Travels in Ethiopia, above the second cataract of the Nile

by G. A. Hoskins

The tomb in which the elliptical arch (see [Vignette]) exists, is near the valley of the Sepulchre of the Queens, at Thebes. It is almost filled up to the ceiling with mummies, which occasioned great difficulty to get at the spring of the arch. It is a painted tomb, and the roof is plastered; and over the plaster, along the centre, is a line of hieroglyphics, containing the name of Amunoph I.; proving the existence of the knowledge of the arch in Egypt, about fifteen centuries and a half before the Christian era. It is also very remarkable, that this arch is not a segment of a circle, but elliptical. A part of the ceiling being broken, discovered the space between the ceiling and the rock.

BRICK ARCH IN A TOMB AT THEBES.

On the road from the Memnonium to the valley of the Hassaseef, a little elevated on a rock, is a very small painted tomb, which is also vaulted. The [vignette] represents the arch of the roof resting on the rock, and the inner arch of a recess at the end. This recess, as likewise the whole tomb, is covered with a coating of plaster; and on one of the jambs of the recess are the titles and prænomen of Thothmes III., “Sun, Establisher of the World,” fifth king of the eighteenth dynasty, who reigned about fifteen centuries before the Christian era. The present access to this tomb is through a hole in the ceiling, from the floor of another tomb. This fracture discovers satisfactorily the construction of the arch. The sections, therefore, of the pointed arch at Gibel el Birkel (see [Plate XXVIII.]), of the circular one at the site of the metropolis of Ethiopia (see [Plate VII.]), and this elliptical and circular arch at Thebes, will, I think, satisfy the most sceptical, that the Romans were not the first who were acquainted with the power and principle of the arch. We have here, undoubtedly, the geometrical forms; and in answer to the cui bono of the learned author of the able article in the last Quarterly Review[92], I must state that the Ethiopian arches were obviously invented to resist the rains; as the peasants of Sennaar have conical roofs to their cottages for the same purpose. The brick arches at Thebes, I conceive to have been erected not merely as ornaments, but, as regards the one of the time of Amunoph III., for the purpose of protecting it from the partial decomposition of the calcareous rock, which happens to be there less solid, while the tomb of the time of Thothmes III., being immediately beneath another, suggested the utility, if not necessity, of strengthening the roof with an arch.

BRICK ARCH IN A TOMB AT THEBES.

The Ethiopian sculpture has the same defects as the Egyptian, as to the manner of representing the profile of the face, but the bodies have a roundness which distinguishes them entirely from the Egyptian. The latter is more graceful and pleasing to the eye, when the traveller is accustomed to that peculiarity of style, but I do conceive the Ethiopian to be, in some respects, more true to nature.

It may be asked why, advanced as the Ethiopians were in the arts, they did not draw the human figure better, and more in accordance with nature. It is difficult, and, I must confess, almost impossible, to explain quite satisfactorily this circumstance. The Egyptians, as I have said, had a style still more unnatural, yet few can doubt their high degree of civilisation. The general form of the figures gives one the idea of their being very early efforts of art. It seems to me very possible, that the invention of the sculptor and painter may have been first exercised on the walls of some celebrated temple; and this defective representation may, from the sacredness of the place, have become the conventional style of the country. The bigotted veneration which the people would naturally feel for those forms under which their divinities were first represented, may have made them consider it lawful, indeed, to improve the delineation, but criminal to attempt to change it entirely.

The Egyptians and the Ethiopians were equally ignorant of perspective. When Egypt was under the dominion of the Greeks and Romans, we perceive that policy and respect for the prejudices of the people prevented those nations from making any innovations in the national style. The differences between the sculpture, at those periods, and during the eighteenth dynasty, cannot be called so much changes, as marks of the great decline of the pure Egyptian art. No figures, on the walls of the temples, are sculptured or painted in the pure Greek or Roman style. Those rulers of Egypt, though of course acquainted with the latter, continued to follow the Egyptian style in all the edifices that they erected. The only instances in which they seem to have deviated at all from this rule, are in some few portraits found on Greek mummies. This renders it probable that there existed a strong religious prejudice on the subject, and that the Ethiopians and Egyptians were as tenacious of the forms and costumes of their divinities, as religious sects, in more recent times, have shown themselves about the dress and appearance of their ministers.

There is, therefore, no reason to suppose, that the Ethiopians were unable to draw figures correctly, because, from reverence to the antiquity of their religion, and the superstition of the people, they did not improve the forms of their divinities. Faulty, however, as that style is, both in design and colour, it has still its attractions, though, in saying so, I may be accused of being an admirer of deformity. Their formality is not inappropriate to sacred edifices. Travellers daily become reconciled to its defects, and at last admire what at first appeared to them so strange. No one can have visited the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, without an enthusiastic admiration of the beautiful and rich harmony of the colouring, the taste displayed in the ornaments, the spirited execution of the animals and hieroglyphics, and the magical effect of the decorations. We see, in the fragments which still exist, that the Ethiopians drew animals, and also ornaments, very beautifully. We may therefore consider it almost certain, that they could have drawn the human figure better had they been permitted.