Egyptian Art: Studies

by G. Maspero

PRINCESS OF THE FAMILY OF TÎYI (FULL FACE).

Painted wood. Berlin, collection of M. James Simon.

And now let us compare each of these pieces with our Canopic heads. The profile of Khouniatonou helmeted is not as strong as theirs, due perhaps to the contusions undergone by the surface of the stone during a long sojourn in a damp soil where saltpetre was abundant, but each of the elements may be superposed and adjusted, forehead, nose, eyes, mouth, chin, in an absolutely satisfying manner: it merely seems that the artist of the Canopic heads saw his model in better health than that of the statue. The resemblance, although less complete, with the statuette of yellow soapstone is still apparent. No unprejudiced observer with the series in front of him can come to any other conclusion than that we have in it portraits of one and the same man. Leaving out the slight differences due to the chisel, there is no more deviation between the group of statues and the best of our heads than there is between that and the three found with it. There is divergence in one point only: in the two statues the head bends and leans forward more or less; in the Canopic jars it is erect without weakness. A moment’s reflection will show that it could not be otherwise. However greatly we are moved by the beauty of the work, we must not forget that our four heads belong, not to art pure and simple, but to industrial art, and that their purpose imposed special rules on the master who chiselled them. They were prosaic lids for the receptacles in which the entrails of the Pharaoh were placed, and it was necessary that the median axis of the vase properly so-called should coincide exactly with that of the lid. There was a question of equilibrium to be managed between the two constituent elements of the Canopic jar; the sculptor must straighten the neck of his model, and consequently correct the impression of lassitude given by the statues, by an appearance of vigour. If we examine the portraits of Khouniatonou and his successors in company of a physician, certain anatomical details that at the first glance we did not trouble about—the depression of the temples, the obliquity of the eyes, the contraction of the sides of the nostrils, the pinching of the mouth, the attenuation of the neck—assume an etiological value that the archæologist was far from suspecting. Dr. Baÿ, studying the faces of Khouniatonou, Touatânkhamânou, and Harmhâbi with me, diagnosed symptoms of consumption more or less advanced. If Khouniatonou died of the disease when thirty years old, we need not be greatly surprised.

KING KHOUNIATONOU.

The Louvre.

I do not insist upon this kind of research, in which I am not competent, and I leave it to the reader to decide if I have or have not proved the identity of the person represented by our four heads to be that of Khouniatonou, the heresiarch. One of them at least is a masterpiece, and the others possess qualities that assure them a high place in the estimation of connoisseurs, but to which of the great Egyptian schools ought we to attribute them? We may hesitate between two: the Theban, to which most of the artists who filled the royal laboratories then belonged, and the Hermopolitan, in the province of which was El-Amarna, the favourite residence of the sovereign. It was certainly the latter school that worked at the hypogeums and sculptured the pictures. We find in them its defects: harsh, rough composition, a tendency to caricature the human form and to multiply comic episodes; but also its good qualities: suppleness, movement, life, freedom of execution. The few figures in alto-relievo that have escaped destruction, those, for instance, that accompany two of the large front stelæ, are of the same style as the bas-reliefs, but we do not find in them any of the characteristics that we have noted as proper to the monuments of the Louvre or to our Canopic jars. Just as the others show an unfinished, worn aspect, these are carefully finished in the least details: it is the perfect chiselling and high polish of the Theban masters and their strong, dignified way of posing the figure and expressing the physiognomy of the model. Whoever has seen the statues of Thoutmôsis III, Amenôthes II, the so-called Taîa, and Touatânkhamânou in the Cairo Museum will not doubt for a moment that our four heads are from the hands of persons belonging to the same school: they belong to the Theban school, and more particularly, I think, to that portion of the Theban school which, a few years later, decorated the temple of Gournah, the Memnonium of Abydos, and the hypogeum of Setouî I.

KING KHOUNIATONOU.

Fragment of a stone statue. The Louvre.