Egyptian Art: Studies

by G. Maspero

IV

It maintained its flourishing condition during the XIXth Dynasty, and the favissa has restored to us works that yield in nothing to those of the preceding age. In my opinion the best is a mutilated statue of Ramses II, so like the big Turin statue in pose and execution that it might be the first rough draft of it, or the exact smaller copy. A few pieces of the XXth Dynasty are worthy of esteem without rising far above mediocrity, as in a little group in granite of Ramses VI bringing a Libyan prisoner to the god Amon: the bearing of the victorious Pharaoh does not lack pride, the constrained posture of the barbarian is skillfully noted, and the movement of the miniature lion that glides between the two is interpreted with the customary naturalness of the Egyptians when they portray animals.[51] I prefer the priest with the monkey, or, to give him his name, Ramses-Nakhouîti, the chief prophet of Amon. In a crouching posture, with calves and thighs flat on the ground, a roll spread out before him across his legs, bewigged and petticoated, uncomfortable in his robes of ceremony, with an air of abstraction he meditates, or silently recites prayers to himself. A little hairy cynocephalus perches on his shoulders, and looks at him over his head: it is the god Thot who is revealed in this unusual position, and it was difficult to co-ordinate the beast and the man in a manner that should be neither absurd nor simply ugly. The sculptor has come out with honour. The priest slightly bends his neck, but we feel that the beast does not weigh on him: the monkey on his part half shrinks behind the head-dress, and the deep frown of his face prevents the mischievous effect that the countenance of an animal above a human face might have produced. Like the group of Ramses VI, it bears the imprint of the school, but with notable differences of technique: if the first was sculptured in one of the royal studios, the second comes from another studio of which the origin can be indicated.

We know how, about a century after the death of Ramses III, the pontiffs of Amon made themselves masters of the whole of the Thebaïd: while a new Dynasty established itself at Tanis in the eastern delta, they exercised supreme authority over Southern Egypt and Ethiopia, sometimes with the title of high-priest, sometimes with that of king, and their sacerdotal house was the seat of their government. We do not know the exact site, but we learn from an inscription that it was situated near the seventh pylon, not far from the spot where the favissa was dug out. It is probable that their relatives obtained the privilege from them, at the moment they assumed domination, of erecting their statues in the temple. The court-yard between the seventh pylon and the hypostyle hall contains only a small number of ex-votos: they chose it as the place in which to consecrate their monuments, and filled it in the course of generations. What has come down to us does not include all they erected in their own name or to the memory of those they loved. Many statues were seized or destroyed during civil or foreign wars, but when the Macedonians conquered the land enough remained for more than five hundred to be thrown into the favissa. A large number of artists must have been needed to execute so many commissions, and, besides its royal studio, Thebes long possessed one or several pontifical studios. To one of those must be assigned the man with the monkey, and nearly all the statues after the fall of the Ramessides. For the most part they have a real value, and scarcely yield to the old royal works, such as the limestone statuette of Orsorkon II, who drags himself along the ground and offers a boat to his god, the fragments of which have disappeared. We are forced to confess, however, that many are, if not bad, of no interest for the history of art.

THE PRIEST WITH THE MONKEY.

The usual posture did not lend itself to elegance. They are nearly all crouching, the thighs up to the chest, the arms crossed on the knees: what advantage was to be obtained from an attitude that reduced a man to a mere packet surmounted by a head? Where the model departed from the hieratical posture, the qualities of the school are revealed. The Ankhnasnofiriabrê en Hathor has a somewhat strained gracefulness: it would almost bear comparison with the Amenertaîous so much admired by Mariette, if it were not leaning against a big ugly pillar. Perhaps the contrast between the slender waist and the inflated bust and belly is too marked in the Ankhnas, but the composition of the head is irreproachable. It is nearly always so at that epoch: if the sculptors sometimes neglected the bodies or interpreted them ill, they cared lovingly for the heads. Fine portraits may be counted by the score among the statues found in the favissa. I shall only give two here, that of Mantimehê and his son, Nsiphtah, who lived under Taharkou and Psammetichus I. Thebes was then under a curious government. When the male descendants of the priests failed, the power, and those sacerdotal functions that could be exercised by women, passed into the hands of the princesses: one of them was elected, who, wedded to the god in a mystic marriage, henceforth enjoyed the right of living free as she pleased. To assist them in the government, these pallacides of Amon had major-domos, who often filled with them a similar rôle to that of the chief minister with the queens of Madagascar before the occupation of the island by the French. Mantimehê and his son are the best known of these persons, and the artists to whom the care of sculpturing their portraits was entrusted would certainly be the best among those of the sacerdotal studio. It is, in fact, nature itself, and no master of a former age could have expressed better or with a bolder chisel the bustling vulgarity of the father and the aristocratic inanity of the son. The second Saïte period and the beginning of the Greek period are almost entirely unrepresented in the favissa; under the Persians, distress was too general for artistic matters to be thought of, and the Macedonian rule had only just been consolidated when the common pit was dug. A granite head, of hasty workmanship but dignified appearance, shows, however, that the Theban studio followed the movement that prevailed in the schools of Lower Egypt, and that, doubtless under the influence of Greek models, it gave attention to details hitherto neglected: the skull is studied with a greater care for accuracy, and also the slight accidents of the physiognomy, the furrows of the forehead, the lines between the eyes and at the rise of the nose, the falling in or puffing out of the cheeks, the play of the muscles round the nostrils and mouth. The sculptor desired to note in his work not only the broad lines of the face, but the small details that characterize the individual and determine his personality.

OSORKON II OFFERING A BOAT TO THE GOD AMON.

QUEEN ANKHNASNOFIRIABRÊ.

MANTIMEHÊ.

NSIPHTAH, SON OF MANTIMEHÊ.

HEAD (SAÏTE PERIOD).

THE COW OF DEIR-EL-BAHARÎ IN HER CHAPEL.