Egyptian Art: Studies

by G. Maspero

GREEN BASALT STATUETTES OF THE SAÏTE PERIOD.

The Louvre.

The second fragment is evidently Saïte; the somewhat harsh precision of the modelling, the heaviness of the head-dress, the roundness of shoulders and chest, sufficiently prove it. It is broken too high up for us to determine if it belonged to a standing statue like the Pharaoh, or a crouching figure like the third monument. It is a perfect type of the middle-class Egyptian, developed in width rather than in height.

The shoulders are soft and flabby; the smiling insignificance of the features, the sinking down of the trunk on the hips and the head on the shoulders, are just what we should expect in one of the scribes who led sedentary lives in offices, amid piles of documents, of whom some bas-reliefs exaggerate the obesity with an evident intention of caricature. The inscription engraved on the base tells us that he was named Aî, son of Hapi, and that besides his sacerdotal functions he possessed the dignity of director of the two store-houses of the money. The Turin papyrus informs us of the nature of his office. The financial system of Egypt rested on an entirely different principle from ours: coins not being yet invented, or only lately come into use at the Saïte Period, the payment of taxes and of the officials, the transactions of the State with private individuals, or of private individuals with each other, were valued and settled in kind. Every Egyptian owed the Treasury, according to his profession and his fortune, so many fish if he was a fisherman, so many bushels of grain or head of cattle if he was an agriculturist; the whole was duly received, registered, and stored by scribes who, in their turn, put aside for the Pharaoh what would keep, and used what was perishable for the daily disbursements. Silver and gold were articles of exchange in the same way as stuffs or oxen; Pharaoh brought them back in quantities from his expeditions abroad, and received them from his subjects as the equivalent of their share of the tax. Gold and silver circulated in powder, in sachets that contained a definite weight, in thin rings, in the form of couchant oxen, of half-oxen, of ox or gazelle heads, of jars full or empty, in curious shapes that generally were of no use in daily life, and which consequently were only, in spite of their artistic value, a sort of metallic reserve for the rich. The two store-houses or the double house of the money formed the treasury in which Pharaoh stored the quantities of gold and silver that belonged to him: taking into account the value attached to these metals, the directors of these establishments must have occupied a fairly high rank in the Egyptian hierarchy.

But for all that, we must not take the manuscript spread over Aî’s knees and that he is attentively reading for an account-book, or a document relating to his business. The portion of the scroll that he holds in his right hand, placed flat on his knees, is divided into vertical columns, which, cut by horizontal lines, presents a sort of chequered surface, the squares of which are not all of the same size. Each of the larger ones contains the name of an object, and each of the smaller a number. It is the list of the gifts composing the banquet offered to the dead person on the day of burial and during the funeral ceremonies. In the tombs both of the Ancient and the New Empire it is highly developed, and comprises the most varied materials: clear or coloured waters, beers of different kinds, wines of four vintages, seven or nine of the choice pieces of the victim, cakes of all sorts, essences, cosmetics, stuffs. On the scroll of our scribe where the space was restricted the list is shortened, and we only find the actual necessities: water, beer, some meat, a little perfume. It is to that of the tombs what the usual dinner of a middle-class family is to the ceremonial banquet of a noble; nevertheless, our scribe reads it with evident satisfaction: it is the menu of his meals for eternity, and, however scanty others may deem it, he probably considers it more pleasurable than that of his terrestrial dinners. We have here the natural development of the ideas that the Egyptians had of the other world. From the moment that the double was to feed materially, they sought to assure it the food of which it had need. The formulas of the stelæ which mention bread, wine, meat, deciphered by the first comer, secured the provisioning of the double; all that had been desired for him in reciting it would be assured him in the other world by virtue of the magic words. For lack of a passer-by to accomplish this pious duty, it occurred to them to place statues in the tomb which seemed to repeat for ever a written list held on their knees; this simulation of a perpetual reading was more than sufficient to nourish for ever the simulacrum of a man. Here, it is the defunct himself who renders himself this good office; elsewhere it is a friend, a scribe, a favourite servant.

The study of these three little monuments brings out very happily one of the qualities of Egyptian art: the skill with which the least of artists, in reproducing in a sometimes realistic manner the portrait of individuals, understood how to seize the physiognomy and bearing characteristic of their craft or of their social rank. Compare the submissive and sheepish face of the crouching scribe with the bold carriage and imperious head of the Pharaoh: the contrast is striking. With the scribe, all the muscles are relaxed; the whole body is bent, as with a man accustomed to obey and resigned to endure everything from his superiors. With the Pharaoh, the modelling is firm, the figure upright, the mien haughty; we feel that here is a person accustomed from childhood to walk upright in the midst of bowed backs. It is unfortunate that the legend has disappeared with the lower part of the second statuette; comparing it with several other monuments in the Louvre, it reminds me of several priests of the Saïte Period. The hardness in the eye and the corners of the lips is the same, the same furrow surrounds the nostril and the mouth, the outer walls of the nose are compressed in a similar fashion; in spite of the loss of the name and titles, I am tempted to think that the individual who bears on his face in so high a degree the peculiarities of the Egyptian priest belonged to the sacerdotal caste.

XXIII
A FIND OF SAÏTE JEWELS AT SAQQARAH[89]

As soon as I returned to my old post, I resumed the excavations of the pyramids at the point where I had left them in 1886. I had then made a systematic search of the entrance into the funerary vaults: it was now necessary to seek out the exterior chapels, the caves, the secondary pyramids or the mastabas, which, shut in by a walled enclosure, completed the burial-place. At the end of November, 1899, I placed workmen round Ounas, and as I found it impossible to direct the operations myself with the requisite care, I entrusted the surveillance of them to M. Alexandre Barsanti, the curator-restorer of the Museum, with detailed instructions. The campaign then begun was only ended in the last days of May, 1900, and the account of it will be published elsewhere. I now wish to draw the attention of amateurs and scholars to the discovery of a mass of Saïte jewels.

The progress of the clearing away revealed the existence of a series of intact tombs at the south of the pyramid. The last of those that had been opened belonged to a very high personage named Zannehibou, in his lifetime commandant of the king’s boats. The mummy, a block of shining bitumen, was at once recognised as a very rich one. At the height of the face it had a large gold mask which fitted on the front part of the head like the cartonnage case usual with mummies of the second Saïte Period. It had a broad necklace round its neck of beads of gold and of green felspar or of lapis lazuli mounted with gold thread, and fastened to it were numerous amulets, also of gold. Below the necklace, on the chest, an image of the goddess Nouît, in gold, spread its wings. A network of gold and felspar hung down to the hip, and from the image of the Nouît to the ankles might be read, on a long band of gold-leaf, the usual inscriptions in relief: the name of the dead man, his filiation, with short formulas of prayer. Two gold figures of Isis and Nephthys were sewn on the chest, two leaves of gold cut as sandals were fitted to the soles of the feet; a silver plaque with a line engraving of a mystic eye for the incision whence the entrails had been extracted, gold cases for the twenty fingers and toes, completed this magnificent decoration. Everything that with the lower classes of the same period would have been in cardboard, or gilded paste, or enamelled clay, was pure gold and fine stones with Zannehibou. The find, estimated by weight alone, would be valuable, but what gave it inestimable worth was the delicate and artistic workmanship of the greater number of the objects. A few of them, like the sandals and the finger-cases, are only worth the raw metal; the rest are the work of veritable artists. The inscriptions of the legs, the winged Nouît, the Isis and the Nephthys, the mask, are stamped, and although the mask and the two goddesses were miserably crushed by the lid when the sarcophagus was closed, the mould of hard stone which was used to fix them was so delicately cut that the best-preserved pieces, the winged Nouît, for instance, may be quoted as the highest degree of perfection that could be attained by that process. The amulet in shape of a necklace is only a leaf cut with the chisel, on which a chapter of the “Book of the Dead” is engraved with the graving needle. The vulture amulet is a small, thin plaque, on one side of which the stamped figure of a vulture with spread wings has been stuck, while on the other the chapter of the “Book of the Dead” has been engraved, as with the necklace. It is all of good workmanship, but in the amulets hanging on the real necklace of the mummy the goldsmith has surpassed himself.