Drawn by Boudier, from
a photograph by Emil
Brugsch-Bey. The original
is now in the Gîzeh Museum.
The Egyptians wished the double to be able to adapt itself easily to its image, and in order to compass that end, it was imperative that the stone presentment should be at least an approximate likeness, and should reproduce the proportions and peculiarities of the living prototype for whom it was meant. The head had to be the faithful portrait of the individual: it was enough for the body to be, so to speak, an average one, showing him at his fullest development and in the complete enjoyment of his physical powers. The men were always represented in their maturity, the women never lost the rounded breast and slight hips of their girlhood, but a dwarf always preserved his congenital ugliness, for his salvation in the other world demanded that it should be so. Had he been given normal stature, the double, accustomed to the deformity of his members in this world, would have been unable to accommodate himself to an upright carriage, and would not have been in a fit condition to resume his course of life.
The particular pose of the statue was dependent on the social position of the person. The king, the nobleman, and the master are always standing or sitting: it was in these postures they received the homage of their vassals or relatives. The wife shares her husband’s seat, stands upright beside him, or crouches at his feet as in daily life. The son, if his statue was ordered while he was a child, wears the dress of childhood; if he had arrived to manhood, he is represented in the dress and with the attitude suited to his calling. Slaves grind the grain, cellarers coat their amphoræ with pitch, bakers knead their dough, mourners make lamentation and tear their hair. The exigencies of rank clung to the Egyptians in temple and tomb, wherever their statues were placed, and left the sculptor who represented them scarcely any liberty. He might be allowed to vary the details and arrange the accessories to his taste; he might alter nothing in the attitude or the general likeness without compromising the end and aim of his work. The statues of the Memphite period may be counted at the present day by hundreds.
Some are in the heavy and barbaric style which has caused them to be mistaken for primaeval monuments: as, for instance, the statues of Sapi and his wife, now in the Louvre, which are attributed to the beginning of the IIIrd dynasty or even earlier. Groups exactly resembling these in appearance are often found in the tombs of the Vth and VIth dynasties, which according to this reckoning would be still older than that of Sapi: they were productions of an inferior studio, and their supposed archaism is merely the want of skill of an ignorant sculptor. The majority of the remaining statues are not characterized either by glaring faults or by striking merits: they constitute an array of honest good-natured folk, without much individuality of character and no originality. They may be easily divided into five or six groups, each having a style in common, and all apparently having been executed on the lines of a few chosen models; the sculptors who worked for the mastaba contractors were distributed among a very few studios, in which a traditional routine was observed for centuries. They did not always wait for orders, but, like our modern tombstone-makers, kept by them a tolerable assortment of half-finished statues, from which the purchaser could choose according to his taste. The hands, feet, and bust lacked only the colouring and final polish, but the head was merely rough-hewn, and there were no indications of dress; when the future occupant of the tomb or his family had made their choice, a few hours of work were sufficient to transform the rough sketch into a portrait, such as it was, of the deceased they desired to commemorate, and to arrange his garment according to the latest fashion. If, however, the relatives or the sovereign* declined to be satisfied with these commonplace images, and demanded a less conventional treatment of body for the double of him whom they had lost, there were always some among the assistants to be found capable of entering into their wishes, and of seizing the lifelike expression of limbs and features.
* It must not be forgotten that the statues were often, like
the tomb itself, given by the king to the man whose services
he desired to reward. His burying-place then bore the
formulary, “By the favour of the king,” as I have mentioned
previously.
Drawn by Boudier,
from a photograph
by Béchard.