I do not think that any survive which we can with certainty attribute to the time of the Pyramids: but the bas-reliefs of the Memphian tombs show us the joiners at work, and do not allow us to doubt that the trade in small wooden objects was very flourishing at that period. Under the great Theban Dynasties, Egypt exported them by thousands; imitated in Phœnicia, or even transported directly by the Phœnicians to the Mediterranean coasts, they transmitted the forms of Oriental art to the West. It is probable that Theban production—the only one known to us by dated monuments found in the tombs—entirely ceased, or at least became almost insignificant, when the greatness of Thebes declined from the tenth century B.C. They were still manufactured at Memphis and in the important cities of the Delta until the Ptolemies and the Cæsars. Recent specimens are somewhat rare, and present considerable differences from those of Theban manufacture. As it was exactly this Memphian art that almost exclusively supplied the Phœnician market from the time of Sheshonq, it is vexing that examples are not more abundant: as we do not possess sufficient, we cannot accurately judge what their influence was on the arts of the Mediterranean.
The five objects I have been discussing come from the Salt collection. The Theban tombs where they were found were exploited and emptied at the beginning of the nineteenth century by collectors and dealers; it is difficult to find any like them in Egypt now, and those that are discovered are very inferior to these in delicacy and quality.
PERFUME LADLE.
The Louvre.
XXII
SOME GREEN BASALT STATUETTES OF THE SAÏTE PERIOD
These statuettes were cut in greenish basalt of fine grain, loved by the artists of the New Empire and the Saïte Period above all other stones. They formed part of the Salt collection, and are now exhibited in the Louvre.
The first represents a Pharaoh, as is proved by the serpent that rises above his forehead and the hawk’s head that terminates the dagger passed through his belt. He is standing, and walking quickly, the head erect on his shoulders, and slightly bent forward in the attitude of a man who is looking attentively at the point towards which he is going; the arms are not detached from the body, and hang down along the bust and the thigh. The composition is excellent, highly finished in spite of the hardness of the material, and the detail is rendered as freely as on the colossi of the Theban Period.
The face has a particular character which struck Egyptologists long since; it is short, wide at the height of the eyes, rounded at the bottom. The eye is long, prominent, surmounted by strong curved eyebrows, marked where they join on the forehead by two deep vertical furrows. The nose is aquiline, short, thick at the end, flanked by two nostrils the outside walls of which seem to be somewhat thin. The mouth is widely opened and protrudes; full lips, short chin receding a little under the shadow of the lips. On his return from his journey in Egypt, M. de Rougé was struck by the resemblance of this statuette, till then lying forgotten in the corner of a cupboard, with the portraits of the Shepherd Kings discovered at Sân by Mariette. Dévéria cleverly reproduced it in two plates in the Revue archéologique.[88] He asserted what M. de Rougé had admitted as a mere hypothesis: that it was the portrait of a Shepherd King, and that it belonged to the disturbed period which immediately preceded the XVIIIth Dynasty. I must confess that these conclusions do not appear to me to be sound. The long list of Pharaohs includes many sovereigns whose faces present characteristics very different from those usually attributed to the Egyptian race, and yet who, all the same, were Egyptians born and bred. Without entering into the discussion, I will content myself with saying that several of those who reigned at periods relatively late, Taharqa (XXVth Dynasty) or Hakori (XXIXth Dynasty) for example, bear a singular likeness to the sovereign of our statuette in the structure and expression of the face. I cannot be certain here that it is a question of one of them, but the general composition reminds me of the style of the Saïte Period more than of that of the Theban. Without asserting anything, I am inclined to believe that our Pharaoh lived in the last centuries of Egyptian independence.
