Egyptian Art: Studies

by G. Maspero

AMENÔTHES II AND THE COW HATHOR.

Three-quarters view.

She was still half buried when some ten inquisitive persons turned their kodaks on her, thus despoiling Naville, and disputing among themselves the pleasure of being the first to photograph her. In the evening nothing else was talked of in the Louxor hotels, and the tourists did not fail to make up parties to go and admire her the next day. The fellahs, on their side, related the most marvellous tales. She had breathed noisily just at the moment that the light of day touched her, and had shivered in all her limbs. She had directed such a look on the workman who had perceived her that he broke his leg with an awkward blow of his axe. She was not, as she seemed to be, of stone, but of fine gold, disguised by Pharaoh’s magicians in order to keep off treasure-seekers: a few formulas repeated at a fixed hour with the prescribed fumigations and rites, a little dynamite, and after the explosion the fragments would be transformed into ingots of metal. And as if the sorcerers were not sufficient, dealers in antiquities prowled about in the vicinity. Doubtless she was too heavy for them to think of carrying her off whole, but would they have found it very difficult to detach the head and decamp with it during the night, in spite of the vigilance of our guards or with their complicity? Unscrupulous amateurs are never far to seek, ready to pay heavily for a stolen object, provided they believe it to have an artistic or archæological value, and the certainty of gaining hundreds of pounds in case of success largely compensates the honest brokers of Louxor for the petty annoyance of disbursing a few pence by way of fine or of undergoing a week’s imprisonment if they are caught in the act. I should have preferred to leave the monument in its ancient place, but it would have been tempting fortune, and the only means of saving it was to send it to Cairo. I entrusted the matter to M. Baraize, one of our engineers, and he carried it out extremely well: in less than three weeks he had dismantled the blocks, packed up the cow, and transported the cases by train across the Theban plain. The chapel is now rebuilt in a good position at the end of one of the rooms of the Cairo Museum, but the goddess is not hidden in darkness as at Deîr-el-Baharî. She stands at the entrance, her body in the full light, the hinder parts a little under the vault: she comes forth from her house and shows herself freely to visitors, from the snout to the end of the tail.[53]

THE COW HATHOR.

Cairo Museum.

II

Our wonder is at first aroused by the mixture she presents of conventional mysticism with realism. The front view shows only the head surrounded by accessories, the significance of which is only appreciated by those who are learned in religious matters. At the top of the composition, between the tall horns in form of a lyre, the usual head-dress of goddess-mothers, is the solar disk flanked by upstanding feathers and stamped with an inflated uræus. This scaffolding of emblems without thickness and almost without consistence would run the risk of being broken by the slightest blow if it was not supported, and so it rests on two tufts of aquatic plants, the stalks of which, rising from a socket near the hoofs, spring up right and left of the legs; flowers alternating with buds bend over the back of the neck and form a fan-shaped support behind the disk and feathers. Under the snout, and as if framed by the vegetation, is the statuette of a man standing, his back to the cow’s chest. As I said, the face is mutilated, the flesh black; he stretches out his hands, palms downward, in front of him with a gesture of submission, as if avowing himself the humble servant of Hathor: by the uræus of the crown and the stiff petticoat spread in a triangle in front of the thighs, we guess him to be a Pharaoh. He is found again in a less punctilious attitude under the right flank of the statue. He is kneeling, naked, and his flesh is red; he presses the teat between his hands, and drinks greedily of the sacred milk. If we may believe the cartouche engraved between the lotuses, the two figures, the black and the red, are one and the same sovereign, Amenôthes II of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and perhaps that is the case. But it was Thoutmôsis III who built the chapel, and it is he that the artists have represented twice over, praying in front of the cow and sucking the udder. It would be strange if, after erecting the sanctuary, he should have omitted to provide it with his goddess. It is more probable that the cow was commissioned by him, and shut up there by his order, but without dedication or cartouche: he considered doubtless that the neighbouring bas-reliefs would constitute sufficient title-deeds. Later, Amenôthes II, wishing to associate himself with his father’s act of piety, and noticing an empty space behind the coiffure, inscribed his name there.

Such a complexity of figures and attributes does not tend to make the appreciation of the work easy for us, and we have also to add the prescriptions of the ritual to the conventions of the craft from which Egyptian artists were never free, at least when stone was their material: the belly, tail, legs, all the lower parts of the group, are enclosed in a stone partition which spoils the effect even while it preserves them from the chances of breakage. And yet, despite defects that shock a sculptor of our time, one glance suffices to reveal the extraordinary beauty of the work. The head differs from that of our European cows, but it is a question of race, and whoever has seen the Soudanese cow of the present day will easily distinguish its features in the Hathor of Deîr-el-Baharî: the fullness of the brow, the subtle modelling of the temples and cheeks, the gentle widening out of the snout, the suppleness of the nostrils, and the smallness of the mouth. Such accuracy of detail will delight the naturalist, but it might be feared that it would harm the artistic value of the whole. That is not the case at all, and if at a distance the physiognomy seems to have only an expression of gentleness and meditative somnolence, as soon as we go near it assumes an air of intelligent attention. The eye seems to grow larger and to follow the visitor who arrives, the snout to contract and palpitate, as if to scent out. The sculptor, instead of following the tradition and polishing the stone as highly as possible, has respected the fine furrows of the chisel, and the light playing on them gives at moments the illusion of a shudder running over the skin. The body is of equally accurate composition, the chest narrow, shoulders thin, spine long and saddle-backed, leg long and slender, the thigh sinewy, the haunches prominent, the udder only slightly developed. The hinder part is worked with an incredible fidelity. Contrary to custom, the coat is red-brown, darker on the back, lighter, of a tawny shade that becomes white, on the belly; it is speckled with black spots, like flowers with four petals, which we should consider artificial, if there were not animals of Soudanese origin in the Egyptian herds of to-day that show similar markings. By those spots they recognize among the heifers of the year the one in which Hathor has deigned to become incarnated, and which must be worshipped as long as she remains on earth.