Nevertheless, after making all deductions for the perverted historical perspective thus induced, the fact remains that we are quite justified in speaking of the Egyptians as a singularly artistic race. Indeed, it would be absurd to deny this position to the people who, first of any on the earth so far as known, created a truly great and truly individual art.
It has been held a matter for surprise that the Greeks, who so fully appreciated, and, indeed, so greatly overestimated, the learning and the occult wisdom of the Egyptians, should have failed to be impressed by their works of art. But, rightly considered, there is nothing at all remarkable in this. It must be remembered that Herodotus, who gives us our earliest glimpses of Egypt through Grecian eyes, lived in the age of Pericles, when the masterpieces of Phidias and his contemporaries were constantly before the eyes of the Greek traveller as the criterion by which other works of art were to be judged. It can hardly be wondered at that, judged by this test, the Egyptian sculptures did not seem remarkable. Herodotus had not the spirit of the antiquarian nor of the modern scientific historian, and he therefore made no allowance for the fact that the major part of the sculptures visible had been made almost a thousand years before the age of Phidias; but it is that fact which the modern investigator should bear constantly in mind.
It would be absurd to claim for the Egyptian statues that they compare for a moment as finished works of art with the Grecian productions of the Golden Age. But when one reflects that it was the Egyptians who led the way and first pointed out the possibility of modelling in stone; when one reflects that, so far as extant remains can give us any clew, there were no forerunners of the Egyptians who even remotely approached their standard; when, in a word, one remembers that this art was an indigenous product, as nearly independent of outside influences as any human creations ever can be—then, and then only, is one prepared to appreciate the real merit of the Egyptian sculptor.
To one who approaches this work merely in the cold spirit of the modern critic, untouched by the enthusiasm of the antiquarian, the sculpture of the Egyptians may well be characterised as crude in the extreme. In the first instance it is cold, rigid, immobile, lacking utterly the plasticity and action of the Greek product. Secondly, it is but crudely modelled. No Egyptian artist ever learned to draw in the modern acceptance of that word, or to model in more than the most elementary fashion. These, indeed, taken by themselves, are radical defects, and at first sight they render the Egyptian monuments grotesque, rather than pleasing, to the trained artistic eye. But when one has lived long enough among these statues to enter more fully into their spirit, when one has learned to put away the classical traditions and to relax somewhat his standards of technique, he will see this work in quite another light. He will recognise it as the titanic effort of a constructive genius in that earlier and more truly creative period when technique has not been mastered, but when a true artistic impulse is impelling the aspirant towards new and beautiful ideals which he himself will never quite attain, but to which his work points the way. It is large work in the fullest sense of the word, this art of the Egyptians, and he who can get no farther than to note its often faulty drawing, its imperfect modelling, is forever shut out from a true appreciation of its merits. But, on the other hand, the dreamer who sees, as some antiquarians are wont to do, matchless perfections in its very crudities, and intentional artistic effects in the mere faults of its technique—this enthusiast misses the true lessons of Egyptian art as widely as the overcritical and unsympathetic carper.
However much the various schools of critics may differ in their estimates, the task of the historian at least is clear. He must think of Egyptian art in its relations of time and place. To him it is important because of its position in the scale of the evolution of art in the world. And in this view, putting aside at once hypercriticism and overfervid enthusiasm, Egyptian art can hardly fail to impress the observer as one of the most marvellous of human creations.[a]
While Greece was still in its infancy, Egypt had long been the leading nation of the world; she was noted for her magnificence, her wealth, and power, and all acknowledged her pre-eminence in wisdom and civilisation. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Greeks should have admitted into their early art some of the forms then most in vogue; and though the wonderful taste of that gifted people speedily raised them to a point of excellence never attained by the Egyptians or any others, the rise and first germs of art and architecture must be sought in the valley of the Nile. In the oldest monuments of Greece, the sloping or pyramidal line constantly predominates; the columns in the oldest Greek order are almost purely Egyptian, in the proportions of the shaft, and in the form of its shallow flutes without fillets; and it is a remarkable fact that the oldest Egyptian columns are those which bear the closest resemblance to the Greek Doric.
Temple on the Island of Philæ
Though great variety was permitted in objects of luxury, as furniture, vases, and other things depending on caprice, the Egyptians were forbidden to introduce any material innovations into the human figure, such as would alter its general character; and all subjects connected with religion retained to the last the same conventional type. A god in the latest temple was of the same form as when represented on monuments of the earliest date; and King Menes would have recognised Amen, or Osiris, in a Ptolemaic or a Roman sanctuary. In sacred subjects the law was inflexible; and religion, which has frequently done so much for the development and direction of taste in sculpture, had the effect of fettering the genius of Egyptian artists. No improvements, resulting from experience and observation, were admitted in the mode of drawing the human figure; to copy nature was not allowed; it was therefore useless to study it, and no attempt was made to give the proper action to the limbs. Certain rules, certain models, had been established by the priesthood; and the faulty conceptions of ignorant times were copied and perpetuated by every successive artist. For, as Plato and Synesius say, the Egyptian sculptors were not suffered to attempt anything contrary to the regulations laid down regarding the figures of the gods; they were forbidden to introduce any change, or to invent new subjects and habits; and thus the art, and the rules which bound it, always remained the same.
Egyptian bas-relief appears to have been, in its origin, a mere copy of painting, its predecessor. The first attempt to represent the figures of gods, sacred emblems, and other subjects consisted in drawing, or painting, simple outlines of them on a flat surface, the details being afterwards put in with colour; but in process of time these forms were traced on stone with a tool, and the intermediate space between the various figures being afterwards cut away, the once level surface assumed the appearance of a bas-relief. It was, in fact, a pictorial representation on stone, which is evidently the character of all the bas-reliefs on Egyptian monuments; and which readily accounts for the imperfect arrangement of their figures.