Egyptian Art: Studies

by G. Maspero

The Louvre.

All the details of nature grouped round and framing the principal subject, the exact form of the flowers and leaves, the species of the birds, are very accurate, and sometimes betray wit. Of the three ducks that the bearer of offerings has tied by their claws, and which hang over her arm, two are resigned to their fate and go swinging along, the neck stretched out, the eye wide open; the third lifts its head up and flutters its wings. The two water-fowl perched on the lotuses listen at ease, the beaks on their crops, to the lute-player who is passing near them; experience has taught them that they need not disturb themselves for songs, and that a young girl is only to be feared if she is armed. In the bas-reliefs, the sight of a bow or a boomerang throws them into confusion, just as to-day that of a gun scatters the crows. The Egyptians knew the habits of the animals who lived in their land, and took pleasure in minutely observing them. Observation became instinctive with them, and they gave a striking air of reality to the least of their productions.

The bowl of the ladles is generally oval. It is edged by a running decoration between two lines, a waving line, or a more or less accentuated denticulation. The cavity made in the slave’s burden is of irregular shape, and the thick border is decorated with lightly carved flowers and foliage. It was a perfume box rather than a ladle, for the little hole in the lower part, near the prisoner’s shoulder, held the hinge of the lid, now lost. The fifth ladle is in the shape of a quadrangular trough. The bottom, set in four rectangular mouldings, is covered with waving lines simulating water; the edges represent the banks of the lake and are covered with aquatic scenes. On the right, amid the flowers and lotus buds, a little personage is catching birds with a net; on the left, another is fishing from a boat. They are both summarily indicated, but are not the less full of life. It is a miniature reproduction on a wooden ladle of the great scenes of fishing and bird-catching which are painted in the tombs and the temples.

PERFUME LADLE.

The Louvre.

PERFUME LADLE.

The Louvre.

The objects are in wonderful preservation. A lid is lost, a lotus branch is broken behind the girl who is gathering flowers, one of the feet of the bearer of offerings is missing. Otherwise they are intact, and might have just come from the hands of the craftsman. The wood is of a very fine grain, marvellously adapted to the needs of the chisel. It has never been painted, but has become darkened with time. The original colour must have been the golden yellow seen in the cracks of some pieces of thin wood found in the tombs. None of the ladles show any signs of wear: they seem to have been deposited new in the tomb near the dead person, who preserved them new until our day. Like the rest of the funerary equipment, they were intended for use in the other world. The lists of offerings mention antimony powder and green paint among the things sent to the double on festival days: the perfume ladles and boxes were as necessary in the tomb as they had been on earth.