II. Figures of men and animals, etc.
Many scarab-seals bear the figures of men and animals, the principal animals figured being the lion, bull, cynocephalus, horse, and gazelle. Birds are also often engraved, the hawk, the emblem of Horus, being the commonest. Serpents are very common, and we also occasionally find combinations of serpents with animals, sphinxes, griffons, and sometimes beetles and locusts (see [Pl. XXV]). Flowers, such as the lotus, are frequently found engraved on these seals.
Hunting scenes on scarab-seals appear for the first time during the Hyksos period, and a beautifully cut specimen of this date is in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford (Pl. XXV, 26). It represents a king clad in a striped loin-cloth with fringed edge, and wearing a curiously-shaped head-dress. Armed with a bow and arrows, he hunts three ibex-gazelles and a lion among bushes of a desert wady. To a later period, probably not earlier than the Nineteenth Dynasty, belong the common hunt scarabs of the types figured in Pl. XLII, 33-39. The first and rarest type (Pl. XLII, 33) shows a hunter with lions and cheetahs chasing a gazelle. The second and commonest type represents an archer hunting the lion and other desert animals (Pl. XLII, 35). The third type is more elaborate, and depicts the hunter riding in a chariot drawn by one or more horses (Pl. XLII, 37-39), while on other scarabs we sometimes see the huntsman overtaken by a lion, and lying flat on the ground, apparently slain (Pl. XLII, 34). The cutting of these Nineteenth Dynasty hunt scarabs is generally deep, and the subject is always more or less coarsely rendered: few specimens bear any trace of glazing, and when found it is always of an inferior kind, which has turned brown.
Coil and rope patterns.
Scarabs with ornamental devices, such as coils and twisted rope patterns engraved upon them, appear first about the reign of Usertsen I, and continued in use to the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, after which period they rarely occur. The date of any single specimen may generally be determined by the form of the back, but the glazing and general style of cutting is also important in this connection. Specimens of the late Twelfth and early Thirteenth Dynasties are often fine examples of ornamental art: they are generally designed with much care, and executed with wonderful minuteness and delicacy of touch. Finely worked specimens are also found of the time of Queen Hatshepsut and Thothmes III. A representative series of coil and rope-pattern scarabs is given in Pls. XVIII and XIX. The rope-patterns figured in Pl. XIX, 1-3, are of the Hyksos period, while those on Pl. XVIII, 1-15, 18, range in date from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Dynasties. The coil-patterns given in Pl. XIX, 4, 5, 9, are certainly of the Hyksos period, while the remainder of the coil patterns are mainly of the late Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties. Often the continuous loop coil was used to ornament the scarabs of kings and officials. The earliest example, indeed the earliest example of any coil-pattern in Egypt, is found on a scarab of Usertsen I, most exquisitely worked and fully developed (fig. [82]).
Fig. 82.
For a long time past it has been thought that the spiral as a motive in decoration originated in the Nile Valley, and much misconception seems to prevail among archaeologists as to its occurrence in Egypt. Prof. Petrie says[[114]] that its earliest use in the country was for the decoration of scarabs, and he would trace the spiral motive back as far as the Fifth Dynasty. The single scarab that he instances, it is true, bears the prenomen of Dad-ka-Ra (Assa), but there is not the slightest reason to make one believe that this particular specimen is contemporaneous with the king whose name it bears; the whole style of it, on the contrary, clearly shows that it belongs to no earlier a date than the Eighteenth Dynasty. Prof. Petrie also attributes a number of scarabs bearing coil, hook and link ornamentation to the Sixth and Eighth Dynasties, but these have been conclusively shown by Fraser[[115]] and Griffith[[116]] to be in reality post rather than pre Twelfth Dynasty. The fact is that the spiral has not yet been found on Egyptian monuments of an older date than the reign of Usertsen I. It was then used as a motive for decorating a ceiling in the tomb of a chieftain at Assiut.[[117]] Employed architecturally it is not found again until the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, when it was perhaps the most frequent motive for ceiling decorations in Theban tombs. In these tombs it is generally coloured yellow, to represent gold, and it is highly probable that the ornament itself originated in metal wire-work.[[118]]
At the same time as we find it occurring at Assiut, we also find the spiral used to decorate a scarab bearing the prenomen of Usertsen I (fig. 82). On this specimen the ornament is cut with very great care and regularity, indicating that the design was “a novelty, which had not yet become stereotyped[[119]] and reproduced as a matter of course.” The same exquisite workmanship is found on some scarabs bearing private names of the time of Amenemhat III or a little later; and here the continuous coil is combined with the lotus in a most beautiful design—a continuous coil, with flowers and buds in the spaces (Pl. XIV, figs. 21-26). It is difficult to believe that such a design sprang into being fully developed; but nothing has yet been found in Egypt at all like it of a period anterior to the Twelfth Dynasty; we must therefore search for the origin and development of the spiral motive in ornament elsewhere than in the Nile Valley. We do not yet know sufficiently the history of the Delta to say definitely that it did not originate there, but the probabilities are that we should look for its earliest employment and development outside the realm of Egypt.[[120]] However that may be, the spiral was one of the most important of the motives of the decorative art of the ancient world. From very ancient times it was largely used by the peoples of Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and in “the wake of early commerce it was spread afield to the Danubian basin, and thence in turn by the valley of the Elbe to the Amber coast of the North Sea; there to supply the Scandinavian Bronze Age population with their leading decorative designs. Adopted by the Celtic tribes in the Central European area, it took at a somewhat later date a westerly turn, reached Britain with the invading Belgae, and finally survived in Irish art.”[[121]]
Material. Hard stones, obsidian, etc.