Fig. 288.—Winged globe. From Prisse.
Among the original motives to be found in these paintings, there is yet another which deserves to be named for its uncommon character, we mean those tables for offerings which are shown loaded with vases and other objects of a like nature. As if to mark the importance of the funerary gifts, the stems of these tables are made so lofty that they rise high above two trees, apparently cypresses, which grew right and left of their feet (Figs. [289] and [290]).
The Egyptians made use of the afterwards common decorative motive of alternate buds and open blooms of lotus, but they entirely failed to give it the lightness and elegance with which it was endowed by the Greeks. Their buds were poor and meagre, their flowers heavy, and the general design not without stiffness.[359]
The colours are often well preserved, at least in parts, and, as one combination is repeated several times, it is easy to restore the missing parts by reference to those which are intact. The gilding, however, has disappeared, and left hardly a trace behind. Gold was used pretty generally in order to give warmth and brightness. The obelisks, those of Hatasu for instance, were gilded upon all four faces; the winged globe was sometimes gilded,[360] and so were the bronze plates with which the temple doors were covered. The important part played by the gilders, some of whose books of gold have come down to our time,[361] is chiefly known to us by the inscriptions. Their employment may also be divined here and there by the fashion in which the stone has been prepared, sometimes by the peculiar colour effects in certain parts of the bas-reliefs.
In some tombs gold is found in its pure state. During the excavations at the Serapeum, Mariette opened the tomb of Ka-em-nas, a son of Rameses II. When the mummy chamber was entered, the lower parts of the walls and of the mummy cases shone with gold in the candle-light. The floor was strewn with scraps of the same metal, and as many as four books of gold leaf were found in the tomb. Mariette was then in want of funds, and in order that the excavations might proceed, he obtained authority from the French consul to sell this gold, to which of course, no scientific interest was attached. The thick gold mask of the prince and the fine jewelry which adorned his mummy are now in the Louvre.
The mummy's toe-nails, bracelets, and lips, and the linen mask over its face, were very often gilt. The feet are sometimes entirely gilt. So too is the shroud. Those of princes and great personages are sometimes covered with gold from head to foot.
Figs. 289, 290.—Tables for offerings; from the paintings in a royal tomb.
The Egyptian artisans understood these delicate operations at a very early date. Even in the tombs at Beni-Hassan we find the process of gold-beating illustrated in full. We need hardly say that a decorative industry which disposed of such complete resources, thoroughly understood what we call graining, the imitation of the veins and textures of wood, and also those of the different kinds of granite, upon other substances. In more than one instance we find the commoner kinds of stone thus made to look like rarer and more costly materials.