by contact with the Hellenes, who from the time of Psammetichus I swarmed in the provinces of the delta. Certain bas-reliefs of Alexandria and Cairo, the date of which is assigned to the reign of Nectanebo II, which I should like to place in that of one of the first Ptolemies,[10] may be regarded as extant witnesses of a kind of composite art analogous to that which was developed two centuries later at Alexandria or at Memphis, and of which the Cairo Museum possesses some rare examples.
It should be clearly understood that I do not claim to put the complete result of my study of the schools, the presence of which in Ancient Egypt is now confirmed, in these few lines. I am only anxious to point out the part played by them in historic times, and the errors into which those who have written the history of Egyptian art without suspecting their existence, or without taking into consideration what we do know of them, have fallen. Bissing does not ignore them, and is doubtless waiting to criticize them in his Introduction. He has so much material that it will be easy for him to rectify my hypotheses, and to confirm them where necessary; in that way his book will gain by being no longer a mere collection of monuments each described as an isolated piece, but a veritable treatise on sculpture, or at least on Egyptian statuary.
I shall be sincerely sorry if he fails in that particular, but even so, I should feel it right to declare that he has come honourably out of an enterprise in which he had no predecessors. The few plates that I inserted a quarter of a century ago in the Monuments de l’Art Antique, and the notices contained in the parts of the Musée Egyptien that have already appeared, afforded both experts and amateurs a foretaste of the surprises that Egypt has in store in the matter of art; they have been too few, and have related to subjects too scattered in point of time, to produce a body of doctrine. But here, on the contrary, nearly two hundred pieces are available, classified according to the order of the Dynasties, and for the most part unpublished, or better reproduced than in the past. Each will be accompanied by an analysis in which the researches previously connected with it will be set forth and discussed; for the first time Egyptologists and the general public will have the artistic and critical apparatus required for judging the value of the principal pieces of Egyptian statuary before their eyes and in their hands. Those who know the amount of the literature existing on Egyptology, and how scattered it is, can easily imagine the patience and bibliographical flair that Bissing must have needed for gathering from libraries the information so generously scattered on every page of his notices. But that was only the least part of his task; the appreciation of the objects themselves demanded of him an ever alert attention and a continuous tension of mind which would promptly have exhausted a man less devoted to the minutiæ of artistic observation. In other branches of the science, the materials have for the most part been so often and so repeatedly kneaded that nearly always half of the work has been already done; here, nothing of that sort exists, and in many cases Bissing has dealt with objects that he was the first to know, and of which no previous study had been attempted. That he is sometimes weary, and that here and there his opinions may be controverted, he willingly confesses. But what surprises me is how very rarely it is necessary to upset them, even partially.
I hope then that we shall not have to wait too long for the completion of this admirable work. May I venture to add that after the present edition, which is an édition de luxe, a popular edition would be welcome? Egyptologists like myself are condemned to pay such large sums for our books that the price of these “Denkmäler” does not alarm us, but the fact has greater importance for others. A reproduction in a smaller format, and less expensive, would greatly help to spread the knowledge of Egyptian art among classes of readers whom the book in its present form will not reach.
II
SOME PORTRAITS OF MYCERINUS[11]
It has long been a debatable question if the Egyptian statues of kings and private individuals can be regarded as faithful portraits or as merely approximate to their originals. No one has ever denied that their authors desired to make them as like as possible, but we hesitate to believe that they succeeded in doing so. The air of uniformity lent them by the repeated employment of the same expressions and the same postures encouraged the notion that, judging themselves incapable of exactly transcribing the details of bodily form or physiognomy proper to each individual, the sculptors decided that such details were not necessary for the kind of service to which the statues were destined: they considered that the task entrusted to them was sufficiently fulfilled if the soul or the double for which these statues provided an imperishable body recognized in them enough of the perishable body to enable them to attach themselves to it without hurt in the course of their posthumous existence. The study of the monuments has dissipated those doubts. Any one who has carefully handled one of the Saïte heads, the skull and face of which present such clearly individual characteristics, must acknowledge that so many details noted with such felicitous care indicate an absolute intention of transmitting the exact appearance of the model to posterity. And if, proceeding forward, we reach the second Theban period, we shall soon, thanks to the chances which have delivered to us the well-preserved corpses of about fifty princes and princesses, recognize the success with which the royal studios perpetuated in stone the effigies of their contemporaries. The profile of Setouî I photographed in his coffin would coincide line for line with that of his bas-reliefs of Karnak or Abydos were it not for the thinness resulting from embalmment. Let us go back eight or ten centuries and see how the master sculptors of the first Theban period treated their Pharaohs. The statues of Amenemhaît III and of Sanouosrît have so personal a note that we should be wrong to imagine they could be anything but a sincere, almost a brutal likeness. The two Chephrên of the Cairo Museum were not long ago alone in suggesting to us the conviction that the Memphian times yielded nothing in this matter of resemblance to ages farther removed from us; the recent discovery of ten statues of Mycerinus prevents any further doubt.
Most of them have not left Egypt. The first that came to us was acquired by purchase in 1888, with four statuettes of Naousirrîya, of Mankahorou, of Chephrên, and perhaps of Cheops. According to the information collected at the time by Grébaut, they were found together, two or three weeks before, by fellahs of Mît-Rahineh under the ruins of a little brick building situated at the east of what was formerly the sacred lake of the temple of Phtah at Memphis. That was certainly not their original place; they had probably each adorned first the funerary chapel annexed to the pyramid of its sovereign: their transference to the town and their reunion in the place where they were discovered are not earlier than the reign of the last Saïtes or the first Ptolemies. It was then, in fact, that hatred of foreign domination having exalted the love of all that was peculiarly Egyptian in the eyes of the people, reverence for the glorious Pharaohs of former ages revived: their priesthoods were reorganized, and they again received the worship to which centuries of neglect had disaccustomed them. None of our figures are life-size, and the Mycerinus in diorite, which is not one of the smallest, is scarcely 21⅛ inches in height. It is enthroned on a cubical block with the impassibility that the Chephrên has made familiar to us; the bust is stiff, the arms rest on the thighs, he looks straight before him, his face expressionless, as was imposed on Pharaoh by etiquette, while the crowd of courtiers and vassals filed past at his feet: if his name, engraved on the sides of his seat to the right and left of his legs, had not told who he was, we should have guessed it from his bearing. The composition, although not the best imaginable, is good: but the head makes a poor effect in relation to the torso, a defect always at first ascribed to the heedlessness of the sculptor. But it is to be noted that the face somewhat recalled that of two of the other Pharaohs, a fact to be explained by the relationship, the second, Chephrên, being the father of Mycerinus, and the third, probably Cheops, his grandfather. That is a reason for presuming that they are portraits, but are they authentic portraits? Several Berlin Egyptologists whose natural ingenuity encouraged them to revise Mariette’s criticisms on art, thought to discern in certain details of the costume and ornamentation a proof that if they were not figures of pure imagination, they were at least copies of ancient originals freely executed under one of the Saïte Dynasties, and their theory, although opposed by experts who had a longer experience, disconcerted the majority. It was soon upset by facts, but, as often happens, the consequences deduced from it survived by force of habit. Many of us feared for some years after to be asserting too much, to declare openly that our Mycerinus was what we had entitled him on the faith of his inscription, the real Mycerinus.
THE MYCERINUS OF MÎT-RAHINEH.
Diorite. Cairo Museum.
MYCERINUS (REISNER HEAD)
Alabaster. Cairo Museum.
We did not do so until 1908, when Reisner and his Americans, excavating at Gizeh round about the third pyramid, brought to light monuments that with the best will in the world no one could assign to any other epoch than that of Mycerinus. It seems that the fame of piety which popular story ascribed to him was not wholly unmerited, at least as far as his own divinity is concerned, for with the elements of a voluminous funerary equipment in all kinds of stones, the workmen brought out of the ruins of the chapel, fragments of a multitude of statues in alabaster, schist, limestone, and rare breccia. Among them were some unfinished or scarcely shaped out, for the sovereign having died while they were being fashioned, the works, according to Oriental custom, had been immediately interrupted and the workshops abandoned in confusion.
The statues which were already finished and set up in their places were overturned at some unknown period, perhaps when Saladin dismantled the pyramids to build the new ramparts and citadel of Cairo, and the fragments were so ill-treated that an enormous number of them have disappeared. Out of a hundred baskets of debris collected by the Americans, they found at most, besides five or six intact heads, enough to put together, almost completely, two alabaster statues. The best of the heads is in the Cairo Museum, and it has sufficient resemblance to our statuette for us to have no hesitation in recognizing Mycerinus, even if the place whence it comes did not help us to guess it. The statue that the find brought us is seated, but the block on which it is sculptured is not perpendicular to its base, so that it leans slightly backward. On the other hand, the two arms being cut between the armpit and the hip, the accident makes it appear at first glance as if the bust is too narrow for its height. But, and this is the important point, the head is small, so small that the head-dress, in spite of its size, is not sufficient to correct the bad effect of this disproportion between its smallness and the amplitude of the shoulders. The fault is not to be ascribed to the artist’s ignorance and lack of skill, as is probably done. He was not, it must be admitted, a man of talent, but he knew his business, and proved it by the general quality of his work. The harmony between the trunk and the leg, the muscles of the chest, the texture of the costume, the modelling of the knee and calf, conform to the æsthetics of the time; the foot and ankle are particularized with the virtuosity of a craftsman skilled in all the subtleties of his calling. So, now, returning to the statuette of Mît-Rahineh, the technique of which shows it to proceed not from a different school but from a different studio, we shall find a difficulty in imagining that two sculptors would each have fallen into so great an error, if they had not seen it themselves in their model. Since their statues are microcephalous, Mycerinus must have been microcephalous almost to deformity.
ALABASTER STATUE OF MYCERINUS.
Cairo Museum.
The search among the beds of fragments of stone was continued. A few weeks before it was finished, at the end of May, 1908, it produced four groups in schist, the testimony of which fully confirmed that of the alabaster statues. The disposition is the same, with very slight divergences, which do not sensibly modify the aspect of the pieces. Three persons stand side by side against a slab 17 to 23 inches high. Mycerinus is in the middle, his left foot advanced, the waist-cloth fluted on the loins, and on his forehead the white cap of the kingdom of Upper Egypt. He always has a goddess on his right, a Hathor moulded in the sleeveless smock open on the chest, and on her hair the short wig and the coufieh. On the top of this head-dress she wears her two cow’s horns and the solar disk. In one of the groups she is walking, her arms hanging down and her hands laid flat on her thighs; in the second, she embraces him with her left arm and presses against him; in the third she holds his right hand in her left. The last of the figures is sometimes a woman, sometimes a man: the man, who is shorter by a third than his companions, walks forward swinging his arms; the two women are at rest, and one of them puts her right arm round the king’s waist, in symmetry with the Hathor on the left. They are geographical entities, nomes, and the standards on their heads tell us their names: the two women personify the nomes of Sistrum and the Dog, the man that of Oxyrrhinchus. The fragments of schist under which they were buried assuredly belong to other groups now destroyed, but how many of them were there in the beginning? The decorative theme of which they formed part is one of which the intention is grasped at the first glance, but if we needed a commentary to explain it, the brief legends at the base would provide the material. They inform us, in fact, that our Hathor is the lady of the Canton of the Sycomore, and that the nome of the Dog, that of the Sistrum, that of Oxyrrhinchus, bring the sovereign all the good things of their territory. Mycerinus, in his quality of king of the Saîd and of the delta, had a right to tribute during his life, and to offerings after his death from the whole country, and on the other hand, Hathor, lady of the Sycomore, is the patron of dead Osirians in the Memphian province where the palaces and tombs of the Pharaohs are. It was natural then that she should serve as the introducer of the delegates of the nomes when they came to pay their tribute to the common master. With rich private individuals, the operation was symbolized on the walls of the funerary chapels by long processions of men or women in bas-relief, each of whom incarnated one of the domains charged with the upkeep of the tomb. Here it was expressed in even a more concrete fashion by two series of groups in rondo-bosso, which were probably developed on the walls in one of the court-yards of the temple of the pyramid. The four which have escaped destruction belonged to the series of the Saîd, as is proved by their names and the head-dress of the sovereign, but those of the delta could not have been omitted without causing regrettable privations to the double in his life beyond the tomb; there were then about forty in all, as many as there were nomes in the whole of Egypt.
MYCERINUS, HATHOR, AND THE NOME OXYRRHINCHUS
Schist. Cairo Museum.
MYCERINUS, HATHOR, AND THE NOME CYNOPOLITE
Schist. Cairo Museum.
The excellence of those that have survived fills us with regret for those that are lost. At the instant they emerged from the earth, they preserved something of their primitive colouring, but contact with the air and light speedily deprived them of it, and only traces remain on the chest, at the neck, wrists, waist, places protected by the customary ornaments of people of high rank. The gold-leaf with which the necklaces and bracelets were decorated was stolen in times of antiquity, but the thicker layers of paint on which they were placed preserve their contours fairly exactly. It would be easy for us to restore to the whole the aspect it had when fresh and new—a light yellow complexion for the women, and red-brown for the men, black hair, blue or white head-dresses, white crowns, and garments relieved by the tawny brilliance of the jewels. In pieces where everything is so minutely calculated for reality, it is scarcely probable that anything is the effect of chance or of lack of skill; if then the sovereign’s head is too small it is because it was so in reality. In fact, the lack of proportion with the rest of the body is less perceptible here than in the isolated statues, and it is not perceptible at the first glance: but it is soon recognized when the sovereign is compared with his two companions. Not only are their heads larger and more massive than his, but it would seem that the sculptor desired to accentuate the inequality between them by a trick of his craft: he has perceptibly narrowed their shoulders, and the contrast between the small head that surmounts the vast shoulders of Mycerinus with the two large heads that weight the narrow shoulders of the acolytes, emphasizes the deformity that the placing together of three figures on the same level had almost concealed. Study of the schists leads to the same conclusion as that formed of the alabasters. It is the real Mycerinus that contemporaries have bound themselves to transmit to posterity, and they have spared no details which were naturally calculated to make us better acquainted with him. We have only to analyse their works to see him stand before us in his habit as he lived. He was tall, robust, slender, with long legs, powerful shoulders surmounted by a small face, an athlete with the head almost of a child. In addition, projecting eyes, big ears, a short nose, the tip turned up, a sensual mouth with full lips, a chin receding under the artificial beard; the expression of the face is benevolent, even weak. In vain has the sculptor stiffened the backbone and the neck, thrown out the chest, stretched the biceps, clenched the fist, and immobilized the features into a hieratic gravity: he has not succeeded in inculcating the sovereign majesty that makes our Chephrên the ideal Pharaoh, the equal of the gods. He has the sanctimonious appearance of a private individual of good family, but his general bearing is below his condition. We could easily point to a dozen statues, his neighbours in the Cairo Museum, that of Rânafir, for instance, which have a more exalted appearance and a prouder mien.
MYCERINUS AND HIS WIFE.
Schist. Boston Museum.
And the new schist group that Reisner discovered during the winter of 1909 has not made any change in our opinion necessary. This time Mycerinus is represented with his wife; the lower portions of the two figures had not received the final polish when death intervened, but those of the upper part were finished and are admirable. Mycerinus wears the head-dress of the ordinary claft, which squarely frames the face, and his features are those with which we have become familiar in the statues described above; eyes starting from his head, a fixed expression, turned up nose, a large, loose mouth, the lower lip protruding, the physiognomy of a man of the middle class straining to appear dignified. The queen does not appear much more noble, but in looking at her we are disposed to think that she had more intelligence and vivacity. We should not say that she was exactly smiling, but a smile has just passed over her face, and traces of it remain on her lips and in her eyes. She has beautiful round cheeks, a little turned-up nose, a full chin, full lips cleft from top to bottom by a strongly marked furrow: a determined expression shows itself between her narrow, heavy eyelids. She resembles her husband, a fact that is not surprising, since unions between brothers and sisters were not only tolerated but commanded by custom; there is thus every chance that the couple were born of the same father and mother; she has only a greater appearance of strength than he has. Custom exacted that, when a husband and wife were associated in a group, they should not be placed side by side on a level of absolute equality, but that the woman should be given a posture or merely a gesture implying a state of more or less affectionate dependence on the husband; she crouched at his feet, her chest against his knees, or her arm was round his waist or his neck, as if she had no trust except in his protection. Here the queen’s gesture is in conformity with convention, but the manner of its execution contradicts the intention of submission: she leans less against the Pharaoh than she draws him close to her, and looks as if she is protecting him at least as much as he is protecting her. She is his equal in height, and even if she is more slender than he is, as is proper to her sex, her shoulders are as robust. Does it mean that the sculptor has attributed to her the massive shoulders of a man? Not at all: but following the example of his colleagues in the triads, he has cheated a little in order to dissimulate the defect of his model. As doubtless he would not have liked to show a deformed Pharaoh, and as he might not alter features which, after all, were those of a god, he has made the deformity less visible by taking away from the shoulders what was wanted in order to establish a sort of apparent equilibrium between the parts, and so we are brought back by a fresh detour to the point to which the examination of the alabasters and triads had led us. Let us once more conclude that the effigies of the Memphian Pharaohs and their subjects were real portraits of the personages they claimed to reproduce.
MYCERINUS, HATHOR, AND THE NOME OF THE SISTRUM.
Schist. Cairo Museum.
MYCERINUS AND HIS WIFE (DETAIL).
Schist. Boston Museum.
They were real, but not realistic unless there was special necessity. I have repeatedly attempted to define the two chief schools of Egyptian sculpture, the Theban and the Memphian. From the beginning the Theban school tends to copy the model brutally, as it was at the moment when it was portrayed. Take the statues of Sanouosrît I or of Sanouosrît III, which lately came to the Cairo Museum. The family likeness between all of them is indubitable, but, according as they come from a Theban or Memphian studio, the features which constitute the complete resemblance are noted in such divergent ways that at the first glance we are inclined to think that it scarcely exists. The Thebans scrupulously marked the thinness of the cheeks, the hardness of the eye, the harshness of the mouth, the heaviness of the jaw, and have exaggerated rather than diminished those points. The Memphians do not neglect them, but have treated them in a more merciful manner, and, from the haggard faces in which the rival school took pleasure, have brought out the happy smiling expression that its own traditions ascribed without exception to all the Pharaohs. We cannot institute comparisons of that kind for the epoch of Mycerinus: the Theban school, if, as is probable, it was then in existence, still sleeps buried beneath the ruins, and we know nothing belonging to it to place by the side of the Memphian. It is sufficient, however, to walk through the rooms of the Cairo Museum reserved for it to be convinced that if the Cheîkh-el-Beled, the Chephrên statues, the royal couple of Meîdoum, the Rânafir statues are portraits and likenesses, they are at the same time idealized portraits according to the formula, the influence of which we have seen in the monuments of the XIIth Dynasty. Whatever the models presented that was too pronounced, was softened in order to give them the serene bearing fitting the imperishable bodies of such noble and respectable persons. They only departed from this routine when there were monstrosities, the entire suppression of which would have been fraught with danger for the immortality of the subject, as in the case of the two dwarfs in the Cairo Museum; but it is not quite certain if even in those cases some modification of the ugliness has not been contrived. What has happened to Mycerinus renders it probable: have we not seen, in fact, that the artist exerted his ingenuity to dissimulate the disturbing exiguity of the head by an artifice? And he must often have taken similar liberties, although we have no actual means of proving it. I will venture to assert it of Chephrên, although almost the half of one of his two statues, that in green serpentine, is a restoration by Vassalli. For if we compare their profiles, we notice that that of the serpentine statue is weaker than that of the diorite statue: the eye is smaller and the chin less authoritative, the tip of the nose recedes a little, and there is a slight resemblance with Mycerinus. The lofty dignity which I noted just now as appearing in the father in contrast to the son may be the result of the Memphians’ determination to idealize their subjects so as to make each of them an almost abstract type of the class to which they belonged.
As might be expected, the alabasters of Mycerinus are a long way from equalling the schists. Indeed, whenever we find statues of a person in different materials, it is seldom that those most difficult to work in are not also the best. Petrie concluded that in all periods Egypt had a school of sculpture in limestone and soft stones, and one in granite and hard stones. But who would think of classifying modern sculptors in different schools according as they used bronze or marble? In Egypt, as in later times, the instruction given to learners prepared them to practise the complete calling, whatever the special branch to which they later confined themselves might be, but as the handling of certain stones required a more extended practice, care was taken in the workshops to entrust them to the most expert. That is evidently what happened in the case of Mycerinus. His alabasters are certainly very estimable; but those to whom we owe them were not skilled virtuosi, and if they acquitted themselves of their task honourably, they only produced ordinary work. Those who executed the schists were much more skilled. I will not venture to assert that they entirely triumphed over their material: the bodies of princes and gods sculptured in matter so unyielding and of so gloomy a tone present a rigidity of contour which we feel as keenly as we do the lack of colour which would enliven them. They almost repel any one who sees them for the first time, but the repulsion once overcome, they reveal themselves as perfect of their kind. The artist has done what he wished with the ungrateful material, and has handled it with the same suppleness as if he had been kneading the most ductile clay. The women are especially remarkable with their full round shoulders, their small breasts placed low, the belly strong and well designed, the thighs full and graceful, the legs vigorous, one of the most elegant types created by Memphian Egypt. It does not equal the diorite Chephrên, nor the Cheîkh-el-Beled, nor the Crouching Scribe, nor the lady of Meîdoum, but it is not so far removed from them, and few pieces take so high a rank in the work of the old Memphian school.
MYCERINUS AND HIS WIFE (DETAIL).
Schist. Boston Museum.
III
A SCRIBE’S HEAD
OF THE IVth OR Vth DYNASTY
(The Louvre)
The inventories give no indication of the origin of this head. So little was its source suspected that for a long time it was believed to be of Peruvian work: M. de Longpérier with his usual tact restored it to its rightful place in the Egyptian series.[12] At the first glance the style is seen to be that of the ancient Memphian Empire: it has evidently been detached from a statue found in one of the necropolises of Saqqarah. The absence of the plinth and the parts which usually bear the inscription prevents us from knowing the name of the individual it represents, a scribe contemporary, or very nearly, with the celebrated Crouching Scribe. A narrow and somewhat receding forehead, a long prominent eye slightly drawn up towards the temples, snub-nose, thin nostrils, accentuated cheekbones, thin cheeks, large mouth with full lips, a firm rounded chin, do not make a flattering portrait but certainly an exact one. The material is the excellent limestone of Tourah painted bright red: the technique shows delicacy and skill rare even at that period of admirable artists.
Almost all the statues of mere private individuals come from temples or tombs. The right of setting up a statue in the temples belonged exclusively to the king; so the greater number of those we have offer a special formula: “Granted as a favour on the part of the king to a son of so and so,”[13] sometimes too the favour is qualified as great or very great. It was then by some exceptional title, in reward of services rendered, or by a caprice of royalty, that an Egyptian was authorized to place his portrait in a temple, whether of his native city or of some other town, to the god for whom he professed a special devotion. The great feudal lords, who all more or less aspired to possess royal rights, sometimes took the liberty of setting up a statue of themselves without the preliminary permission of Pharaoh; but in spite of these usurpations of the royal prerogative, the number is relatively small. Civil wars, foreign invasions, the ruin of towns, the destruction of idols by the Christians, contributed to make private statues coming from temples rare in our museums.[14]
SCRIBE’S HEAD.
The Louvre.
But, on the other hand, those that come from cemeteries are very numerous. Every tomb that was somewhat cared for in the ancient or new empire contained several which represented the defunct alone, or accompanied by the principal members of his family. They were not always placed in the same spot: in the IVth Dynasty they were sometimes placed in the outer court, in the open air, sometimes also in the chapel, where on certain days the family celebrated the worship of the ancestor. Most often they were imprisoned in a narrow chamber, with a lofty ceiling, something like a corridor, and for that reason called Serdâb by the Arabs. Sometimes the Serdâb is lost in the masonry and does not communicate with any of the other chambers. Sometimes it is connected with the funerary chapel by a sort of quadrangular pipe, so small that a hand can scarcely be inserted.[15] The priests would burn incense near the orifice, pour libations, present offerings, murmur prayers, and everything was supposed to penetrate to the little apartment. Some of these Serdâb contained one or two statues at most, others would contain twenty. Some are in wood or hard stone, but the greater number are in painted limestone. Seated or standing, crouching or in the attitude of walking, they all claim to be portraits—portraits of the dead man, of his wife, of his children, of his servants. If they were more often found in places where they would have been visible, their presence would be explained by the pleasure members of a family would feel in seeing the features of those they had loved. But they are generally walled up for all eternity in hidden corners where no one would ever penetrate: we must seek other reasons.
The Egyptians formed a somewhat coarse idea of the human soul. They regarded it as an exact reproduction of the body of each individual, formed of a substance less dense than flesh and bones, but susceptible to the sight, feeling, and touch. The double, or to call it by the name they gave it, the ka, was subject, though in a lesser degree than its terrestrial type, to all the infirmities of our life: it drank, ate, clothed itself, anointed itself with perfumes, came and went in its tomb, required furniture, a house, servants, an income. A man must be assured beyond the tomb of the possession of all the wealth he had enjoyed in the world, under penalty of being condemned to an eternity of unspeakable misery. His family’s first obligation towards him was to provide him with a durable body; they therefore mummified his mortal remains to the best of their ability, and buried the mummy at the bottom of a pit where it could only be reached with the greatest difficulty. The body, however, in spite of the care taken in preparing it, only very remotely recalled the form of the living person. It was, besides, unique and easily destroyed: it could be broken, methodically dismembered, and the pieces scattered or burnt. If it disappeared, what would become of the double? For its support statues were provided, representing the exact form of the individual. Effigies in wood, limestone, hard stone, bronze, were more solid than the mummy, and there was nothing to prevent the manufacture of any number of them desired. One body was a single chance of durability for the double: twenty gave it twenty chances. And that is the explanation of the astonishing number of statues sometimes found in one tomb. The piety of the relatives multiplied the images, and consequently the supports, the imperishable bodies, of the double would, by themselves alone, almost assure him immortality.[16]
Both in the temples and hypogeums, the statues of private persons were intended to serve as a support to the soul. The consecration they received animated them, so to speak, and made them substitutes for the defunct: the offerings destined for the other world were served to them. The tomb of a rich man possessed a veritable chapel to which a special body of priests was attached, formed of hon-ka or priests of the double. At the sacramental festivals the priests of the double performed the necessary rites, they looked after the upkeep of the edifice and administered its revenues. The statues of the towns themselves demanded particular care. Indeed, the clergy of the temple in which they were placed claimed their part in the advantages derived from ancestor worship: veritable acts of donation were drawn up in their favour, in which were specified the part they were to play in the ceremonies, the quantity of the offerings that fell to their share for the service rendered, the number of days in the year consecrated to each statue. “Agreement between Prince Hapi-T’aufi and the hour-priests of the temple of Anubis, master of Siout, in regard to one white loaf that each must give to the statue of the prince, under the hand of the ka-priest, the 18th Thot, the day of the festival of Ouaga,[17] and also the gifts which every tomb owes to its lord; afterwards in regard to the ceremony of kindling the flame, and the procession that they ought to make with the ka-priest while he celebrates the service in honour of the defunct, and that they march to the north corner of the temple on the day of kindling the flame. For that Hapi-T’aufi gives the hour-priests a bushel of corn from each of the fields belonging to the tomb, the firstfruits of the harvest of the prince’s domain, as each commoner in Siout is accustomed to do from the firstfruits of his harvest, for every peasant always makes a gift from the firstfruits of his harvest to the temple.”[18] The ceremonial is set out in detail, and the monument tells us how, and under what conditions, a dead person is fed in Egypt. The loaves, meat and corn were placed in front of the statue by the priests: thence they reached the gods, who, after taking their part, transmitted the rest to the double.
We now understand why the statues that do not represent gods are always and uniquely portraits as exact as the artists could render them. Each was a stone body; not an ideal body in which only beauty of form or expression was sought, but a real body in which care should be taken neither to add nor take away anything. If the body of flesh had been ugly, the body of stone must be ugly in the same way, otherwise the double would not find the support it needed. The statue from which the head preserved in the Louvre was broken off was, undoubtedly, the faithful portrait of the individual whose name was engraved on it: if the realism of the expression is somewhat brutal, it is the fault of the model, who had not taken care to be handsome, and not that of the sculptor, who would have been guilty of a sort of impiety if he had altered the physiognomy of his model in the least detail.
IV
SKHEMKA, HIS WIFE AND SON
A GROUP FOUND AT MEMPHIS
(The Louvre)
Skhemka lived at Memphis at the end of the Vth Dynasty. He was attached to the administration of the domains, and was buried in the necropolis of Saqqarah. His tomb, discovered by Mariette during the excavations of the Serapeum, furnished three pretty statues to the Louvre.[19] I knew the group reproduced here at a time when the coating that covered it had suffered very little; the galleries of Europe possess nothing to be compared with it for finish of execution.
I shall not say much of the principal personage: he possesses all the qualities and all the defects to which we are accustomed in the work of the sculptors of the Ancient Empire. The modelling of the torso, arms, and legs is excellent, of the foot mediocre, of the hands execrable; the head lives, alive and intelligent under the large wig, with its rows of braids one above the other, which frames it. The two accessory statues are charming in design and composition. On the left Ati, the dead man’s wife, stands leaning against the back of the seat embracing her husband’s leg. The face and limbs are painted yellow in accordance with a convention almost always respected in Egypt.[20] A layer of bright red denotes the tan that the sun lays on the men’s skin; the light yellow reproduces the more delicate shade induced by the indoor life of the women. The hair, parted over the forehead, falls in two masses alongside the cheeks. The sleeveless dress is open in front, and the opening extends in a point to between the two breasts: the stuff exactly follows the lines of the body, and the skirt ends a little above the ankle. The position of the breasts is indicated by a special design; all the rest from the waist to the feet is embroidered with ornaments in colour, imitating the network of glass beads to be seen in the museums.[21] A necklace with two rows and bracelets complete the costume. On the right, Knom, son of Skhemka and Ati, serves as a pendant to his mother: he is naked except for a necklace round the bottom of his neck and a little square amulet that falls on his chest. The grace and charm of the figures cannot be too much admired. Although of small dimensions, the artist has endowed them with the physiognomy and features suited to their age with as much exactness as if he had been dealing with a colossus. The firm flesh and rounded but muscular limbs of the woman in her prime, and the chubby flesh and soft limbs of the child, are treated equally happily. The mother’s face has a smiling charm, the son’s a naïve and wondering grace: the Egyptian chisel did not often work with so much intelligence and lightness.
SKHEMKA WITH HIS WIFE AND SON.
Limestone. The Louvre.
The gesture with which each of the two small people embraces the leg of the big one is not an artifice of composition, a simple way of attaching the subordinate elements of the group to the principal one. It is often to be found in turning over the plates of Lepsius’s fine work.[22] The inscriptions repeatedly state of the wife that “she loved her husband,” and the artists reveal it in action. Seated or standing by his side, she puts her hand on his shoulder or her arm round his neck; crouching or kneeling, she leans against him, her breast pressed against his leg, her cheek leaning against his knee. And it is not only in the privacy of the home that she treats him with this affectionate abandon, but in public, before the servants or the assembled vassals, while he is inspecting his lands and reviewing his possessions.[23]
In the same way it is rare to find a personage without his children, “who love him,” at his feet or by his side, from the little, naked long-haired boy, like Knom, to the grown-up sons and married daughters. To sum up, the sculptor to whom we owe the Louvre monument has carved in stone a scene of contemporary life. He shows us Skhemka, Ati, and Knom grouped as they were every day: and what is conventional in his work is not the grouping of the three people, but the disproportion in stature between the husband and wife, and between the mother and son.
But here, again, he is only conforming to a prevailing tradition of his art. In all the tombs of every period, the master of the hypogeum is generally of the height of the wall, while servants, friends, sons, and wives are only of the height of one of the rows. The king, in the warlike paintings of the temples, is of colossal size, while the others, friends or enemies, beside him, look like a crowd of pigmies. In that case we might imagine that the difference in size showed only the difference of rank, but the explanation does not suffice elsewhere. A slave married for her beauty preserved something of the inferiority of her former condition; a princess of the blood royal, united in marriage to a private individual, did not therefore renounce her royal rank. If inequality of stature corresponded to inequality of rank, the sculptor would have made the first smaller and the second bigger than her husband. They did not, however, do that: slave or princess, they gave the wife a stature sometimes equal but more often lower than that of the husband.[24] Thus the treatment does not show social distinction; the woman was legally on the same level as the man. If the master of the tomb is alone in his height, it is merely because he alone is at home in the tomb, and it was desired to show in him the one master, the personage who must be protected against the dangers of the other world: so he was designed of large size, as we underline a word in a sentence in order to emphasize it.
In fact, the sculptor, in modelling his work, thought of the necessities of the life beyond the tomb. Skhemka’s wife living might be superior to Skhemka by fortune or birth, and so take precedence of him; before the dead Skhemka she was only a subordinate personage. Egyptian theology supposed, it would seem, that the wife was as indispensable to the man after as during life, and that is why she is represented by his side on the walls of his tomb; but, as she is only an accessory there, the sculptor and the painter are free to treat her as they understand the matter. If the husband demanded it, they gave both the same stature, seated them on the same seat, made no sort of difference between them. But if he expressed no wish, they could either suppress her altogether or relegate her to the background and give her the dimensions of her son, as they did with Ati, in order that she may lean against the seat on which her husband is enthroned.
V
THE CROUCHING SCRIBE
Vth DYNASTY
(The Louvre)
He was found by Mariette in the tomb of Skhemka in 1851, during the soundings which preceded the discovery of the Serapeum. He is now in the Louvre, in the centre of the “Salle civile” of the Egyptian Gallery, surrounded by show-case tables. His attitude, in conjunction with the unfortunate place assigned him, makes him look like a fellah dealer in antiquities seated in the midst of his goods, patiently waiting for customers. The red paint, which was perfect when he was brought to the Louvre, has worn off in places with the coating on which it was applied, and so the whity colour of the limestone shows through here and there; the cross light from the two windows falls on him in such a way as almost to efface the modelling of the shoulders and chest: ordinary visitors, for whom there is nothing to mark it, scarcely look at it, and pass it by in complete indifference to the fact that one of the masterpieces of Egyptian sculpture is before them.
CROUCHING SCRIBE.
The Louvre.
Does he represent the great lord in whose tomb he was found? Other statues that entered the Louvre with his bear the name of Skhemka and pass for the faithful portrait of that personage.[25] If, as their careful composition leads us to believe, that claim is justified, the Crouching Scribe was only one of the numerous relatives or servants named in the inscriptions of the chapel. The people of the Ancient Empire had the custom of shutting up in the Serdâb,[26] by the side of the statue of the dead person, those of other individuals belonging to his family or his household. They are mourners, both men and women crouching down, one hand hanging or cast on the ground about to pick up the dust in sign of mourning, the other held in front of the face and plunged into the hair;[27] women who crush the grain on the stone; servants who thrust their arm into an amphora, probably to coat it with pitch before pouring in the beer or wine. Ours is a scribe: his legs bent under him and placed flat on the ground in one of those positions familiar to Orientals, but almost impossible for Europeans, the bust upright and well-balanced on the hips, the head raised; reed in hand, and the sheet of papyrus spread over his knees, he still waits, at an interval of 6,000 years, for his master to resume the interrupted dictation. The paintings in the contemporary tombs tell us a hundred times rather than once what he is preparing to write. In order to sustain himself in the other world, the great Egyptian lord received on appointed days the offerings due to him from the domains attached to his tomb: one was to bring bread, one meat, others wine, cakes, fruit. It was quite a big piece of bookkeeping, identical with that usual in his lifetime. The scribes of flesh and blood entered the real revenues as they came in; the scribe of stone rendered the same service to the master of stone whom he attended for ever.
We cannot say that our scribe was handsome in his lifetime, but the truth and vigour of his portrait compensates largely for what he lacks in beauty. The face is almost square, and the strongly accentuated features indicate a man in his prime; the large mouth with thin lips is slightly raised at the corners and almost disappears in the prominent muscles that frame it; the cheeks are rather hard and bony; the ears are thick and heavy, and stand out awkwardly from the head; and the low brow is crowned with coarse, short hair. The eye is well opened, and owes its special vivacity to an artifice of the ancient sculptor. The stone in which it is set has been cut away and the hollow filled with black and white enamel; a bronze mounting marks the edges of the eyelids, while a little silver nail[28] fastened under the crystal at the bottom of the eyeball receives the light, and reflecting it, simulates the pupil of a real eye. It is difficult to imagine the striking effect that this combination may produce in certain circumstances. When Mariette cleared out the tomb of Râhotpou at Meîdoum, the first ray of light which entered the tomb, that had been closed for 6,000 years, fell on the forehead of two statues leaning against the wall of the Serdâb, and made the eyes sparkle so brilliantly that the fellahs threw down their tools and fled in terror. Recovered from their fear, they wanted to destroy the statues, persuaded that they contained an evil genius, and were only prevented from doing so at the point of the pistol. More than one statue of the Ancient Empire, intact at the moment of its discovery, was mutilated for the same reason that nearly proved fatal to those of Meîdoum. In the bad light in which the Crouching Scribe is placed, the eyeball does not shine with a sufficiently strong sparkle, but it really does seem to have life in it and to follow the visitor with its look.
The rest of the body is equally full of expression. The flesh hangs a little, as is fitting with a man of a certain age whose occupations prevent exercise. The arms and back are good in detail; the lean bony hands have fingers of a greater length than is usual; the rendering of the knee is minute and exact in a way rarely found elsewhere in Egyptian art. The whole body is, so to speak, governed by the animation of the physiognomy, and under the influence of the same feeling of expectation that dominates it: the muscles of the arm, bust, and shoulder are only partly at rest, ready at the first signal to resume the task that has been begun. No work better refutes the reproach of stiffness usually made in regard to Egyptian art. Let us add that it is unique in Europe, and that we must go to Boulaq for pieces fine enough to sustain comparison without disadvantage. But it is not enough to possess a masterpiece, it is still more important to preserve it. In its present position the Crouching Scribe runs more risks than formerly in Egypt. The thousands of years spent buried beneath the sand in a hypogeum on the tableland of Saqqarah thoroughly dried up the limestone of which it is made. Transported to our damp climate, and submitted to its sudden changes of temperature, it is only too much exposed to deterioration. It should not have been installed without protection and naked, so to say, in the centre of a room, between two large doors always open, round about which there are perpetual draughts. The curators at Turin have placed the fine limestone statue of Amenôphis I possessed by the Museum in a tightly closed glass cage, and to that protection is due the fact that the Pharaoh has preserved its epidermis and colour intact; the expense is not so great that the Louvre would be impoverished by authorizing a similar proceeding. The demotic inscriptions of the Serapeum are carefully placed under glass, and the precaution is praiseworthy, although it makes the study of them impossible; it is then high time to take similar precautions with the Scribe. The damp has already acted on it a little; the red coating has been loosened and has fallen away in some places. If the mechanical work of destruction is allowed to proceed it will soon be in the same condition as the three statues of Sapouî and his wife, and the Louvre will have lost one of the finest pieces of sculpture Egypt has given us.
In comparing it with the statues of Skhemka that we have already described,[29] we are led to ask why the statue of a subordinate person should be so superior to that of his master. The Egyptians knew nothing of what we term art and the artist’s profession: their sculptors were persons who cut stone with more or less skill, but whose work, always subordinated to the plan of a building, or to theological considerations, did not possess the absolute value belonging to the least important statue of classical antiquity or of modern times. The effigy of an individual was placed in his tomb, not because it was beautiful, but because it represented him and served as a support to his double. The question of skill or artistic feeling was a subordinate one, and we find twenty statues of the same person, some of which are of finished workmanship and others coarse sketches: whether a masterpiece or not, the stone body equally served its purpose. Skhemka fell into the hands of a merely conscientious workman, his scribe into those of a highly skilled craftsman. I imagine that they cared little enough if the sculptor brought more or less talent to his task: so long as the resemblance was there, they asked for nothing more.
VI
THE NEW SCRIBE OF THE GIZEH MUSEUM[30]
The excavations undertaken by M. de Morgan in the northern part of the necropolis of Saqqarah have recently brought to light a mastaba in fine white stone, near the tomb of Sabou, a little to the east of Mariette’s old house. No architectural façade or chapels accessible to the living were found, only a narrow corridor that plunges into the masonry from north to south with 5° deviation to the east. The walls had been prepared and made smooth to receive the usual decoration, but when the mason had completed his task, the sculptor, it would seem, had no time to begin his. None of the sketches with the chisel or brush customarily found in the unfinished tombs of all periods are to be seen. Two large stelæ, or, if it is preferred, two niches in the form of doors, had been prepared in the right-hand wall, and a statue stood in front of each in the same spot where the Egyptian workmen had placed them on the day of the funeral. The first represents a man seated squarely on a stool, wearing the loin-cloth, and on his head a wig with rows of small curls one above the other.
THE NEW SCRIBE OF THE GIZEH MUSEUM.
Painted limestone.
The bust and legs are bare; the fore-arms and hands rest on the knees, the right hand closed with the thumb sticking out, the left flat with the tips of the fingers reaching beyond the hem of the loin-cloth. So far as may be judged from a photograph, the general style is somewhat weak; but the detail of the knee, the structure of the leg and foot, are carefully rendered, the chest and back stand out by the excellent modelling, the head, weighted as it is by the coiffure, is attached to the shoulder with an easy and not ungraceful vivacity. The face is not in good relief, and has a sheepish expression, but the mouth is smiling, and the eyes of quartz and crystal have an extraordinarily gentle expression. Taken altogether it is a very good piece of Egyptian portraiture, and would be a valuable addition to any museum.[31]
The new scribe was crouching in front of the second stele.[32] He measures in height almost the same as his colleague in the Louvre, and sufficiently resembles him to permit both being described in almost similar terms. The legs are bent under and are flat on the ground, the bust upright and well balanced on the hips, the head raised, the hand armed with the reed, and in its place on the open papyrus sheet; they are both waiting at an interval of 6,000 years for the master to resume the interrupted dictation.[33] The professional gesture and attitude are reproduced with a truth that leaves nothing to be desired: it is not only a scribe whom we have before us, it is the scribe as the Egyptians knew him from the beginning of their history. The skill with which the sculptors have brought out and co-ordinated the general features belonging to each class of society is largely responsible for the impression of monotony produced by their works on modern spectators. That impression is lessened and nearly effaced, if we look a little more closely and see how carefully the sculptors have noted and reproduced the details of form and bearing that make up the physiognomy proper to each of the individuals who live in the same social surroundings or practise the same profession. Our two scribes do not cross their legs in identical fashion; he of the Louvre puts the right leg in front, he of Gizeh the left. There is no fixed choice, and children at first tuck their legs under without thought of preference for one or the other; soon they acquire a habit which makes them keep to the position once adopted, and in the East to-day you find people who put either the left or right leg in front, and just a few who put either one or the other indifferently. The Louvre scribe flattens out the hand that holds the reed, the man of Gizeh sinks down, and his back is slightly bent. This shows the habit of the individual, and is not a question of age, for a glance at the two statues shows that the Gizeh scribe is younger than his colleague of the Louvre: he is not out of the thirties, while the other is certainly over forty.
Indeed, the age of the two men is an important point of which we must not lose sight, if we desire to judge soberly the real value of the two works. I have heard archæologists, when comparing them, regret that the scribe of Gizeh does not show the same abundance of carefully studied anatomical detail as the scribe of the Louvre; that therein lies the real inferiority of the first, whether it was that the sculptor was less conversant with the anatomy of the human body than with that of the face, or that time had pressed, and he had contented himself with giving his subject the conventional body that for the most part sufficed in funerary statues. The care, as I have pointed out, with which the small details of the attitude are expressed shows that the reproach is undeserved, and that the artist has worked to give a portrait complete from top to toe, and not only to reproduce a head on a conventional body. The roundness of the form preserves the appearance of the original, and shows, realistically, the age the subject was at the time of his death, or at least at the period of life at which his relatives desired to have a portrait of him. In the best facsimile something of the delicacy of the monument itself must be lost, and in spite of the great care taken in engraving it, its original aspect is not entirely preserved. I think, however, that in looking closely at it there can still be seen in many places the artistic, supple workmanship by which the chisel expressed the delicacy and vigour of the model. The most vigorous fellah of our day, when young and in good health, has apparently slender muscles that do not stand out: like those of the porters of Boulaq, one of whom without aid moved a stone statue of nearly the same height as himself, and yet had hands and calves like those of a woman, that looked of slight strength and incapable of continuous effort. The knotty and twisted excrescences to be seen on the arms, back, or chest of our athletes were rarely found in Egyptians of ancient race, at least in youth. The ancient sculptor rightly noted that physiological trait of his people. He had a young man before him: so he evolved from the limestone a young Egyptian body in which the play of the muscles is hidden beneath the skin, and is only betrayed by a number of touches manipulated with knowledge and discretion. If, like his colleague who sculptured the Louvre scribe, he had had to portray a person of ripe age, he would not have exerted himself to bring out the flabbiness of the flesh and the heaviness of its folds, to execute all the pleasant work of the chisel which so well reproduces the depredations of age in a rich sedentary man of fifty. In short, he worked differently because he had a different subject.
There is no sort of inscription on either statue to inform us of the name and characteristics of its original, who must have been a person of some importance: a large tomb invariably meant a considerable fortune, or a high post in the administrative hierarchy which compensated for mediocrity of fortune. It might also be that Pharaoh, desiring to reward services rendered him by some one in his entourage, granted him a statue, a stele, an entire tomb built by the royal architects at the expense of the Treasury.[34] It is certain that our anonymous scribe held high rank in his lifetime, but to what Dynasty did he belong? He so closely resembles the scribe of the Louvre that he was evidently his contemporary: he must then have lived at the end of the Vth Dynasty, and we reach a similar result if we compare him with the other statues preserved at Gizeh. It is of the style of the statues of Ti and of Rânofir, especially of the last two. One of them, which formerly was No. 975 in the Boulaq Museum, is full of dignified feeling.[35] Rânofir is standing, his two arms pressed against his body, one leg in advance, in the attitude of a prince who is looking at his vassals march past him. Whoever has seen him cannot fail to observe how much he resembles our new scribe. Firstly, the head-dress is the same; they both have the head framed, so to speak, in a bell-mouthed wig. The hairs or fibres of which it is made were gummed, as is the case to-day with the hair of certain African tribes. The hair is carefully smoothed on the forehead and the top of the head, and being parted on the cranium, hangs down and forms a kind of dark case round the face which accentuates the ruddy tint of the flesh. The modelling of the torso, the muscling of the arms, are treated in the same way in both statues, and the dignified expression which characterizes the physiognomy of Rânofir relieves the somewhat commonplace features of the new scribe. Those are all facts that are not to be noted in other portraits of our personages. The seated statue that I first described possesses the general aspect of the individual, and undoubtedly represents him; but the technique and feeling differ, since it is necessarily that of a different sculptor. It is the same with Rânofir. The statue of him numbered 1049 in the Boulaq Museum lacks the high dignity we admire in No. 975. It is so heavy, so expressionless, that it almost seems to be another Egyptian. The difference in the workmanship proves that two artists were commissioned to execute statues of the same man. The identity of workmanship, on the other hand, compels us to recognize the same hand in the statue No. 975 of Rânofir and in that of our new scribe: the two works proceeded almost at the same time from one studio.
STATUE OF RÂNOFIR.
Cairo Museum.
It would be interesting to find out if, among the statues in the museums, there are others that may be related to these and have a common origin. I do not so far know any, but I ought to add to what I have said the indication of a special sign by which they can be distinguished. The Egyptians were accustomed to paint their statues and bas-reliefs, and the colours in which they clothed them were more varied, and more subject to change, than is generally recognized. We are used to see only a red-brown tone for the flesh, and they certainly employed it very often; they did not, however, employ that tone only, and men’s faces are occasionally coloured in a very different way. The colouring of statue No. 975 and of the new scribe differs from the usual manner. That of statue No. 975 has grown paler since Rânofir left his tomb and became exposed to the light, but that of the Gizeh scribe is still fresh, and resembles as faithfully as possible the yellow complexion bordering on red of the modern fellah. The greater number of archæologists who occupy themselves with Egyptian art neglect facts of this kind. During my stay in Egypt I have endeavoured to bring them out, and it is in co-ordinating them systematically that I have been able to verify the existence, either at Memphis itself or in the ancient village of Saqqarah, of two principal studios of sculptors and painters to which customers of the later periods of the Vth Dynasty entrusted the task of decorating the tombs and carving the funerary statues.
Each had its special style, its traditions, its models, from which it did not willingly depart. Commissions were divided between them in unequal proportions, according to whether it was a question of isolated statues or of bas-reliefs. I do not remember observing sensible differences of style in the pictures that cover the walls of the same mastaba: for that kind of work application was made to one or the other studio, and it alone undertook the commission. For the statues, on the contrary, recourse was had to both at the same time: the task, thus divided, was more quickly accomplished, and there was more chance that it would be finished by the day of the funeral. I do not mean to state that there were then only the two studios of which I speak: I think I have found traces of several others, but they perhaps enjoyed less vogue, or the chances of excavation have not so far been favourable to them.
To sum up, we may say, without the risk of being taxed with exaggeration, that the art of the Ancient Empire counts another masterpiece. It was a gift of happy chance to M. de Morgan in his first serious excavations as earnest of good fortune: it is of good augury for the future, and, as he is not a man to let a chance slip once he holds it, and since he has the material means and the money required for methodical exploration, we may hope for further finds without long delay.
VII
THE KNEELING SCRIBE
Vth DYNASTY
(Boulaq Museum)
If he had not been dead for 6,000 years, I should swear that I met him six months ago in a little town of Upper Egypt. It was the same commonplace round face, the same flattened nose, the same full mouth, slightly contracted on the left by a foolish smile, the same banal expressionless physiognomy: the costume alone was different and prevented the illusion from being complete. The loin-cloth is no longer in fashion, and neither is the large wig; except the fellahs when at work, no one now goes about with bare legs and torso. Some follow fairly closely the custom of Cairo, and wear the too small tarbouche, the stiff stambouline, the European starched shirt, but without a cravat, black or crude blue trousers, shoes with cloth gaiters. Others keep to the turban, long gown, wide trousers, and red or yellow morocco leather babouches. But if his clothes have changed since the Vth Dynasty, his deportment has remained perceivably identical. The modern secretary, after delivering his papers to his master, crosses his hands over his chest or his stomach in the fashion of the ancient scribe; he no longer kneels while waiting, but assumes the humblest attitude imaginable, and if his costume did not hide it, we should recognize the suppleness that characterizes the Boulaq statue in the movement of his shoulders and spine. His chief finishes reading the papers, affixes his seal to this one or that, writes a few lines across another, and throws the sheets on the ground: the secretary picks them up, and returns to his office without offence at the cavalier manner in which his work is given back to him. Indeed, is it to be expected that a moudir, a man receiving a large salary, would take the trouble to stretch out his arm to meet the hand of a mere ill-paid employee? In fact, he treats his subordinates as his superiors treat him; his subordinates, in their turn, act in a similar way towards theirs, and so things go on right down the ladder, and no one dreams of objecting.
KNEELING SCRIBE.
Cairo Museum.
Our scribe was one of those to whom the papers were thrown more often than to others. He occupied a somewhat low place in the hierarchy, and no bond attached him to the great families of his period. If he is kneeling, it is that the sculptor has represented him in one of his ordinary attitudes during the hours of work; he has also drawn his portrait with the fidelity and jovial good humour adopted by artists in portraying scenes of everyday life. The man has just brought a roll of papyrus or a tray laden with papers; kneeling in the approved manner, the bust well-balanced on the hips, the hands crossed, the back bowed, the head slightly bent, he waits until his master has finished reading. Does he think? Scribes felt some secret apprehension when appearing before their masters. The rod played a large part in the discipline of the offices. An error in the addition of an account, a word omitted in copying a letter, an instruction misunderstood, an order awkwardly executed, and the blows fell. Few employees escaped flogging. If they did not deserve it, it would be inflicted on principle: “That young fellow requires a beating. He obeys when he is flogged!”[36] The sculptor has admirably transferred to the stone the expression of resigned uncertainty and sheepish gentleness with which the routine of an entire life spent in service had endowed the model. The mouth is smiling, for such is the demand of etiquette, but there is no joy in the smile. The nose and cheeks grimace in unison with the mouth. The two big enamel eyes, surrounded with bronze, have the fixed expression of a man who is vaguely waiting, without looking attentively at anything or concentrating his thought on a definite object. The face lacks intelligence and vivacity. After all, the profession did not exact great alertness of mind. The formulas of administration were simple and of little variety, the arithmetic was not complicated; it was possible to get on easily with memory and industry, and so, without much trouble, to earn sufficient to purchase a good funerary statue.
Our statue was found at Saqqarah[37] in a tomb of somewhat mediocre appearance. Neither the name nor filiation of the man informs us under what king or Dynasty he vegetated; but in comparing him with the statue of Rânofir[38] we are able to assign him his place in the series. First, both our scribe and Rânofir wear a wig of a form somewhat rare at that period; the hair, parted from the centre of the brow, is drawn back in a mass behind the ears and hangs down straight round the neck. Our scribe, instead of the red complexion usually attributed to men’s faces, is painted light yellow, very like those of women. Rânofir shows the same peculiarity, an unusual one under the Ancient Empire. I do not think it could have been mere caprice on the part of the artist. A scribe, forced to live always in his office as women do in their homes, would have a less sunburnt skin than his colleagues who worked in the open air: the yellow colour of the limestone would thus be a sort of professional sign, and would correspond with a lighter complexion in the original. The titles of Rânofir prove that he lived under the last reigns of the Vth Dynasty,[39] and in placing the kneeling scribe at the same period, we are sure of not being much in error. I have preferred to base my opinions on purely archæological grounds, but I think an examination of the style of the two statues would carry the connection still farther: the way in which the neck is attached to the shoulders, and particularly the way in which the hands are treated, is almost identical in the two cases. I do not know if I am mistaken, but I have almost persuaded myself that the statue of Rânofir and that of the kneeling scribe come from the same studio, and are perhaps the fruit of the same chisel. I do not despair of finding other monuments of a similar origin, and of reconstituting in part the work of one of the masters of which the tombs of Memphis have preserved the various productions, but without preserving their names.
The execution is very careful: unfortunately the limestone in which the scribe is cut was too soft, and it is worn away in places. The knees have suffered most, and it is a great pity, for we can see by what is left of them how careful the artist has been with the modelling. The arms are not divided from the bust, the hands are heavy, the feet long, but the play of the muscles of the chest and neck is well noted. In short, it is an estimable work of a conscientious sculptor who thoroughly understood his vocation.
VIII
PEHOURNOWRI
STATUETTE IN PAINTED LIMESTONE FOUND AT MEMPHIS
(The Louvre)
Mariette found the statuette by chance when searching the Serapeum. It had formerly been taken from the pit in which it was shut up and thrown amid the rubbish of the great sphinx avenue that leads to the tomb of Apis. The individual was named Pehournowri; he was cousin royal, and fulfilled functions that I do not know how to define. Nothing in the inscription helps us to conjecture with what king he claimed relationship, but its style proves that he lived under the Vth Dynasty. That he was of mature age is indicated by the plenitude of form, by the fine proportions and the benevolent and benign aspect. A short wig, a necklace, a loin-cloth scarcely reaching the knees, completes his costume. His statue is not one in front of which we naturally pause when walking through a museum. I do not think that during the thirty years it has been in the Louvre it has attracted the attention of any one except experts in Egyptology. Not that it lacks merit: the modelling is exact, the execution skillful and delicate, the expression frank and successful, but the pose differs very slightly from that which hundreds of other artists have given to hundreds of other statues. The careless visitor who passes from one seated man to a second, and then to many others, does not think of looking for the details of execution that distinguish them. He thinks that when he has seen one or two he has seen all, and departs with the idea that the chief attribute of Egyptian art is monotony.
Egyptian sculptors did not greatly vary the pose of their sitters. Sometimes they represented them standing and walking, one leg in advance of the other, sometimes standing, but motionless, with the feet together, sometimes sitting on a seat or a stone pedestal, sometimes kneeling, more often crouching, the chin against the knees like the fellahs of to-day, or the legs flat on the ground like the scribe of the Louvre.[40] The details of arrangement and costume may be modified ad infinitum, but the attitude is nearly always regulated by the six types I have enumerated. Some modern critics attribute this fact to the inexperience of the sculptors, others to the inflexibility of certain hieratical rules. But having seen not only the few incomplete pieces to be found in Europe, but also the monuments still existing in Egypt, I cannot admit those reasons. Everywhere in the bas-reliefs of the temples and tombs a multiplicity of gestures or attitudes are to be seen which show to what point the artists could, when they pleased, diversify the human figure: the peasant bends over the hoe, the joiner leans over his bench, the scribe stoops over his paper, the dancers, girls and men, twist and balance their bodies, the soldiers brandish their lances or march in time, as naturally as possible. And the sculptors even reproduced positions in their statues very different from those we are accustomed to see at the Louvre: the kneeling woman who is grinding her corn, the baker who is kneading the dough, the slave who coats the amphora with pitch before pouring in the wine, the crouching mourner of Boulaq,[41] are all composed and modelled with a lightness of action and a perfection of expression that leaves no doubt as to the skill of the artist. It is true that hieratical rules existed, and no one will dispute that fact, but they were reserved for matters of religion and for those alone. They exacted, for instance, that Amon must always, in every case, have the attributes, costume, and attitude proper to the god, but they in no wise ordered that all men were to be confined to one of the five attitudes I have just described. The freedom of composition to which the large historical pictures of the temples or the domestic scenes of the tombs testify, does not agree with what we are told concerning the inflexibility of the hieratical rules.
PEHOURNOWRI.
The Louvre.
I shall not now touch on the statues of kings or divinities: I shall have an opportunity later of treating them at leisure. Those of private individuals represent for the most part persons of rank, great nobles, people of the court, officers, magistrates, priests, employees of birth or fortune; they come from nearly all the cemeteries, and are portraits of the man for whom the tomb was hollowed out or of people of his house. The master stands in an attitude of command, or sits like Pehournowri, and he could only have one or the other of those attitudes. The tomb is, in fact, his private house, where he rests from the fatigues of life, as he used to do in his terrestrial home. A soldier when at home does not carry his arms, a magistrate does not wear his robe: soldier or magistrate, the insignia of the profession are laid aside when he returns home. Thus the master of the tomb always wears his civil costume, and leaves the marks of his profession at the door.
Then, also, the accessible part of his dwelling has a special destination which regulates the pose of the statues: it is, in fact, his reception-room, where on certain days the family assembled to present the offerings to him, in more prosaic words, to dine with him. Whether his statue was visible in one of the open chambers or invisible in the Serdâb,[42] it was his substitute. It is sufficient to look at the neighbouring bas-reliefs to discover what were the official attitudes of the dead man in the tomb. He was present at the preliminaries of the sacrifice, the sowing and the harvest, the rearing of the cattle, fishing, hunting, the execution of crafts, and he saw all the works carried out for the eternal dwelling: he was then standing, one foot in advance, head erect, hands hanging down, or armed with the staff of command. Elsewhere, one after the other, the different courses of the meal are served him, cakes, wines, canonical meats, fruits which he needs in the world of the dead: then he is seated in an armchair alone or with his wife. The sculptor employed for his statues the two positions he has in the paintings: standing, he receives the homage of his vassals; seated, he takes part in the meal. And in the same way the statues which embody the members of the family and of the household have likewise the attitude suited to their rank and occupation. The wife is sometimes standing, sometimes sitting on the same seat as her husband, or on a separate one; sometimes, as in life, crouching at his feet. The son wears the costume of childhood, if the statue was carved while he was still a child, or the costume and attitude of his office if he was an adult. The acting scribe crouches, the roll spread on his knees, as if he was writing from dictation or reading from an account-book.[43] The slave grinds the corn, the bakers knead the dough, the cellarers pitch their amphoras, the mourners lament and tear their hair as it was their duty to do in the world above; each individual is occupied according to his condition. The social hierarchy followed the Egyptian after death, and it regulated the pose of the statue after, as it had regulated that of the model before, death. Up to a certain point it is the same to-day, and he who carves the statue of a printer is careful not to attribute to him the action and costume of a miner or a sailor. These statues, shut up in the tomb, formed a sort of tableau in which each person held for ever the pose characteristic of his rank or his profession. The artist was free to vary the detail and regulate the accessories according to his fancy, but he could not change the general disposition without injuring the utility of his work.
At bottom, it is with the statues of Ancient Egypt as with the pictures of saints of the Italian schools. The painters had to treat their subject on lines from which they could not depart without falsifying or disfiguring it. Bring sixty or eighty St. Sebastians together in a room: how many of those who saw them would escape the boredom that infallibly results from constant repetition? When the tenth St. Sebastian was reached only a few professional artists would not have already gone away. I am supposing, too, that only choice pictures had been collected in which the qualities of a master are easily recognized. If, on the contrary, there had been collected at random all the available St. Sebastians without first eliminating the bad pictures, the finest St. Sebastians in the world, lost in the crowd, would be likely to attract no more attention from the public than the Crouching Scribe or the other masterpieces of Egyptian sculpture in the Louvre. The hypothesis appears absurd, because no one will easily admit that any one could have the idea of making such a collection. I agree so far as modern or ancient works, the value of which is known, are concerned; but Egyptian Museums have so far always been classified as depôts of archæological objects, not as art galleries. Each statue is a scribe, a god, a king; it is the scribe Hor of the XIXth Dynasty, or the scribe Skhemka of the Vth, or the king Sovkhotpou, wearing the head-dress of the pschent, and that is all. The trumpery scribes and the scribes that emanate from the hands of a master are confused under the same rubric, and no mark is placed to distinguish the good from the bad. Pehournowri is a scribe, Ramke a second scribe, Rahotpou a third scribe, just as the St. Sebastian of such or such a great Italian master and the St. Sebastians of the Epinal pictures are two St. Sebastians: the public which is not warned, and which has no more interest in one scribe than in another, passes on without looking.
The impression of monotony is produced by the perpetual repetition of the same types and by the method of classification adopted in the museums. If it was decided to do for Egypt what has been done for Greece and Rome, to separate the productions of art and the objects of archæology, people’s opinion would be promptly modified. The impression of monotony would not wholly disappear, because the number of types studied by the Egyptian sculptors was not sufficiently numerous: it would be lessened and would no longer blind the crowd to the real beauty and perfection that reside in Egyptian sculpture.
IX
THE DWARF KHNOUMHOTPOU
(Vth OR VIth DYNASTY)
(Boulaq Museum)
The charming person who left us this statue is known, since the Exhibition of 1878, by the name of the Superintendent of the Cooks; his title in the inscription on the pedestal indicates a keeper of the wardrobe. In his lifetime he doubtless enjoyed some notoriety, since he had one of the fine tombs of Saqqarah for himself alone, but we know nothing of his history. His name was Khnoumhotpou, a name later made illustrious by a prince of Minieh under the XIIth Dynasty: his place of burial proves that he was born at the end of the Vth or beginning of the VIth Dynasty.
He was a dwarf, and a very small dwarf. The statue is scarcely a foot in height, and the dimensions of the head show that it was probably half the natural size. It reproduces the characteristics proper to dwarfs without exaggerating them. The head, of a suitable size, is long-shaped and flanked by two large ears. The expression of the face is heavy and stupid, the eyes narrow and raised at the temples, and the mouth wide and ill-formed. The chest is strong and well developed, but the artist has employed his ingenuity in vain in order to dissimulate the hind-quarters by covering them with a vast white petticoat; notwithstanding, we feel that the torso is not in proportion to the arms and legs. The stomach forms a round projection, and the hips recede in order to counterbalance the stomach. The thighs only exist in a rudimentary state, and the whole individual, mounted as he is on little deformed feet, seems about to fall face downwards on the ground. The flesh was painted red, the hair black, but the colour has peeled off or been effaced in places. The two legs were broken formerly at the ankle, then stuck on again when the statue was transported to the Museum. It is very possible that the accident happened during the execution of the statue, for the limestone used by the Egyptians is so fragile that the sculptor did not venture to detach the arms from the body: too hard a blow of the mallet while freeing the legs may have caused the unfortunate fracture that spoils the bottom of the monument.
Khnoumhotpou is, so far, the only dwarf that has come to light who is a nobleman. Similar dwarfs were not lacking in Egypt, but they nearly all belonged to the class of jugglers and buffoons. The Pharaohs and the princes of their court bestowed the same affection on these deformed creatures as did Christian or Mussulman kings in mediæval times; their household would not have been complete without two or three of them of an aspect more or less grotesque. Ti possessed one that figures by her in her tomb: the poor wretch holds in his right hand a kind of large wooden sceptre terminated by a model of a human hand, and leads a greyhound almost as tall as himself in a leash. Elsewhere dwarfs are represented crouching on a stool at the feet of their masters, by the side of the favourite monkey or dog. We know from the pictures of Beni-Hassan that two of them belonged to the prince of Minieh’s suite; one, despite his small size, does not lack elegance, but the other enjoys with the exiguity of his stature the pleasure of being club-footed. The Egyptian heaven did not escape the prevailing mania any more than the court of the Pharaohs, and it included several dwarfs, of whom two at least had an important rôle: Bîsa, who presided over arms and the toilet, and the Phtah, who for a long while has, without reason, been called embryonic Phtah.[44] Perhaps Knoumhotpou joined to his functions of keeper of the wardrobe the office of court buffoon; perhaps he was of noble birth, and preserved by his origin from the disagreeables to which his brethren of low extraction were exposed.
THE DWARF KHNOUMHOTPOU.
Cairo Museum.
But we have no need to know what he was: merely in leaving us his portrait, he has rendered signal service to science. Let us recall the part played by the statues of the tombs in the theological conceptions of the Egyptians: they were the indispensable support of the double, the body without which the soul of the dead person could not exist in the other world. It might be thought that in passing from life in this world to that beyond the tomb, the people to whom beauty had been chary might not have been sorry to assume a new appearance; if we are to be re-born, it is better to be re-born less ugly. The care that poor Khnoumhotpou has taken to reach us deformed shows that the old Egyptians did not hold our views on the subject: they desired to remain always as nature created them at the moment of conception. It was not absence of coquetry on their part, but necessity: their idea of the soul compelled them so to act. From the moment that their personality was indissolubly bound up with the existence of the body, the first condition imposed on them for remaining identical with themselves after death, as before, was to preserve their earthly form intact. In order that the Khnoumhotpou who dwelt in the hypogeum of Saqqarah might not be a different being from the Khnoumhotpou who walked through the streets of Memphis, it was necessary that his disincarnated double should find there the support of a statue of a dwarf. Give him the fine proportions of Ti or Rânofir, the proud bearing and haughty mien of the Cheîkh-el-Beled, even the more common type of the Crouching Scribe, he would not have known what to do. His substance, poured, so to speak, into the exiguous and deformed mould of the dwarf, could never have adapted itself to the new mould into which the artist would have tried to cast it. Khnoumhotpou beautified would no longer have been Khnoumhotpou; his tomb, without the statue of a dwarf, would only have sheltered a double and a support strangers to each other.
It was then the likeness, and the absolute likeness, that the artist had to seek to reproduce, and the seriousness and scrupulousness with which he rendered the deformity of his model is thus explained. The Egyptians were scoffers by nature, and liked to mingle the comic with the serious, not only in literature but in the arts. To take only one example: the painter who, at Thebes, pictured the interment of Nofrihotpou, has drawn, by the side of the large boats laden with mourners and all the apparatus of grief, the contortions of two sailors whose shallop was brutally struck by the oars of the funerary barque. If the sculptor who chiselled Khnoumhotpou had been free to follow his natural inclination, he would probably have exaggerated certain features and given the unfortunate creature a slightly absurd physiognomy. His religious conscience would not permit him to risk anything of the kind: a statue uglier than nature would have been as inconvenient to the soul of the original as a statue more beautiful than nature. A body of stone identical at all points with the body of flesh was what the Egyptian demanded, and that is exactly what the sculptor fashioned for the little Khnoumhotpou. We see here that what we call the question of art is subsidiary: a stone-cutter who understood his business sufficed for all that was required.
It must not, however, be concluded from what precedes that I regard the portrait of Khnoumhotpou as the work of a mere artisan. It has been too often repeated that statuary in Egypt was a mechanical craft; sculptors were taught to fashion arms, legs, heads, and torsos, and to join them, according to the formula, in imitation of two or three models always the same. That opinion, repeated by the Greeks, is fairly difficult to uphold in the presence of the statue of Knoumhotpou; it might be possible to set up patterns for bodies of ordinary formation, but all varieties of deformed bodies could not possibly be foreseen. The unknown master whose work we have at Boulaq proceeded in exactly the same manner as a modern sculptor, the necessities of whose work confronted him with a deformed model: he produced a work of art, not the task of a mechanic.