[233] Mariette, Itinéraire, p. 246.

[234] Ch. Blanc, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, p. 265.

[235] Antiquités, vol. ii. p. 110.

[236] Maspero, Études sur quelques Peintures Funéraires. Mariette, in describing this bas-relief (Notice du Musée, No. 903), observes that these funeral dances are still in vogue in most of the villages of Upper Egypt. The bas-reliefs from Sakkarah could not, however, as he says, render the piercing shrieks with which these dances are accompanied.

[237] Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien. Text, p. 418. This bas-relief has also been reproduced by Mariette, Monuments Divers, pl. 68.

[238] Some of our illustrations allow the justice of this observation to be easily verified (Figs. 172, 253, and 254, Vol. I.). In one of these the porters and in another the prisoners of war seem to be multiplied by some mechanical process. A glance through the Denkmæler of Lepsius leaves a similar impression. We may mention especially plates 34, 35, 175, 125, and 135 of the third Part.

[239] So, at Dayr-el-Bahari the decorator has taken pains to give accurate reproductions of the fauna and flora of Punt. See the plates of Mariette (Dayr-el-Bahari) and the remarks of Prof. Ebers (Ægypten, vol. ii. p. 280).

[240] Ch. Blanc, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, p. 74, pl. 31.

[241] Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. i. p. 72. Plates 23 and 24.

[242] Champollion makes the same remark (Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie, p. 326).

[243] Ch. Blanc, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, p. 178.

[244] Gab. Charmes, De la Réorganisation du Musée de Boulak.—Mariette, Notice, No. 22.

[245] Louvre. Ground-floor gallery, No. 24.

[246] Ch. Blanc, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, p. 153.

[247] Mariette, Notice, No. 20.

[248] Mariette, Notice, No. 866. There is a cast of this statue in the Louvre, but, like that of the statue of Chephren, which forms a pendant to it, it has been coloured to the hue of fresh butter and the result is most disagreeable. Even when placed upon a cast from an alabaster figure this colour is bad enough, but when the cast is one from a statue in diorite, like that of Chephren, it is quite inexcusable. It would have been better either to have left the natural surface of the plaster or to have given to each cast a colour which should in some degree recall that of the originals and mark the difference between them.

[249] For the meaning of this word see Pierret, Dictionnaire, &c.

[250] For illustrations of this statue and an explanation of the name here given to it, see Birch, Gallery of Antiquities, London, 4to.—Ed.

[251] Mariette, Notice du Musée de Boulak, No. 385.

[252] Notice, Nos. 196-7.

[253] Ibid., Nos. 105-15.

[254] The Boulak Museum possesses a very fine scarab which shows Nechao between Isis and Neith, one of whom hands him a mace and the other a small figure of Mentou-Ra, the God of Battles. Two chained prisoners are prostrate at the base of the scarab. Mariette, Notice, No. 556.

[255] Pierret, Catalogue de la Salle Historique, No. 269.

[256] De Rougé, Notice Sommaire, p. 59.

[257] It would appear that wood-carving was never so popular in Egypt as it was under the Second Theban Empire. The numerous wooden statues which fill our museums date from that period. We have given an example of them in Fig. 50, Vol. I.

[258] Mariette, Notice du Musée, Nos. 386 and 387. Mariette seems to estimate these two statuettes far too highly.

[259] De Rougé, Notice des Monuments Exposés au Rez-de-chaussée, No. 91.

[260] De Rougé, Notice des Monuments Exposés au Rez-de-chaussée, No. 94.

[261] Ibidem, No. 88.

[262] Mariette, Notice du Musée, Nos. 35-6.

[263] Mariette, Notice du Musée, No. 18.

[264] Mariette, Notice du Musée, p. 16. See also his Catalogue Général, c. i.

[265] Mariette (Karnak, p. 15) calculated that this temple, whose major axis from the pylon to the sanctuary hardly exceeded 300 feet in length, must have contained 572 statues, all in black granite, and differing but little in size and execution. If placed in rows against the walls, and here and there in a double row, their elbows would almost have touched one another. The first and second courts, and the two long corridors which bound the temple to the east and west, were full of them. One of these figures is represented in our Fig. 39, Vol. I.

[266] Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. ii. p. 25.

[267] Maspero, Annuaire de l'Association des Études Grecques, 1877, p. 132.

[268] See the often-quoted story of a voyage taken by a statue of Khons to the country of Bakhtan and its return to Egypt. De Rougé, Étude sur un Stèle Égyptienne appartenant à la Bibliothèque Nationale, 8vo, 1856.

[269] Mariette, Karnak, p. 36. See also his Abydos, Catalogue Général, § 2, p. 27.

[270] Maspero, in the Monuments de l'Art Antique of Rayet.

[271] Description, Antiquités, vol. iii. p. 41.

[272] Mariette, Notice du Musée, No. 1010.

[273] At Tell-el-Amarna we find the lion marching by the side of the king (Lepsius, Denkmæler, vol. vi. pl. 100).

[274] Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. ii. p. 9.

[275] Upon the significance of the sphinx and its different varieties, see Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, etc. vol. iii. pp. 308-312. Wilkinson brings together on a single plate (vol. ii. p. 93) all the fantastic animals invented by the Egyptians. See also Maspero, Mémoire sur la Mosaïque de Palestrine (Gazette Archéologique, 1879).

[276] Maspero, Les Peintures des Tombeaux Égyptiens et la Mosaïque de Palestrine, p. 82 (Gazette Archéologique, 1879).

[277] See also Lepsius, Denkmæler, part ii. pl. 11, and a tomb at El Kab (Eilithyia). Mariette (Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, plate 6 and page 37) cites, as a curious example of a bolder relief than usual, the scenes sculptured upon the tomb of Sabou, especially the picture showing the servants of the defunct carrying a gazelle upon their shoulders.

[278] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. iii. p. 42.

[279] Belzoni (Narrative of the Operations, etc. pp. 343-365) mentions the presence of this stucco upon the colossi of Rameses at Ipsamboul as well as on the walls of the tombs in the Bab el-Molouk.

[280] This point is very well brought out by Rhind (Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, etc., pp. 24-25).

[281] M. Maspero was the first to start this theory in his paper entitled Les Peintures des Tombeaux Égyptiens et la Mosaïque de Palestrine.

[282] Birch, Guide to (British) Museum, pp. 70-74.—Pierret, Catalogue de la Salle Historique, Nos. 457, 559, passim.

[283] M. Soldi remarks, in connection with the Mexicans, that they managed to cut the hardest rocks and to engrave finely upon the emerald with nothing but bronze tools. Prescott and Humboldt bear witness to the same fact. The Peruvians also succeeded in piercing emeralds without iron. Their instrument is said to have been the pointed leaf of a wild plantain, used with fine sand and water. With such a tool the one condition of success was time (Les Arts Méconnus, pp. 352-359).

[284] Pierret, Catalogue de la Salle Historique, No. 457.

[285] A description of it will be found in Champollion, Notice Descriptive des Monuments Égyptiens du Musée Charles X., 2nd edition, 1827, D. No. 14, p. 55.

[286] P. Pierret, Une Pierre Gravée au Nom du Roi d'Égypte Thoutmès II. (Gazette Archéologique, 1878, p. 41). This stone is placed in Case P of the Salle Historique in the Louvre. M. Lenormant has kindly placed at our disposal the clichés of the double engraving which was made for M. Pierret's article.

[287] Pierret, Catalogue de la Salle Historique, No. 481.

[288] Genesis xli. 42.

[289] Birch, History of Ancient Pottery, p. 72. Pierret, Catalogue de la Salle Historique du Louvre, Nos. 499, 500, 505.

[290] In turning over the leaves of Champollion we have found but two exceptions to this rule. In the Temple of Seti, at Gournah, that king is shown, in a bas-relief, in the act of brandishing his mace over the heads of his prisoners. The group is the usual one, but in this case two of the vanquished are shown in full face (pl. 274). At the Ramesseum, also, one man in a long row of prisoners is shown in a similar attitude (pl. 332).

[291] Ch. Blanc, Grammaire des Arts du Dessin, p. 469.

[292] For other conventional methods, of a similar though even more remarkable kind but of less frequent occurrence, see Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, etc., vol. ii. p. 295. The same ruling idea is found in those groups in the funerary bas-reliefs, which show husband and wife together. The wife's arm, which is passed round the body of the husband, is absurdly long (Lepsius, Denkmæler, part 11, plates 13, 15, 91, 105, etc.; and our Figs. 164 and 165, Vol. I.). This is because the sculptor wished to preserve the loving gesture in question without giving up the full view of both bodies to which his notions committed him. One could not be allowed to cover any part of the other, they could not even be brought too closely together. They were placed, therefore, at such a distance apart that the hand which appears round the husband's body is too far from the shoulder with which it is supposed to be connected.

[293] Our Fig. 217 gives another instance of the employment of this method, and even in the time of the Ancient Empire the idea had occurred to the Egyptian artists (Fig. 201).

[294] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part ii. pl. 47 and 61.

[295] Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, etc., vol. ii. p. 88.

[296] M. Émile Soldi (La Sculpture Égyptienne) tells us that during the reign of Napoleon III. such representations of the Emperor as were not taken from the portrait by Winterhalter were forbidden to be recognized officially.

[297] Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, p. 272.

[298] Émile Soldi, La Sculpture Égyptienne, 1 vol. 8vo, 1876, copiously illustrated. (Ernest Leroux.)

[299] See the note of M. Chabas, "Sur le nom du fer chez les Anciens Égyptiens." (Comptes Rendus de L'Académie des Inscriptions, January 23, 1874.)

[300] Certain alloys, however, have recently been discovered which give a hardness far above that of ordinary bronze. The metal of the Uchatius gun, which has been adopted by Austria, is mixed, for instance, with a certain quantity of phosphorus.

[301] Soldi, Les Arts Méconnus, p. 492. (1 vol. 8vo, Leroux, 1881.)

[302] It has escaped M. Perrot's notice that one is left-handed.—Ed.

[303] Upon the different kinds of chisels used by the Egyptian sculptors, see Soldi, La Sculpture Égyptienne, pp. 53 and 111. He includes the toothed chisel and the gouge.

[304] This man's attitude, the shape of the tool in question, and the general significance of the composition, seem rather to suggest that he is giving the final polish to the surface of the statue. Compare him with the pschent-polisher in Fig. 252.—Ed.

[305] E. Soldi, La Sculpture Égyptienne, pp. 41, 42.

[306] M. Ch. Blanc had a glimmering of the great influence exercised over the plastic style of Egypt by the hieroglyphs; see his Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, p. 354.

[307] Dictionnaire de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts, under the word Canon.

[308] These researches are described in the chapter entitled Des Proportions du Corps Humain of M. Ch. Blanc's Grammaire des Arts du Dessin, p. 38.

[309] Diodorus, i. 98, 5-7.

[310] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part iii. plate 12.

[311] Ibid. plate 78. It is in this division into nineteen parts that M. Blanc finds his proof that the medius of the extended hand was the canonical unit. (Grammaire, &c. p. 46.)

[312] At Karnak, in the granite apartments. See Charles Blanc, Voyage de la Haute-Égypte, p. 232. Two figures upon the ceiling of a tomb at Assouan are similarly divided.

[313] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part iii. p. 282.

[314] Ebers, Ægypten, vol. ii. p. 54. Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, text, pp. 124-128.

[315] Lepsius, Ueber einige Kuntsformen, p. 9. Birch, in Wilkinson's Manners and Customs, vol. ii. Lepsius, Denkmæler, part ii. pl. 9, p. 270, note 3.

[316] Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien.

[317] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part iii. pl. 70.

[318] Ibid. plate 152.

[319] Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, text, p. 123. Lepsius, Denkmæler, pl. 65.

[320] Upon the preparation of the bas-relief, see Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations, etc. p. 175.

Prisse gives several interesting examples of these corrected designs, among others a fine portrait of Seti I. (Histoire, etc. vol. ii.)

Examples of these corrections are to be found in sculpture as well as in painting. Our examination of the sculptures at Karnak showed that the artist did not always follow the first sketch traced in red ink, but that as the work progressed he modified it, and allowed himself to be guided, to some extent, by the effects which he saw growing under his hands. The western wall of the hypostyle hall contains many instances of this. It is decorated with sculptures on a large scale, in which the lines traced by the chisel differ more or less from those of the sketch. (Description, Ant. vol. ii. p. 445.)

[321] Mariette, Notice du Musée, Nos. 623-688.

[322] Nos. 652-654 of the Notice du Musée.

[323] In the Boulak catalogue.

[324] Mariette, La Galerie de l'Égypte Ancienne à l'Éxposition du Trocadéro, pp. 69, 70.

[325] Ch. Blanc, Voyage de la Haute-Égypte, p. 99.

[326] E. Melchior de Vogüe, Chez les Pharaons.

[327] Vol. ii. plates 41, 66, and 70.

[328] Description, Antiquités, vol. iii. p. 45.

[329] Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, text, p. 289.

[330] Fuller details as to the composition of these colours are given in Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, text, pp. 292-295. A paper written by the father of Prosper Mérimée and printed by Passalacqua at the end of his Catalogue (pp. 258, et seq.) may also be consulted with profit; its full title is Dissertation sur l'Emploi des Couleurs, des Vernis, et des Émaux dans l'Ancienne Égypte, by M. Mérimée, Secrétaire Perpétuel de l'École Royale des Beaux-Arts. This paper shows that M. Mérimée added taste and a love for erudition to the talent as a painter which he is said to have possessed. Belzoni shows that the manufacture of indigo must have been practised by the ancient Egyptians by much the same processes as those in use to-day (Narrative of the Operations, etc. p. 175). See also Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, etc. vol. ii. p. 287.

[331] Champollion, Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie, p. 130.

[332] Description, Ant. vol. iii. p. 44.

[333] Mérimée, Dissertation sur l'Emploi des Couleurs, p. 130.

[334] Mérimée, Dissertation, etc. Champollion uses the term gouache, body colour, in speaking of these paintings, but as the characteristic of that process is that every tint is mixed with white, there is some inaccuracy in doing so.

[335] Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, text, p. 291.

[336] Prisse, Histoire, etc. text, p. 291.

[337] Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, etc. vol. ii. p. 294.

[338] Herodotus, ii. 182.

[339] There are other exceptions to the ordinary rule. In a fine bas-relief in the Louvre, representing Seti I. before Hathor, the carnations of the goddess are similar to those of the Pharaoh; they are in each case dark red (basement room, B, 7).

[340] Champollion, Monuments de l'Égypte et de la Nubie, pl. 11. Blue was the regular colour for Amen when represented with a complete human form; when he was ram-headed he was generally painted green (see Champollion, Panthéon Égyptien, No. 1; Pierret, Dictionnaire Archéologique; and pl. 2, vol. i. of the present work).—Ed.

[341] Ibid. pl. 59.

[342] Ibid. plates 71, 76, 78, 91.

[343] Ibid. pl. 154.

[344] We place this portrait of Taia in our chapter on painting because its colour is exceptionally delicate and carefully managed (see Prisse, text, p. 421). The original is, however, in very low relief, so low that it hardly affects the colour values.

[345] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part iii. pl. 40, cf. pl. 116.

[346] Ibid. pl. 117.

[347] See the Ethiopians in the painting from the tomb of Rekmara, which is reproduced in Wilkinson, vol. i. plate 2.

[348] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part iii. pl. 216.

[349] The materials for this plate were borrowed from the Description de l'Égypte. In the complete copies of that work the plates were coloured by hand, with extreme care, after those fine water-colours the most important of which are now in the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliothèque Nationale. The colours thus applied are far nearer the truth than those of the chromo-lithographs in more modern publications.

[350] Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, text, p. 424.

[351] John Kenrick, Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, vol. i. pp. 269, 270.

[352] Prisse, Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, text, pp. 142, 143.

[353] Ibid. p. 144.