Fig. 291.—Pitcher of red earth. British Museum.
Fig. 292.—Red earthenware. British Museum.
Another kind of pottery, that known as Egyptian porcelain, must be noticed in greater detail. This designation is inexact. The proper name would be Egyptian faience. It consists of white sand, gently fused, and overspread with a glaze of coloured enamel. This enamel is composed of flint and soda, with the addition of a colouring matter. This faience has been fired with such care that it is able to support the high temperature of a porcelain kiln without damage. Vases of many different kinds, enamelled tiles, statuettes (Fig. 294), sepulchral figurines (Figs. 96 and 97, Vol. I.), neck ornaments and other articles for decorating the person, amulets (Fig. 295), scarabs, rings, and many other articles were made in this material.
Vases were generally either blue or apple green. A very small number of them were ornamented with figures of men or animals, always treated in a purely decorative fashion. No vase has yet been discovered with any attempt to portray an incident upon it. The figures are never united by a subject. Bouquets of lotus around some central motive are of most frequent occurrence (Fig. 296). Sometimes these flowers are combined with mystic symbols, like the eyes in Fig. 297. These designs, which are in black, are produced by inlaying coloured enamel.
Fig. 293.—Gray earthenware. Boulak.
Fig. 294.—The God Bes. Enamelled earthenware.
Two of the vases which we reproduce (Figs. 296 and 297) are similar to those shown in the bas-reliefs, in scenes of libation to the gods or to the dead. Their form is that of the Greek φιάλη and the Latin patera. Numerous bottles have also been found whose general shape exactly resemble that of the Greek ἀρύβαλλος (Fig. 298).
The blue with which these objects are covered has often preserved a brilliance and transparency which could not even now be surpassed. Yellow, violet, and white glazes are also met with, but less frequently. The hieroglyphs which many of them bear prove that the manufacture of these little articles was in full swing under the three great Theban dynasties, that it continued through the Saite period, and that under the Ptolemies, and even later still, it was not extinct. To the same branch of industry belong those tiles of enamelled faience which seem to have been used by the Egyptians from very early times. They were also used by the Assyrians, as we shall see hereafter. "These tiles were used very extensively in eastern and southern countries, and are found both in palaces and in private dwellings. In the towns of Turkey and of Modern Egypt, in the towns and villages of Algeria and of all the African coast as far as the Straits of Gibraltar, thousands of examples are to be found. The freshness which seems to result from their use and the enduring brilliancy of their colours make these tiles very popular with the inhabitants of hot climates."[367]
Fig. 295.—Pendant for necklace. Louvre.
Fig. 296.—Enamelled earthenware. British Museum.
Fig. 297.—Enamelled earthenware. British Museum.
Fig. 298.—Enamelled faience. British Museum.
Fig. 299.—Doorway in the Stepped Pyramid at Sakkarah.
We do not know whether these tiles were used for the floors and walls in the dwellings of rich Egyptians or not, but it appears certain that their manufacture was understood even as early as the Ancient Empire. The doorway of a chamber in the stepped pyramid of Sakkarah is enframed with enamelled plaques. A sketch of Perring's, which we reproduce, gives a good idea of this arrangement (Fig. 299).[368] Some of these plaques are now in London, but a still larger number are in the Berlin Museum, where the doorway as a whole has been restored, the missing parts being replaced by copies. Our Figures 300-302 show the back, the front, and the profile, of a single plaque. The obverse is slightly convex, and covered with a greenish-blue glaze; the reverse has a salient tenon which was held securely by the mortar. Through a small hole in this tenon a rod of wood or metal may have passed which, by uniting all the plaques in each horizontal row, would give additional solidity to the whole arrangement.[369] On the backs of several plaques there are marks which seem to be rotation numbers. They are figured in the centre of Perring's sketch. Other bricks from the same doorway are covered with an almost black enamel. They form the horizontal mouldings between the rows of upright bricks, and are decorated with a sort of arrow-head pattern.
Figs. 300-302.—Enamelled plaque from the Stepped Pyramid.
This fashion endured throughout the Theban period. The most important relic of it which we now possess is from the decoration of a temple built by Rameses III. to the north-west of Memphis, near the modern Tell-el-Yahoudeh, upon the railway from Cairo to Ismailia. The building itself was constructed of crude brick, the walls being lined with enamelled tiles. The royal ovals and titles were cut in the earth before it was fired, and afterwards filled up with an enamel so tinted as to stand out in strong relief from the colour of the brick. Other tiles represent African and Asiatic prisoners. The figures are in relief; the enamel is parti-coloured, the hair of the prisoners being black, their carnations yellowish-brown, and certain details of their costume being accentuated by other hues. Dr. Birch reproduces some of these painted reliefs and compares them to the figurines rustiques of Bernard Palissy.[370] The principal fragments of this decoration are in the store-rooms of the Boulak Museum. They deserve more publicity than they have received. Most of them are purely decorative in character and bear designs of which an idea may be gained from three pieces of faience which are now in the British Museum. Two have graceful rosettes, while the third is covered with a pattern resembling a spider's web (Figs. 303-305).[371]
Figs. 303-305.—Enamelled earthenware plaques in the British Museum.
Certain buildings in Memphis seem to have been decorated in the same fashion. "The most curious thing brought by me from Mitrahineh," writes Jomard, "is a fragment of enamelled and sculptured terra-cotta, which probably belonged to a wall lined with that fine material. It is remarkable for the brilliant blue, the blue of the lapis-lazuli, which covers it.... The outlines of the hieroglyphs are as firm, and their edges as sharp as if they were the work of a skilful carver, and had never been subjected to the heat of a furnace. They are of blue stucco, inlaid into the body of the enamel. I look upon this kind of decoration as analogous to that of the Cairo divans, in which we see walls covered with earthenware tiles which are painted with various ornaments and subjects."[372] Now that attention has been attracted to this kind of decoration, traces of it will no doubt be found at many other points of Ancient Egypt.[373]
These enamels were not always used upon stone or faience; their charming varieties of tone are also found upon wooden grounds. M. Maspero mentions as an example of this the fragments of a mummy case in the Turin Museum. An inscription upon the wood is surrounded by faience ornament of a very rich colour. Mariette also mentions bronzes in which the remains of enamel and of pietra dura inlays are yet to be seen.[374]
Enamel is glass coloured by means of a metallic oxide and spread thinly over a surface, with which it is combined by means of heat. The Egyptians must therefore have understood the manufacture of glass at a very early date. It is represented in the paintings at Beni-Hassan.[375] Workmen are shown crouched by a fire and blowing glass bottles by means of a hollow cane, exactly as they do to this day. This industry continued to flourish in Egypt down to the Roman epoch. The glass manufacturers of Alexandria told Strabo that Egypt possessed a peculiar vitrifiable earth, without which the magnificent works in many-coloured glass could not be executed.[376] It is generally supposed that this "earth" was soda. The Venetians of the middle ages imported the soda required for their glass-making from Alexandria. It is said that Egyptian soda is the best known. It comes from the ashes of a plant called by botanists Mesem Bryanthemum copticum.[377]
Vessels of Egyptian glass are to be found in most museums, which recall those of Venice by their bands and fillets of brilliant colours. As for ordinary glass it seems never to have been quite transparent and colourless; it was always tinged with green and slightly opaque. It was upon their productions in colour that the fame of the Egyptian glass-makers depended. They produced vases, cups, pateræ, goblets, beads and other ornaments for necklaces and bracelets, amulets and everything else that the material would allow, in prodigious quantities, both for domestic consumption and for exportation. At one time mummies were covered with a kind of garment composed of multitudinous strings of beads.
Statuettes, such as the two figured below, were also made of glass. The larger of the two, which still has the hook, by which it was suspended, in its head, is entirely covered with parti-coloured ornaments similar to those shown upon its right shoulder. Our draughtsman at Boulak had no time to finish the drawing he had begun, and we have reproduced it in its actual condition rather than omit it or have it completed in any degree conjecturally. The details given afford a sufficiently good idea of the motives employed by the Egyptian artist. The ornamentation of the other figure is more simple (Fig. 307), but the attitude is the same. There are two colours on the very well modelled head which acts as tail-piece to the Introduction in our first volume. The globe of the eye and its contours stand out in black against the yellow of the flesh. The wig is also black.
Fig. 306.—Glass statuette. Boulak. Actual size.
Fig. 307.—Glass statuette. Boulak. Actual size.
Nothing can have been more surprising to the ancient traveller who set foot upon the soil of Egypt for the first time, than the vast number of these objects in coloured glass and in green or blue faience. They appeared everywhere; upon the walls of buildings and upon the persons of their inhabitants, upon every article which helped to furnish tombs or temples, palaces or private houses. Everything shone with the brilliant colours of this enamel, whose unchanging brightness was so grateful to a southern eye. It harmonized to perfection with the whiteness of the fine linen worn by the richer classes of Egyptians, and formed happy combinations with the rich red and blue fringes which bordered their robes and girdles. Enamel was much more easily cleaned than cloth. When it was tarnished by dust or dirt, a few drops of water would restore all its brightness. The lavish employment of such a material doubtless did much to give the persons of the Egyptians and their dwellings that neat and smiling aspect which so charmed foreign visitors. Herodotus tells us that one of the features which most strongly warned the traveller that he was in the presence of a very ancient and refined civilization, was the national passion for a cleanliness that was almost too fastidious, for fine linen constantly renewed, for frequent ablutions, for the continual use of the razor. A nation dressed in spotless white, shaved, circumcised and continually washed, afforded a curious contrast to shaggy barbarians clothed in wool that was dirty with long usage. Even in the time of Herodotus more than one tribe of Greek mountaineers was still in existence, that hardly differed in habits and costume from those early ancestors of the Hellenes who, as Homer tells us, "slept upon the bare ground and never washed their feet."
Egypt had, perhaps, her age of stone. MM. Hamy and François Lenormant have called attention to the cut and polished flints which have been found in Egypt, and Mariette brought a whole series of them to the Universal Exhibition of 1878. Mariette, however, was careful to remark that some of these flint implements, exactly similar in appearance to those found in the open air, were discovered in the tombs, among the mummies.[378]
These flint knives, therefore, are not necessarily anterior to the commencement of Egyptian history, that is to say to the first dynasties mentioned by Manetho. Moreover, Herodotus tells us that it was with a flint knife that the Egyptian embalmer made his first incision upon the corpse entrusted to him.[379] It would, then, be difficult to distinguish between prehistoric flint objects and those which belong to the civilization whose remains we are now studying, while our examination of the latter leads us quite as deeply into the past as we desire to go.
Even under the earliest dynasties the Egyptians were metal-workers.
Several bronze objects are in existence which date at least from the end of the Ancient Empire,[380] and in the bas-reliefs of the tomb of Ti, we see smiths directing the flame, by means of long tubes, upon the block of metal which they are forging (Fig. 21, Vol. I.). This is a kind of elementary blow-pipe, such as those still used by certain savage tribes.
The Egyptians began by making use of pure copper, which they could obtain from Sinai and other mines within easy reach. Various indications allow us to conclude that they were long ignorant of the fact that by mixing it with a little tin its hardness could be enormously increased.[381] In any case, they had certainly discovered the secret during the fifth, or, at latest, the sixth, dynasty. As to where they found the tin, we can say nothing positively. No deposit of that metal is known either in Egypt or in the neighbouring countries. It may possibly have come from India, passing through various hands on its way. In later years the Phœnicians brought it from Spain and the southern shores of Britain. The metal must then have become common enough, and it was used in large quantities by the Egyptian founders. Thus when the pavement of the room in the north-western corner of the Temple of Rameses III. at Medinet-Abou was raised, nearly a thousand bronze statues, all representing Osiris, were found. The existence of this deposit bears witness to the Egyptian habit of sanctifying the site of a new temple by sowing it broad-cast with sacred images.[382]
Bronze was employed for all kinds of domestic purposes. The graceful mirror-handle reproduced below (Fig. 308) is in the Boulak Museum. So too, are the bronze hair-pin (Fig. 309) and the curiously designed dagger (Fig. 310).
The analysis of various specimens of Egyptian bronze shows that the proportion of tin which it contained was not constant. It varies from about five to fifteen per cent.[383] Traces of iron are also found in it.
Fig. 308.—Mirror-handle.Fig. 308.—Mirror-handle.
Fig. 309.—Bronze hair-pin.
Fig. 310.—Bronze dagger.
The date at which this last named metal was introduced into the country is still matter of dispute. Various facts brought together by Dr. Birch, lead us to think that the Egyptians were acquainted with iron at least as soon as the commencement of the Theban supremacy,[384] but it would seem that they always made a greater use of bronze.
The word that signifies gold appears in the oldest inscriptions, and in the pictures at Beni-Hassan contemporary with the twelfth dynasty the whole process of making gold ornaments is represented.[385] From that time onward the Egyptian Pharaohs caused the veins of quartz in the mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea to be worked; they also obtained large supplies of the precious metal from Ethiopia. Silver came from Asia. It seems to have been rarer than gold, at least during the last centuries of the monarchy. As Belzoni remarked, while gold is lavished upon the mummies and upon all the sepulchral furniture about them silver is only met with in exceptional cases.[386] In 1878, Mariette exhibited in Paris five massive patera-shaped silver vases, which, from the style of their ornaments, he attributed to the Saite epoch.
The finest specimens of Egyptian jewelry now extant belong to the three great Theban dynasties. We may give as instances the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, which are among the most precious treasures of the Boulak Museum,[387] and those found in the tomb of Kha-em-uas, son of Rameses II. These are in the Louvre. The splendid breast ornament figured on the opposite page (Fig. 311), is one of them. It is made of lapis-lazuli and gold, and is thus described by M. Pierret: "Jewel in the form of a naos, in which a vulture and an uræus are placed side by side; above them floats a hawk with extended wings; in his claws are seals, the emblems of eternity. Under the frieze of the naos an oval with the prenomen of Rameses II. is introduced. Two tet are placed in the lower angles of the frame."[388] These jewels were funerary in character. They consist of a little chapel in the middle of which there is usually a scarab—emblem of transformation and immortality—adoring the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. They are called pectorals because they were placed upon the bosoms of the dead. Great numbers of them have been found in the tombs, in metal, in wood, and in earthenware; few, however, are as rich as that of Kha-em-uas. Each compartment of the golden frame-work is filled in either with coloured glass or with a piece of some pietra dura with a rich hue of its own.
Fig. 311.—Pectoral. Actual size. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
In the same case as this pectoral there are two golden hawks incrusted in the same fashion, which may have belonged to a similar jewel. The larger of the two (Fig. 312) has a ram's head.[389] There is a necklace about its throat, and in its talons it grasps a pair of seals, the symbols of reproduction and eternity. The same emblem is held by the smaller hawk (Fig. 313), whose wings form a large crescent.[390]
Fig. 312.—Golden Hawk. Actual size. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
Fig. 313.—Golden Hawk. Actual size. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
Living forms are interpreted in a less conventional fashion in the little monuments which are known as ægides, on account of their shape. This may be seen by reference to one recently acquired by the Louvre (Fig. 314). The name of an Osorkhon of the twenty-second dynasty and that of Queen Ta-ti-bast are on the back. At the top appears the lion-head of the goddess Sekhet, modelled with great skill and freedom, and supported on each side by the head of a hawk; below these comes a plate of gold, entirely covered with fine engraving. A seated figure with expanded wings forms a centre for numerous bands of ornament in which the open flower of the lotus is combined with its buds and circular leaves.
Necklaces are also very rich and various in design. Fig. 315 is the restoration of one which exists in a dislocated state in one of the cases of the Louvre. It is formed of glass beads in four rows, below which hangs a row of pendants, probably charms. The tet, the god Bes, the oudja or symbolic eye, &c., are to be distinguished among them.
Fig. 314.—Ægis. Louvre. Actual size. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
The beautiful group of Osiris, Isis, and Horus deserves to rank as a work of sculpture (Fig. 316). These little figures are of gold. Osiris is crouching between the other two deities on a pedestal of lapis-lazuli, which bears the name of Osorkhon II. The inscription upon the base consists of a religious benediction upon the same Pharaoh. These little figures are finely executed, and the base upon which the group stands is incrusted with coloured glass.
We have already reproduced specimens of finger rings (Figs. 241 and 243), and the additional examples on page 387 will help to show how varied were their form. Many of these little articles have moveable or rotating stones upon which figures or inscriptions are engraved. Some have this merely upon a flattened or thickened part of the ring, which, again, is sometimes double (Fig. 318). Ear-rings of many different forms have been found; they are ornamented with little figures in relief (Figs. 319 and 320).
Some writers have spoken of the cloisonné enamels of Egypt. This expression is inaccurate, as Mariette has observed.[391] There are certainly cloisons in many of the jewels above described—such as the pectoral and the two hawks—cloisons made up of thin ribs of silver or gold, but these compartments are not combined by firing with the material used to fill them. Where the Chinese place enamel the Egyptians inserted fragments of coloured glass or of such stones as the amethyst, cornelion, lapis-lazuli, turquoise, jasper, &c. The work was not passed through an oven after the insertion of these colouring substances; it was therefore rather a mosaic than an enamel in the proper sense of the term. By an analagous process bronze was damascened with gold and silver, threads of these two metals being inserted in prepared grooves and hammered into place. Mariette has called attention to several bronzes at Boulak thus inlaid with gold,[392] and in the Louvre there is a graceful little sphinx marked with the cartouche of Smendes, which is damascened with silver.
The Egyptians were also workers in ivory, which was obtained in large quantities from Ethiopia. Sometimes they were content with carving it (Fig. 322), sometimes they engraved upon it with the point and then filled in the design with black, giving it a forcible relief (Fig. 323). The ivory plaque from Sakkarah reproduced in Fig. 321, deserves to be studied for its technical method, although it dates from the Greek period. The blacks shown in our woodcut are produced in the original by filling up with mastic the hollows made with the point.
Famous sculptors were especially fond of working in ivory. Iritesen speaks as follows upon a stele translated by M. Maspero:—"Ah! there is no one who excels at this work except myself and the eldest of my legitimate sons. God decided that he should excel, and I have seen the perfection of his handiwork as an artist, as the chief of those who work in precious stones, in gold, silver, ivory and ebony."[393]
Fig. 315.—Necklace. Louvre. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
Fig. 316.—Osiris, Isis, and Horus.
No traces of amber have been discovered in Egypt, and Egyptologists tell us that no word for it is to be found in the language.
Figs. 317, 318.—Rings. Louvre.
Figs. 319, 320.—Ear-rings. Louvre.
A complete idea of Egyptian jewelry and work in the precious metals cannot be given without colour; without its assistance the brilliance, softened into completest harmony by the action of time, which distinguishes the objects of which we have now been speaking, can only be guessed at. Our best advice to those who wish to thoroughly appreciate their beauty, is to examine them in the museums where they are exposed. But even in the black and white of our draughtsman the excellent taste which animated the Egyptian jeweller may be fairly estimated. Other races, the Greeks, for instance, gave more lightness and a more refined grace to their trinkets, but our familiarity with their productions does not prevent us from recognizing the nobility and amplitude of these designs. Their originality, too, is strongly brought out by their affinity to the style and decoration of the great national buildings; we might almost be tempted to think that their designs and colour compositions were supplied by architects.
Fig. 321.—Ivory Plaque. Boulak.
The same characteristics are to be recognized on the vases figured in the royal tombs at Thebes.[394] They are coloured yellow and blue, and both their form and tint forbid us to suppose that they were of any material but metal, of gilt bronze or gold, or of silver. Incrustations in enamel or coloured pietra dura relieve the monotony of the metal surface. Some of these pieces seem to have been very large. Their decoration and design is rich and complex. Flowers and half-opened buds, lions' heads, masks of Bes and of negroes, birds, sphinxes, etc., are introduced. We may presume that such objects were made for presentation to the gods and preservation in treasure-houses; few of them could have been put to any practical use. The great men of Egypt followed the example of Pharaoh in enriching the temples. The stele of Neb-oua, chief prophet of Osiris in the reign of Thothmes III., runs thus: "I have consecrated numerous gifts in the temple of my father Osiris; in silver, in gold, in lapis-lazuli, in copper, and in all kinds of precious stones."[395]
Fig. 322.—Ivory Castanet. Louvre.
Fig. 323.—Fragment of an Ivory Castanet. Louvre.
The Egyptians made great use of wood. Under the Ancient Empire it furnished the material for all their lighter constructions, to which, by the help of colour, great variety and cheerfulness was imparted. Even in those early ages the cabinet-maker or joiner endeavoured to make his work artistic. Various articles of furniture had their feet carved into the shape of lions' paws, or the hoofs of oxen.[396] To judge from certain stone objects preserved in the mastabas, wood, which was comparatively easy to work, must have afforded the material for those skilfully-made and complex pieces of furniture whose forms are preserved for us by paintings from the Theban epoch.[397]
In these pictures the labours of the carpenter (Fig. 324), and those of the cabinet-maker (Fig. 325) are often represented. The specimens of furniture in our modern museums are mostly of a commonplace character, but they are interesting from the light they throw upon the methods of the Egyptian joiners (Fig. 326). The richness and elaboration of Egyptian furniture under the great Theban dynasties can only be estimated from the paintings. We have already seen that their musical instruments were elaborately decorated; the harp of the famous minstrel figured on page 345 is entirely covered with incrustations, and its foot is ornamented with a bust of graceful design. In this luxurious age the arts of the cabinet-maker must have been carried to a great height. The interior of an ancient Egyptian house must have been very different from the bareness which greets a visitor to the modern East. Chairs with or without arms, tables of varied form, folding seats, foot-stools, brackets supporting vases of flowers, cabinets in which objects of value were locked up, filled the rooms. The upper classes of Egypt lived a life that was refined and elegant as well as civilized. A great lord of the time of a Thothmes or a Rameses was not content, like a Turkish bey or pacha, with a divan, a few carpets, and a mattress which, after being locked up in a cupboard during the day, is spread upon the floor for his accommodation at night. He had his bedstead, often inlaid with metal or ivory, and, like a modern European, he had other articles of furniture besides.
Fig. 324.—Workman splitting a piece of wood. Gournah. From Champollion.
Fig. 325.—Joiner making a bed. From Champollion.
Several pictures are extant in which Egyptian receptions—Egyptian salons—are represented. The company is not crouched upon the earth, in the modern Oriental fashion. Both men and women are seated upon chairs, some of which have cushioned seats and backs.[398]
Fig. 326.—Coffer for sepulchral statuettes. Louvre.
The elegance of these seats may be guessed from the two examples on the next page, one from the tomb of Rameses III. (Fig. 327), the other from that of Chamhati (Fig. 328). They are both royal chairs, or thrones. The smaller chair figures among a number of things presented by Chamhati to his master, Pharaoh, and we need feel no surprise that among the supports of both these pieces of furniture, those crouching prisoners which became about this time such a common motive in Egyptian ornament, are to be found. In the one example, they are incorporated with the carved members which support the seat, in the other they are inserted between the legs, which are shaped respectively like the fore and hind quarters of a lion. Each arm terminates in a lion's head. A crowned, winged, and hawk-headed uræus, some lotus-flowers, and a sphinx with a vanquished enemy beneath his paws, are carved upon either side of the chair. The scheme of decoration as a whole is a happy combination of æsthetic beauty with allusions to the power and success of the king.
Fig. 327.—Chair. From the Description.
Fig. 328.—Chair. From Prisse.
These elaborate pieces of furniture are only known to us by the paintings, but when we turn to articles of a less ambitious description, such as toys and what are called bimbeloterie in French, and, rather helplessly, "fancy articles" in English, we have many fine specimens to turn to. Of these the most conspicuous are those perfume spoons whose handles so often embody charming motives. The more simple examples are ornamented merely with the buds or open flowers of the lotus (Fig. 329). Others, however, have beautifully carved figures. In Fig. 330 we see a young woman picking a lotus bud. Several stalks crowned with open flowers support the bowl, which is shaped like that of a modern spoon, except that its narrow end is turned towards the handle. The attitude and expression of this little figure are very good. The right foot, which is thrust forward, only touches the ground by the toes. The water in which she is about to step may hide sharp flints or unkindly roots, and, with commendable prudence, she begins by testing the bottom. Her legs are bare, because she has raised her garment well above the knee before descending into the marsh. Her carefully plaited hair and her crimped petticoat show that her social condition is good.
Another spoon shows us a musician between stems of papyrus. She stands upright upon one of those boats which were used in the papyrus-brakes (Fig. 331). Her instrument is a long-handled guitar. The musician herself seems to have been one of those dancers and singers whose condition was pretty much the same in ancient as in modern Egypt. Her only garment is a short petticoat knotted about her waist. The bowl of this spoon is rectangular.
Fig. 329.—Perfume Spoon. Boulak. Drawn by Bourgoin.
Another common motive is that of a girl swimming. She is represented at the moment when her stroke is complete; her upper and lower limbs are stretched out to their full extent so as to offer the least possible resistance to the water (Fig. 257). There is a perfume-box in the Louvre which is supported on a figure contrasting strongly with the last described. The box is shaped like a heavy sack, and is supported upon the right shoulder of a slave, who bends beneath its weight. By the thick lips, flat nose, heavy jaw, low forehead, and closely-shaven, sugar-loaf head, we may recognize this as yet another of those caricatures of prisoners which we have already encountered in such numbers.[399] A perfume-box at Boulak should also be mentioned. It is in the shape of a goose turning its head backwards. Its wings open and give access to the hollow of the box.
This desire to ornament even the most apparently insignificant objects of domestic use was universal. The sticks which are shown in the bas-reliefs in the hands of almost every Egyptian of good social position, were generally provided with a more or less richly ornamented head. The simplest terminate in a handle which appears to be modelled after the leaf of the lotus, as it rises above the level of the water, and, before opening to the full expansion, forms an obtuse angle with the stalk which supports it (Fig. 332). Other sticks of a similar shape have an eye painted upon them (Fig. 333). Sometimes the handle is shaped like a lotus-flower surmounted by an oval knob (Fig. 334). Wooden pins have been found with the head of a jackal or some other animal carved upon them (Fig. 335).