Egyptian Art: Studies

by G. Maspero

II

So much for the illustrations: the portion of the text as yet published greatly increases their interest, and assures the work permanent value. It contains information as to the origin of the object, its migrations, its actual home to-day, its state of preservation and, at need, the restorations it has undergone: descriptions showing careful research, and extended bibliographies complete the suggestions made by the picture, and inform us of previous criticisms. The shortest of the notices fills two compact quarto columns, and are reinforced by numerous footnotes; many of them are veritable essays in which the subject is examined on every side and as exhaustively as is possible. Vignettes are inserted which exhibit the object in a different light from that of the plate, or show the reader some of the analogous motives referred to in the discussion.

Repetition of similar types has sometimes prevented Bissing from developing his views as a whole, and we are compelled to look under several rubrics before learning his full opinion. This is a serious drawback unless it is remedied in the introduction: we shall perhaps find all the observations brought together there into one system, with justificatory references to each of the notices in particular.

Bissing’s criticisms are always well justified: they testify to a mature taste or a sure tact, and there are very few with which experts would not willingly agree. Here and there, however, I must make some reservations, for example, with regard to the Chephrên of Gizeh. After discussing at length Borchardt’s reasons for attributing it to a Saïte school, and refuting them, Bissing declares that it is perhaps a late copy of a work contemporary with the Pharaoh. I recently had occasion to study it closely in order to determine the position in the Museum best suited to it, and to decide the height of the plinth on which it should be placed. I went over Borchardt’s arguments and Bissing’s hypotheses one after the other and came to the conclusion that the date assigned by Mariette at the moment of its discovery is the only admissible one. The archæological details belong to the Memphian age, and the peculiarities of style which Bissing points out, and which actually exist, are not sufficiently strongly marked to justify its attribution to a later epoch. I only see in them the divergences which, in every age, mark works coming from different and perhaps rival studios. The artists who cut the doubles in diorite destined for the pyramid of the Pharaoh, did not certainly have the same masters as those to whom we owe the Chephrên in alabaster and the royal statuettes of Mitrahineh: the difference of origin sufficiently explains why they do not resemble each other. I fear that in criticizing certain sculptures Borchardt and others were governed in spite of themselves by the ideas that long prevailed on the uniformity and monotony of Egyptian art. It seemed to them that at one and the same period the composition and inspiration must always remain identical, and wherever they did not harmonize, the fact was attributed solely to an interval in time. But we must accustom ourselves to think that things did not go differently with the Egyptians than with the moderns. In a city like Memphis there was more than one studio, and they all possessed their traditions, their affectations, their style, which distinguished them from each other, and which are found in their work like a trade-mark. Some errors of classification will be avoided in the future if we can be persuaded to recognize that many of the peculiarities that we begin to note on statues and bas-reliefs may be the mannerisms of the school to which they belong, and are not always indications of relative age.

The care that Bissing has taken to render what is due to each of the experts who discovered a piece or spoke of it, deserves the more praise since many Egyptologists of the present generation have adopted the attitude of ignoring what has been said or written before them. They seem to insinuate to their readers that archæology, religion, grammar, history, nothing indeed that they touch on, has ever been studied before, and that the bibliography of a subject begins with the first essay they have devoted to it. Although the past of Egyptology is so short, it is a difficult subject to know, and it is not surprising if Bissing has misrepresented some features or ignored others. For example, he attributes the merit of recognizing in the animal’s tail that the kings attach to their back, not a lion’s tail but a jackal’s[4] to Wiedemann; I do not know if I was the first, but I think that I certainly stated this before Wiedemann.[5] A little farther on, I regret that Bissing was not acquainted with my notice of the statue of Montouhotpou in the Musée Egyptien:[6] I am curious to know if he accepts my explanation of the disproportion between the feet, legs, and bust. It seems to me that it was not intended to be on the same level as the spectator, but that it ought to be placed in a naos, on a fairly high platform which could be reached by a staircase in front: seen from below, foreshortened, the effect of the perspective would redeem the exaggeration of form and re-establish the balance between the parts. It seems also that Bissing was not acquainted with the part of the Musée in which this Montouhotpou is discussed, for he does not refer to it again with regard to the Amenemhaît III discovered by Flinders Petrie at Fayoum.[7] Farther on again, it would have been in keeping to note that Legrain found the debris of a statuette in black granite in the mud of the favissa at Karnak, which so closely resembles the admirable Ramses II of Turin that it might almost be the replica or a sort of original rough model.[8] Unfortunately the head is wanting, but we have been almost entirely successful in restoring the body: if it is not by the same sculptor who took such pleasure in modelling the Turin statue, it comes from the same royal studio. The few differences to be noted between them arise solely from the inequality of the stature: it was necessary to simplify certain details or to suppress them in the smallest of the statues.

These examples show that there is nothing very serious in the omissions and negligences: we are surprised not that there should be some, but that among such a mass of references there are not more. I might perhaps disagree with some of the theories or points of doctrine Bissing constantly advances, but I will wait to do so until he has elaborated into a system the elements so abundantly spread through the notices. But there is one criticism I will make now: he scarcely mentions the schools into which Egypt was divided, so that we are tempted to conclude that, like so many contemporary archæologists, he believes in the existence of one sole school, which worked in an almost uniform manner over the whole of Egypt at one time. It is, however, certain that there were always several schools on the banks of the Nile, each of which possessed its traditions, its designs, its method of interpreting the costume or the pose of individuals, the works of which have a sufficiently special physiognomy to admit of their being easily separated into their different groups. Here, again, it seems to me that sometimes varieties of execution which are the result of the teaching are taken to be signs of age, and that pieces which are contemporary within a few years, but which proceed from distinct schools, are spread over centuries. I have not discovered Bissing in such errors: his natural insight and his knowledge of the monuments preserved him from making them. I wish, however, that he had touched on the matter more definitely than he has, and, after letting it be seen in several places that he admits the existence of those schools, he should have defined their characteristics in accordance as the progress of his book brought their work before the reader. He has briefly touched on the matter in regard to the sphinxes of Tanis and the statue of Amenemhaît III, but he might, for example, have seized the opportunity of the Montouhotpou in order to demonstrate the tendencies of Theban art at its birth; he could have followed them in their evolution, and the Amenôthes I of Turin might perhaps have served to teach us how those tendencies were developed or modified between the beginning of the first Theban Empire and that of the second. A passage in the notice of the so-called Hyksôs sphinxes leads me to hope that he will do this for the Tanite school in regard to the celebrated Bearers of offerings: I greatly wish that I may not be disappointed in my hope.

III

As far as I can judge there were at least four large schools of sculpture in the valley of the Nile: at Memphis, Thebes, Hermopolis, and in the eastern part of the delta. I have attempted farther on to sketch the history and define the principal characteristics of the Theban school;[9] I shall only refer to it as far as it is necessary to make clear in what it is distinguished from the three others.

And to begin with, it is probable that the first of those in date, the Memphian, is merely the prolongation and continuation of a previous Thinite school. If I compare the few objects of real art that have come to us from the Thinites with parallel works of which the necropolises of Gizeh, Saqqarah and the Fayoum have restored to us so many examples, I am struck by the resemblances in inspiration and technique that exist between the two. We have no statues originating from Thinis itself, but the stelæ, the amulets in alto-relievo, the fragments of minute furniture discovered in the tombs of Omm-el-Gaâb find their exact counterpart in similar pieces that come from the excavations of Abousîr-el-Malak or of Meîdoum and from the sub-structure of Memphian residences. I think I see that at the beginning there were mediocre workmen in the plain of the Pyramids capable, however, of sculpturing, ill or well, a statue of a man seated or standing: to those men I attribute the statue No. 1 in the Cairo Museum, the Matonou (Amten) of Berlin, the Sapouî (Sepa) of the Louvre, and a few other lesser ones. The same defects are to be seen in all: the head out of proportion to the body, the neck ungraceful, the shoulders high, the bust summarily rough-hewn and without regard to the dimensions of each part, the arms and legs heavy, thick, angular. Their roughness and awkwardness compared with the beautiful appearance of the two statues of Meîdoum, which are almost contemporary with them, would astonish us if we did not think that the latter, commissioned for relatives of Sanofraouî, proceed from the royal workshops. The transference of the capital to Memphis, or rather to the district stretching from the entrance into the Fayoum to the fork of the delta, necessarily resulted in impoverishing Thinis-Abydos; the stone-cutters, architects, statuaries, and masons accompanied the court, and planted the traditions and teaching of their respective fatherlands in their new homes. According to what is seen in the tombs of Meîdoum, the latest Thinite style, or rather the transition style of the IIIrd Dynasty, presents exactly the same characteristics as the perfect style of the IVth, Vth, and VIth Dynasties, but with a less stiff manner. The pose of the persons and the silhouettes of the animals are already schematized and encircled in the lines which will enclose them almost to the end of Egyptian civilization, but the detail is freer, and keeps very close to reality. The tendency is perceived only in the roundness and suppleness that prevails from the time of Cheops and Chephrên. The Memphites sought to idealize their models rather than to make a faithful copy of them, and while respecting the general resemblance, desired to give the spectator an impression of calm majesty or of gentleness. Their manner was adopted at Thinis by a counter-shock, and it may be said that from the IVth to the XXVIth Dynasty Abydos remained almost a branch of the Memphian school, which, however, grew out of it. The productions only differ from those of the Memphites in subordinate points, except during the XIXth Dynasty, when Setouî I and Ramses II summoned Theban sculptors there, and for some years it became, artistically, a fief of Thebes.

If we would indicate in one word the character of this Thinito-Memphian art, we should say that it resides in an idealism of convention as opposed to the realism of Theban art. Thanks to the fluctuations of political life which alternately made Memphis and Thebes the capitals of the whole kingdom, the æsthetics of the two cities spread to the neighbouring towns, and did not allow them to form an independent art: Heracleopolis, Beni-Hassan, Assiout, Abydos took after Memphis, while the Saîd and Nubia, from Denderah to Napata, remained under the jurisdiction of Thebes. An original school arose, however, in one place, and persisted for a fairly long time, in Hermopolis Magna, the city of Thot. We observe there, from the end of the Ancient Empire, sculptors who devoted themselves to expressing with a scrupulous naturalism, and often with an intentional seeking after ugliness, the bearing of individuals and the movement of groups. We should observe with what humour they interpreted the extremes of obesity and emaciation in man and beast, in the two tombs called the fat and the lean. The region where they flourished is so little explored that it is still unknown how long their activity practised a continuous style: it was at its best under the first Theban Empire, at Bercheh, at Beni-Hassan, at Cheîkh-Saîd, but the period at which it seems to me to be most in evidence was at the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty, under the heretic Pharaohs. When Amenôthes IV founded his capital of Khouîtatonou, if, as is probable, he settled some Theban masters there, he would certainly have utilized the studios of Hermopolis. The scenes engraved on the tombs of El-Tell and El-Amarna are due to the same spirit and the same teaching as those of the fat and lean tombs; there are similar deformations of the human figure bordering on caricature, the same suppleness and sometimes the same violence in the gestures and attitudes. In a number of portraits the Theban importation prevails, but the cavalcades, processions, royal audiences, popular scenes, must be attributed to the Hermopolitans, for their inspiration and execution present so striking a contrast to those of analogous pictures that adorn the walls of Louxor or Karnak. The fall of the little Atonian Dynasty stopped their activity; deprived of the vast commissions which opened a new field for their enterprise, they fell back into their provincial routine, and we have not yet enough documents to tell us what their successors became in the course of the centuries.