Egyptian Art: Studies

by G. Maspero

THE HALF-BURIED COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II.

THE COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II EMERGING FROM THE EARTH.

All Europeans in turn who have visited Egypt have admired it. It lies along the side of the path under the palm-trees of Bedrecheîn at the bottom of a muddy ditch. At the period of the inundation, water fills it and covers the statue for some weeks; then it gradually reappears, the shoulder and the leg first, then the bust and face, until it is all high and dry again in its hole. Its Pharaoh was standing, walking, the arms close against the sides. The name of Ramses II is to be read on the cartouche engraved on the buckle of the waistband that fastened his petticoat. Nitre has destroyed one side of the face and body, but what remains suffices to show the excellence of the work. The profile is that of the young Ramses, with low forehead, large aquiline nose, rather a large mouth, and a haughty expression. The base is at some distance off, and farther away still, to the south, a smaller colossus in wood, débris of walls, and fragments of statues point out the position of ancient chambers. The palm forest which flourishes on the site harasses excavation and prevents us from reconstituting the plan. The building or group of buildings that our colossus adorned went along the south bank of the sacred reservoir on which the mysteries of Phtah and the Memphian gods were celebrated on the canonical days. In spite of the long period of time, alluvial matter has not succeeded in entirely filling the lake. The place is marked by a noticeable depression, and the earth which fills it, instead of being planted with date-trees, is sown with corn; it is like a square basin the edges of which are drawn downwards from the surrounding ground. The rise of the river partly restores the original aspect of the spot, but the setting of porticoes and pylons which framed it has vanished; it is replaced by clumps of big trees, under which is situated the village of Tell-el-Khanzîr.

It seems that Mohammed-Ali formerly gave Ramses II to England; the fact is not exactly proven, and to admit it definitely a more serious authority than that of one or several of the “Travellers’ Guides to Egypt” would be required. The English have not availed themselves of the doubtful tradition to remove the colossus: they were satisfied to set it up again. They did not succeed at the first attempt, and two trials made by Messrs. Garwood and Anderson failed ignominiously enough. General Stephenson, who long commanded the army, was more successful. He first had the ambitious project of setting the statue on its feet again, but as the subscription opened for that purpose did not produce sufficient money, he contented himself with raising it up above the level of the inundation. The operations, conducted by Major Arthur Bagnold, of the Engineers, were begun on January 20, 1887.[73] Having drawn off the water, he applied eight lifting jacks of differing force along the body: the effort was directed alternately to the head and the feet: as soon as the whole mass was raised a little more than a foot and a half, huge beams were slipped underneath, and the hollow was filled up with broken potsherds collected in the ruins of the ancient city, reduced to tiny pieces and beaten so as to form a compact bed. The work was finished on April 16th. The colossus now lies on its back, the face to the sky. A pent-house shelters the head; a thick brick wall surrounds it and protects it from the gaze of the inquisitive crowd. Its guardian dwells beside it in a small two-roomed house where Major Bagnold installed him, and he only shows it to visitors on payment of two Egyptian piastres: it costs about sixpence to see it at the bottom of the new funnel in which it is plunged. The “Service des Antiquités” employs a portion of the tax in keeping it in good condition. Another Ramses in granite and a stele of Apries found in the neighbourhood were afterwards placed there, and complete the little open air museum.

The Arabs call the colossus Abou’l-Hol, the father of the Terror, like the great Sphinx. I do not know what they think now that it is under lock and key in its enclosure, but they were really frightened of it when it was, so to speak, at large. The ancient Egyptians believed that statues, human and divine, were animated by a spirit, a double, detached from the soul of the person they represented. The double ate, drank, even spoke at need, and pronounced oracles; it has survived the religion and civilization of the ancient people, but the changes that have taken place around it seem to have soured its character. It plays evil tricks on those who approach its hiding-place, injures them, at need even kills them: Arab writers have a thousand tales of persons who suffered because they imprudently attacked a monument and the spirit that guards it. The means of rendering the Afrite powerless is to destroy, if not the whole statue, at least its face: that is why so many Pharaohs have their noses broken or faces damaged. The spirit of Ramses II walked in the palm forest at night, and it was therefore imprudent to venture in the vicinity at twilight. Every time that I was obliged to go that way at sunset, my donkey-boy mumbled prayers and urged on his beast. One evening when I asked him if he was afraid of some Afrite, he entreated me to keep silence, assuring me that it was ill to speak of such things, and that if I persisted some accident would happen to me. In fact, my donkey stumbled in the middle of the forest and threw me against the trunk of a palm-tree: if the donkey-boy had not caught me and averted the blow, I should have smashed my head. From that time, whenever there was talk of the danger in speaking disrespectfully of the spirit that lives in the statue, what had happened to me was always quoted. The whole of Egypt is full of analogous superstitions, the greater number of which are derived from the ancient beliefs, and have been transmitted from generation to generation from the time of the Pharaohs, the builders of the Pyramids.[74]

XVI
EGYPTIAN JEWELLERY IN THE LOUVRE[75]

So much has appeared in the newspapers about the treasure unearthed at Dahchour last year by M. de Morgan, that every one in Europe knows the number, form, and richness of the objects it comprises; but among those who have described and justly praised them, how many—I do not say Englishmen or Germans, but Frenchmen alone—know that the Louvre possesses a collection of the finest Egyptian jewellery? Mariette was fortunate enough twice in his life to find a number of magnificent ornaments of great artistic value on the royal mummies, at the Serapeum in the tomb of the Apis buried in the reign of Ramses II by the care of one of the sons of the conqueror, Khâmoîsît, high-priest of Phtah, and regent of the kingdom for his father, and at Thebes in the coffin of a queen of the XVIIIth Dynasty, Ahhotpou I, who in her lifetime was the daughter, sister, wife, and mother of Pharaohs. Mariette, artist as he was, very skilfully brought out the interest of his discovery, and the admirable idea it gave of the goldsmiths of the seventeenth and fourteenth centuries B.C., but he went no further. He had brought to light so many monuments of importance for the study of political history and of civilization, that he never had time to dwell much on the secondary result of his works. The jewellery of Ahhotpou is preserved in the Boulaq Museum, where thousands of tourists admire it every winter; that of the Serapeum is placed in the Louvre, and usually obtains only an absent-minded glance from the few visitors who traverse the solitudes of the Charles X Museum.

It fills several compartments of a glass case that stands in the centre of the historic hall. At first we note a large gold mask, unfortunately damaged, and grouped near it gold chains with five and eight strands of extraordinary suppleness and perfection; amulets of various shapes in felspar, red and green jasper, and cornelian; scarabs, a buckle, an olive, a little column, in the name of Khâmoîsît. A little farther on a second series from the same source includes pieces, if not in themselves more finished, more curious and more attractive to a modern eye; the Lord Psarou, who was present with the prince at the funeral of an Apis, did honour to the mummy of the sacred bull. I imagine that the greater number of our contemporaries have but vague notions regarding the way in which the Egyptians wore jewels. Men or women, their costume at first was summary enough: the men protected their loins with a cloth which scarcely reached the knee and left the bust entirely bare; the women crept inside a clinging smock which reached the ankle, went up to the pit of the stomach, disclosed the breast, and was kept in place by two straps over the shoulders. Jewellery served partly to hide what the stuff left uncovered, at least with the women. A necklace of several rows encircled the neck and came down to the rise of the breasts; large rings were round the wrists, the upper part of the arm, and the lower part of the leg. The hair, or rather the wig, clothed the back and half the shoulder; a square plaque suspended by a chain of beads or a leather strap hung down below the necklace into the space between the two breasts. That is what we call the pectoral. It often looks like the façade of a temple, surrounded by a torus, and surmounted by a curved cornice; portraits of gods or sacred emblems were crowded on the surface, and inscriptions scattered everywhere tell us the name of the owner, accompanied generally by pious formulas.