We have already reproduced many examples of what may be called the classic form of sphinx, his head covered with the klaft and his paws extended before him (Figs. [41] and [157], Vol. I.). But the type included several secondary varieties. Sometimes the forepaws are replaced by human hands holding symbolic objects (Figs. [227] and [238]); sometimes the head of a hawk is substituted for that of a man. The animals which form many of the dromoi at Karnak are called crio-sphinxes (Fig. [205], Vol. I.), but the name is an unhappy one, because they have nothing in common with a sphinx but the position. They are rams and nothing else.
The Greek word σφίγξ is feminine. The sphinx with female breasts is, however, very rare in Egypt. Wilkinson only knew of one, in which the Queen Mut-neter of the eighteenth dynasty was represented.[275]
Fig. 238.—Sphinx with human hands. Bas-relief; from Prisse.
The Egyptians were not content with confusing the figures of men and animals in their images of the gods, they combined those of quadrupeds and birds in the same fashion. Thus we sometimes find wings upon the backs of gazelles and antelopes, and now and then a curious animal compounded of a hawk's head and a nondescript body (Fig. [239]). Whether such fantastic quadrupeds were consciously and deliberately invented by the Egyptian artists or not, we have no means of deciding. In a period when there was none of that scientific culture which alone enables men to distinguish the possible from the impossible, they may well have believed in winged and bird-headed animals with four legs. For the Greeks of Homer's time, and even for their children's children, the chimera and his kindred were real. They knew where they lived, and they described their habits. In a picture at Beni-Hassan, these imaginary beasts are shown flying before the hunter, and mixed up with the undoubted denizens of the mountains and deserts.[276] Such representations must have been common upon those objects—partly manufactured in Egypt, partly imitated in Phœnicia—which the enterprising inhabitants of the latter country distributed all over Western Asia, and the basin of the Mediterranean. They had a large share of that mystic and enigmatic character which has always been an attraction in the eye of the decorator. They may have helped to develop a belief that the curious beings represented upon them existed in some corner of the world, and they certainly did much to form those decorative types which have been handed down through Greece to the modern ornamentist.
Fig. 239.—Quadruped with the head of a bird. From Champollion, pl. 428 bis.
§ 7. The Technique of the Bas-reliefs.
Work in low relief held such an important place in the affections of the Egyptian sculptor that we must study its processes in some detail.
In the first place, it was almost invariably painted. Those bas-reliefs which show no trace of colour may be looked upon as unfinished.