Fig. 200.—Funerary bas-relief; Sakkarah. Drawn by Bourgoin.
Fig. 201.—Bas-relief from the Tomb of Ti, Sakkarah.
Even in the earliest attempts that have come down to us, the Egyptian sculptor shows a complete grasp of the peculiar features of the domesticated animals of the country. Men accustomed to the careful study of the human figure could make light of rendering those of beasts, with their more striking distinctions between one species and another. In the time when the oldest existing tombs were constructed, the ass was already domesticated in Egypt. Then as now, he was the most indispensable of the servants of mankind. There were, in all probability, as many donkeys in the streets of Memphis under Cheops as there are now in Cairo under Tewfik. Upon the walls of the mastabas we see them trotting in droves under the cries and sticks of their drivers (Fig. 201), we see the foals, with their awkward gait and long pricked ears, walking by the sides of their mothers (Fig. 202), the latter are heavily laden and drag their steps; the drivers brandish their heavy sticks, but threaten their patient brutes much oftener than they strike them. This is still the habit of those donkey boys, who, upon the Esbekieh, naïvely offer you "M. de Lesseps' donkey." The bas-relief to which we are alluding consists only of a slight outline, but that outline is so accurate and full of character, that we have no difficulty in identifying the ass of Egypt, with his graceful carriage of the head and easy, brisk, and dainty motion.
The same artists have figured another of the companions of man with equal fidelity; namely, the deep-sided, long-tailed, long-horned, Egyptian ox. Sometimes he lies upon the earth, ruminating (Fig. 29, Vol. I.); sometimes he is driven between two peasants, the one leading him by a rope, the other bringing up the rear with a stick held in readiness against any outburst of self-will (Fig. 203). In another relief we see a drove advancing by the side of a canal, upon which a boat with three men is making way by means of pole and paddle. One herdsman walks in front of the oxen, another marches behind and urges them on by voice and gesture (Fig. 204). In another place we find a cow being milked by a crouching herdsman. She seems to lend herself to the operation in the most docile manner in the world, and we are inclined to wonder what need there is of a second herdsman who sits before her nose and holds one of her legs in both his hands. The precaution, however, may not be superfluous, an ox-fly might sting her into sudden movement, and then if there was no one at hand to restrain her, the milk, which already nears the summit of the pail, might be lost (Fig. 30, Vol. I.).
Fig. 202.—Bas-relief from the Tomb of Ti, Sakkarah.
By careful selection from the sepulchral bas-reliefs, we might, if we chose, present to our readers reproductions of the whole fauna of Ancient Egypt, the lion, hyena, leopard, jackal, fox, wolf, ibex, gazelle, the hare, the porcupine, the crocodile, the hippopotamus, the different fishes in the Nile, the birds in the marshes, the flamingo, the ibis, duck, stork, crane, and goose, the dog and the cat, the goat and the pig. Everywhere we find the same aptitude for summarizing the distinctive characteristics of a species. This accuracy of observation has been recognized by every connoisseur who has treated the subject. "In the Boulak Museum," says M. Gabriel Charmes, "there is a row of Nile geese painted with such precision, that I have seen a naturalist stand amazed at their truth to nature and the fidelity with which they reproduce the features of the race. Their colours, too, are as bright and uninjured as upon the day when they were last touched by the brush of the artist."[204]
Fig. 203.—Sepulchral bas-relief, Boulak.
Fig. 204.—Bas-relief from the Tomb of Ra-ka-pou, Boulak.
The figures of men and animals to which our attention has been given all belong to the domain of portraiture. The artist imitates the forms of those who sit to him and of the animals of the country; he copies the incidents of the daily life about him, but his ambition goes no farther. All art is a translation, an interpretation, and, of course, the sculptors of the mastabas had their own individual ways of looking at their models. But they made no conscious effort to add anything to them, they did not attempt to select, to give one feature predominance over another, or to combine various features in different proportions from those found in ordinary life, and by such means to produce something better than mere repetitions of their accidental models. They tried neither to invent nor to create.
And yet the Egyptians must have begun at this period to give concrete forms to their gods. In view of the hieroglyphs of which Egyptian writing consisted, we have some difficulty in imagining a time when the names of their deities were not each attached to a material image with well marked features of its own. To write the name of a god was to give his portrait, a portrait whose sketchy outlines only required to be filled in by the sculptor to be complete. Egypt, therefore, must have possessed images of her gods at a very early date, but as they were not placed in the tombs they have disappeared long before our day, and we are thus unable to decide how far the necessity for their production may have stimulated the imaginative faculties of the early sculptors. In presence, however, of the Great Sphinx at Gizeh, in which we find one of those composite forms so often repeated in later centuries, we may fairly suspect that many more of the divine types with which we are familiar had been established. The Sphinx proves that the primitive Egyptians were already bitten with the mania for colossal statues. Even the Theban kings never carved any figure more huge than that which keeps watch over the necropolis of Gizeh (Fig. 157, Vol. I.). But Egypt had other gods than these first-fruits of her reflective powers, than those mysterious beings who personified for her the forces which had created the world and preserved its equilibrium. She had her kings, children of the sun, present and visible deities who maintained upon the earth, and especially in the valley of the Nile, the ever-threatened order established by their divine progenitors. Until quite recently it was impossible to say for certain whether or no the Egyptians of the Ancient Empire had attempted to impress upon the images of their kings the national belief in their divine origin and almost supernatural power. But Mariette—again Mariette—recovered from the well in the Temple of the Sphinx at Gizeh, nine statues or statuettes of Chephren. The inscriptions upon the plinths of these statues enable us to recognize for certain the founder of the second pyramid.
Most of these figures were broken beyond recovery, but two have been successfully restored. One of these, which is but little mutilated, is of diorite (Fig. 205); the other, in a much worse condition, is of green basalt (Fig. 56, Vol. I.).[205]
An initial distinction between these royal statues and the portraits of private individuals is found in the materials employed. For subjects even of high rank, wood or limestone was good enough, but when the august person of the monarch had to be immortalized a substance which was at once harder and more beautiful was employed. The Egyptians had no marble, and when they wished to do particular honour to their models they made use of those volcanic rocks, whose close grain and dusky brilliance of tone make them resemble metal. The slowness and difficulty with which these dense rocks yielded to the tools of the sculptor increased the value of the result, while their hardness added immensely to their chances of duration. It would seem that figures which only took form under the tools of skilful and patient workmen after years of persevering labour might defy the attacks of time or of human enemies. Look at the statue on the next page. It is very different from the figures we have been noticing, although it resembles them in many details. Like many of his subjects the king is seated. His head, instead of being either bare or covered with the heavy wig, is enframed in that royal head-dress which has been known, ever since the days of Champollion, as the klaft.[206] It consists of an ample band of linen covering the upper part of the forehead, the cranium, and the nape of the neck. It stands out boldly on each side of the face, and hangs down in two pleated lappets upon the chest. The king's chin is not shaved like those of his subjects. It is adorned like that of a god with the long and narrow tuft of hair which we call the Osiride beard. At the back of Chephren's head, which is invisible in our illustration, there is a hawk, the symbol of protection. His trunk and legs are bare; his only garment is, in fact, the schenti about his middle. His left hand lies upon his knee, his right hand holds a rod of some kind. The details of the chair are interesting. The arms end in lions' heads, and the feet are paws of the same animal. Upon the sides are figured in high relief the two plants which symbolize the upper and lower country respectively; they are arranged around the hieroglyph sam, signifying union.
Fig. 205.—Statue of Chephren. Height five feet seven inches. Boulak. Drawn by G. Bénédite.
The other statue, which now consists of little more than the head and trunk, differs from the first only in a few details. The chair is without a back, and, curiously enough, the head is that of a much older man than the Chephren of the diorite statue. This difference makes it pretty certain that both heads were modelled directly from nature.
These royal statues are, then, portraits like the rest, but when in their presence we feel that they are more than portraits, that there is something in their individuality which could not have been rendered by photography or by casts from nature, had such processes been understood by their authors. In spite of the unkindly material the execution is as free as that of the stone figures. The face, the shoulders, the pectoral muscles, and especially the knees, betray a hand no less firm and confident than those which carved the softer rocks. The diorite Chephren excels ordinary statues in size—for it is larger than nature—in the richness of its throne, in the arrangement of the linen hood which gives such dignity to the head, in the existence of the beard which gives length and importance to the face. The artist has never lost sight of nature; he has never forgotten that it was his business to portray Chephren and not Cheops or Snefrou; and yet he has succeeded in giving to his work the significance of a type. He has made it the embodiment of the Egyptian belief in the semi-divine nature of their Pharaohs. By its size, its pose, its expression and arrangement he has given it a certain ideality. We may see in these two statues, for similar qualities are to be found in the basalt figure, the first effort made by the genius of Egyptian art to escape from mere realism and to bring the higher powers of the imagination into play.
The reign of those traditional forms which were to be so despotic in Egypt began at the same time. The type created by the sculptors of the fourth dynasty, or perhaps earlier, for the representation of the Pharaoh in all the mysterious dignity of his position, was thought satisfactory. The calm majesty of these figures, their expression of force in repose and of illimitable power, left so little to be desired that they were accepted there and thereafter. Centuries rolled away, the royal power fell again and again before foreign enemies and internal dissensions, but with every restoration of the national independence and of the national rulers, the old form was revived. There are variants upon it; some royal statues show Pharaoh standing, others show him sitting and endowed with the attributes of Osiris, but, speaking generally, the favourite model of the kings and of the sculptors whom they employed was that which is first made known to us by the statue of him to whom we owe the second pyramid. The only differences between it and the colossi of Amenophis III. at Thebes are to be found in their respective sizes, in their original condition, and in the details of their features.
The moulds in which the thoughts of the Egyptians were to receive concrete expression through so many centuries were formed, then, by their ancestors of the Ancient Empire. All the later revivals of artistic activity consisted in attempts to compose variations upon these early themes, to remodel them, with more or less felicity, according to the fashion of the day. Style and technical methods were modified with time, but types, that is the attitudes and motives employed to characterise the age, the mental power, and the social condition of the different persons represented, underwent little or no change.
This period of single-minded and devoted study of nature ought also to have transmitted to later times its care and skill in portraiture, and its realistic powers generally, to use a very modern phrase. Egyptian painters and sculptors never lost those qualities entirely; they always remained fully alive to the differences of conformation and physiognomy which distinguished one individual, or one class, from another; but as the models furnished by the past increased in number, their execution became more facile and superficial, and their reference to nature became less direct and continual. Neither the art of Thebes nor that of Sais seems to have produced anything so original and expressive as the two statues from Meidoum or the Sheik-el-beled, at Boulak, or the scribe in the Louvre.
We may easily understand what surprise and admiration the discovery of this early phase of Egyptian art excited among archæologists. When the exploration of the Memphite necropolis revealed what had up to that time been an unknown world, Nestor L'Hôte, one of the companions of Champollion, was the first to comprehend its full importance. He was not a savant; he was an intelligent and faithful draughtsman and his artistic nature enabled him to appreciate, even better than the illustrious founder of egyptology, the singular charm of an art free from convention and routine. In his letters from Egypt, Champollion showed himself impressed mainly by the grandeur and nobility of the Theban remains; L'Hôte, on the other hand, only gave vent to his enthusiasm when he had had a glimpse of one or two of those mastabas which were afterwards to be explored by Lepsius and Mariette. Writing of the tomb of Menofré, barber to one of the earliest Memphite kings, he says: "The sculptures of this tomb are remarkable for their elegance and the finesse of their execution. Their relief is so slight that it may be compared to that of a five-franc piece. Such consummate workmanship in a structure so ancient confirms the assertion that the higher we mount upon the stream of Egyptian civilization the more perfect do her works of art become. By this it would appear that the genius of the Egyptian people, unlike that of other races, was born in a state of maturity."[207]
"Of Egyptian art," he says elsewhere, "we know only the decadence." Such an assertion must have appeared paradoxical at a time when the Turin Museum already possessed, and exhibited, so many fine statues of the Theban kings. And yet Nestor L'Hôte was right, as the discoveries made since his time have abundantly proved, and that fact must be our excuse for devoting so large a part of our examination of Egyptian sculpture to the productions of the Ancient Empire.
After the sixth dynasty comes an obscure and barren period, whose duration and general character are still unknown to egyptologists. Order began to be re-established in the eleventh dynasty, under the Entefs and Menthouthoteps, but the monuments found in more ancient Theban tombs are rude and awkward in an extreme degree, as Mariette has shown.[208] It was not until the twelfth dynasty, when all Egypt was again united under the sceptre of the Ousourtesens and Amenemhats, that art made good its revival. It made use of the same materials—limestone, wood, and the harder rocks—but their proportions were changed. In Fig. 206 a wooden statue attributed to this period is reproduced. The legs are longer, the torso more flexible, than in the statue of Chephren and other productions of the early centuries.
Compared with their predecessors other statues of this period will be found to have the same characteristics. It has been asserted that the Egyptians, as a race, had become more slender from the effects of their warm and dry climate. It is impossible now to decide how much of the change may fairly be attributed to such a cause, and how much to a revolution in taste. Even among the figures of the Ancient Empire there are examples to be found of these slender proportions, but they certainly appear to have been in peculiar favour with the sculptors of the later epoch. Except in this particular, the differences are not very great. The attitudes are the same. See, for instance, the statue in grey sandstone of the scribe Menthouthotep, which was found by Mariette at Karnak and attributed by him to this epoch. Both by its pose and by the folds of fat which cross the front of the trunk, it reminds us of the figures of scribes left to us by the Ancient Empire. The nobler types also reappear. There is in the Louvre a statue in red granite representing a Sebek-hotep of the thirteenth dynasty (Fig. 207). He sits in the same attitude, with the same head-dress and the same costume, as the Chephren of Boulak. There is one difference, however, his forehead is decorated with the uræus, the symbol of royal dignity, which Chephren lacks.[209] The dimensions, too, are different. We do not know whether the Ancient Empire made colossal statues of its kings or not, but this Sebek-hotep exceeds the stature of mankind sufficiently to make it worthy of the name.
Fig. 206.—Wooden statue, Boulak. Drawn by Bénédite.
The Louvre possesses another monument giving a high idea of the taste of the sculptors belonging to this period, we mean the red-granite sphinx (Fig. 41, Vol. I.), which was successively appropriated by one of the shepherd kings and by a Theban Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty: the ovals of both are to be found upon it. Like so many other things from Tanis, this sphinx must date from a Pharaoh of the thirteenth dynasty. This De Rougé has clearly shown.[210] Tanis seems to have been a favoured residence of those princes, and most of their statues have been found in it. A leg in black granite, now in the Berlin Museum, is considered the masterpiece of these centuries. It is all that remains of a colossal statue of Ousourtesen.[211]
According to Mariette, many of those fine statues in the Turin Museum which bear the names of princes belonging to the eighteenth dynasty, Amenhoteps and Thothmeses, must have been made by order of the princes of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties. In later years they were appropriated, in the fashion well known in Egypt, by the Pharaohs of the Second Theban Empire, who substituted their cartouches for those of the original owners. On more than one of the statues signs of the operation may still be traced, and in other cases the usurpation may be divined by carefully studying the style and workmanship.[212]
It was in the ruins of the same city that Mariette discovered a group of now famous remains in which he himself, De Rougé, Devéria, and others, recognised works carried out by Egyptian artists for the shepherd kings. These works have an individual character which is peculiar to themselves.[213] They differ greatly from the ordinary type of Egyptian statues, and must have preserved the features of those foreign invaders whose memory was so long held in detestation in Egypt. This supposition is founded upon the presumed identity of Tanis with Avaris, the strong place which formed the centre of the Hyksos power for so many generations.
Fig. 207.—Sebek-hotep III. Colossal statue in red granite. Height nine feet. Louvre. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
Confirmation of this theory is found in the existence of an oval bearing the name of Apepi, one of the shepherd kings, upon the shoulder of a sphinx from Tanis. The aspect of this sphinx, and the features and costume of certain figures discovered upon the same site and dispersed among the museums of Europe, are said to have much in common with the ethnic peculiarities of the Syrian tribe by which Middle and Lower Egypt was occupied. M. Maspero, however, who has recently devoted fresh attention to these curious monuments, is inclined to doubt the justness of this conclusion. The position of the cartouche of Apepi suggests that it may be due to one of those usurpations which we have mentioned. For the present, therefore, it may be as well to class these monuments simply among the Tanite remains. Tanis, like some other Egyptian cities, had a style of its own, but we are without the knowledge required for a determination of its origin. We shall be content with describing its most important works and with calling attention to their remarkable originality.
The most important and the best preserved of all these monuments is a sphinx of black granite which was recovered, in a fragmentary condition, from the ruins of the principal temple at Tanis (Fig. 208). Three more were found at the same time, but they were in a still worse state of preservation. The fore-part of one of them is figured in the adjoining woodcut.
"There is a great gulf," says Mariette, "between the energetic power which distinguishes the head of this sphinx and the tranquil majesty with which most of these colossi are endowed. The face is round and rugged, the eyes small, the nose flat, the mouth loftily contemptuous. A thick lion-like mane enframes the countenance and adds to its energetic expression. It is certain that the work before us comes from the hands of an Egyptian artist, and, on the other hand, that his sitter was not of Egyptian blood."[214]
The group of two figures upon a common base, which is such a conspicuous object in the Hyksos chamber at Boulak, seems to have had a similar origin. We give a front and a side view of it (Figs. 210 and 211), and borrow the following description from Mariette.[215]
Fig. 208.—Sphinx in black granite; from Tanis. Drawn by G. Bénédite.
"Huge full-bottomed wigs, arranged into thick tresses, cover the heads of the two figures. Their hard and strongly-marked features (unfortunately much broken) bear a great resemblance to those of the lion-maned sphinxes. The upper lips are shaven but the cheeks and chins are covered with long wavy beards. Each of them sustains on his outstretched arms an ingenious arrangement of fishes, aquatic birds, and lotus flowers.
"No monument can be referred with greater certainty than this to the disturbed period when the Shepherds were masters of Egypt. It is difficult to decide upon its exact meaning. In spite of the mutilation which prevents us from ascertaining whether they bore the uræus upon their foreheads, it cannot be doubted that the originals of the two statues were kings. In after years Psousennes put his cartouche upon the group, which assuredly he would never have done if he believed it to represent two private individuals. But who could the two kings have been who were thus associated in one act and must therefore have been contemporaries?"
Fig. 209.—Head and shoulders of a Tanite Sphinx in black granite. Drawn by G. Bénédite.
This explanation seems to carry with it certain grave objections. It is not, in the first place, so necessary as Mariette seems to think that we should believe them to be kings. Similar objects—fishes, and aquatic flowers and birds—are grouped in the same fashion upon works which, to our certain knowledge, neither come from Tanism or date from the Shepherd supremacy. Their appearance indicates an offering to the Nile, and we can readily understand how Psousennes claimed the merit of the offering by inscribing his name upon it, even although he were not the real donor.
Mariette does not hesitate to ascribe to the same series a figure discovered in the Fayoum, upon the site of the city which the Greeks called Crocodilopolis (Fig. 212). He describes it thus:—[216]
"Upper part of a broken colossal statue, representing a king standing erect. No inscription.
"The general form of the head, the high cheek-bones, the thick lips, the wavy beard that covers the lower part of the cheeks, the curious wig, with its heavy tresses, are all worthy of remark; they give a peculiar and even unique expression to the face. The curious ornaments which lie upon the chest should also be noticed. The king is covered with panther skins; the heads of two of those animals appear over his shoulders.
Fig. 210.—Group from Tanis; grey sandstone. Drawn by Bourgoin.
Fig. 211.—Side view of the same group. Drawn by Bourgoin.
"The origin of this statue, which was found at Mit-fares in the Fayoum, admits of no doubt. The kings who decorated the temple at Tanis with the fine sphinxes and groups of fishermen which I found among its ruins, must also have transported the vigorous fragments which we have before our eyes to the other side of Egypt."
Finally, Devéria and De Rougé have suggested that a work of the same school is to be recognized in the fragment of a statuette of green basalt, which belongs to the Louvre and is figured upon page 237.[217] They point to similarities of feature and of race characteristics. The face of the Louvre statuette has a truculence of expression not unlike that of the Tanite monuments, while the workmanship is purely Egyptian and of the best quality; the flexibility of body, which is one of the most constant qualities in the productions of the first Theban Empire, being especially characteristic. The king represented wears the klaft with the uræus in front of it; his schenti is finely pleated and a dagger with its handle carved into the shape of a hawk's head is thrust into his girdle. The support at the back has, unfortunately, been left without the usual inscription and we have no means of ascertaining the age of the fragment beyond the style, the workmanship, and the very peculiar physiognomy. Devéria suggests that it preserves the features of one of the shepherd kings, some of whose images Mariette thought he had discovered at Tanis and in the Fayoum.[218]
Fig. 212.—Upper part of a royal statue. Grey granite. Boulak. Drawn by G. Bénédite.
It cannot be denied that there are many striking points of resemblance between the different works which we have here brought together. Mariette laid great stress upon what he regarded as one of his most important discoveries. This is his definition of the type which the Egyptian artist set himself to reproduce with his habitual exactness: "The eyes are small, the nose vigorous, arched, and flat at the end, the cheeks are large and bony, and the mouth is remarkable for the way in which its extremities are drawn down. The face as a whole is in harmony with the harshness of its separate features, and the matted hair in which the head seems to be sunk adds to the singularity of its appearance."[219]
Fig. 213.—Fragmentary statuette of a king; height seven inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
Both Mariette and Ebers declare that this type has been preserved to our day with astonishing persistence. In the very district in which the power of the shepherds was greatest, in the neighbourhood of that Lake Menzaleh which almost bathes the ruins of Tanis, the poor and half savage fishermen who form the population of the district possess the strongly marked features which are so easily distinguished from the rounder and softer physiognomies of the true Egyptian fellah. Ahmes must have been content with the expulsion of the chiefs only of those Semitic tribes who had occupied this region for so many centuries. The mass of the people must have been too strongly attached to the fertile lands where they dwelt to refuse obedience to the conqueror, and more than one immigration, like that of the Hebrews, may have come in later times to renew the Arab and Syrian characteristics of the race.[220]
Whatever we may think of these conjectures and assertions, the sculptors of the First Theban Empire and of the Hyksos period took up and carried on the traditions of the Ancient Empire. The processes are the same except that in a few particulars they are improved. More frequent use is made of the harder rocks such as granite, basalt, and diorite, and a commencement is made in the art of gem-cutting.
Even the bas-relief carries on the themes which had been in favour in the first years of the monarchy. We have already illustrated two steles of this period (Figs. 86 and 164, Vol. I.). In the second, and especially in the woman, may be noticed those elongated proportions which characterize the sculpture of the first Theban dynasties. Apart from the steles, which come mostly from Abydos, we have few bas-reliefs which may be referred to this epoch. The mastabas with their sculptured walls were no longer constructed, and the most interesting hypogea of the middle Empire, those of Beni-Hassan, were decorated with paintings only. The sepulchral grottos of El-Bercheh possess bas-reliefs dating from the twelfth dynasty, and the quality of their workmanship may be seen in our Fig. 43, Vol. II. The style is less free and more conventional than that of the mastabas. The men who haul upon the ropes and those who march in front of them, are all exact repetitions one of another, causing an effect which is very monotonous. The paintings of Beni-Hassan, which are freer and more full of variety, are more able to sustain a comparison with the decorations of the mastabas. Even then, however, we find too much generalization. Except in a few instances there is a less true and sincere feeling for nature, and a lack of those picturesque motives and movements caught flying, so to speak, by an artist who seems to be amused by what he sees and to take pleasure in reproducing it, which are so abundant in the mastabas.
The excavations at Tanis have helped us to understand many things upon which our information had been and still is very imperfect. We are no longer obliged to accept Manetho's account of the Shepherd invasion. In his desire to take at least a verbal revenge upon the conquerors of his country the historian seems to have greatly exaggerated their misdeeds. We know now not only that the native princes continued to reign in Upper Egypt, but also that the interlopers adopted, in the Delta, the manners and customs of their Egyptian subjects. So far as we can tell, there were neither destructions of monumental buildings nor ruptures with the national traditions. Thus the art of the three great Theban dynasties, from Ahmes to the last of the Rameses, seems a prolongation of that of the Ousourtesens and Sebek-hoteps. There are no appreciable differences in their styles or in their processes, but, as in their architecture, their works of art as a whole show an extraordinary development, a development which corresponds to the great and sudden increase in the power and wealth of the country. The warlike kings who made themselves masters of Ethiopia and of Western Asia, had aspirations after the colossal. Their buildings reached dimensions hitherto unknown, and while their vast wall spaces gave great opportunities to the sculptor they demanded efforts of invention and arrangement from him to which he had previously been a stranger. These great surfaces had to be filled with historic scenes, with combats, victories, and triumphal promenades, with religious scenes, with pictures of homage and adoration. The human figure in its natural size was no longer in proportion to these huge constructions. In order to obtain images of the king which should correspond to the extent and magnificence of the colonnades and obelisks, the slight excess over the real stature of human beings which contented the sculptors of the Ancient Empire was no longer sufficient. Whether they were cut, as at Ipsamboul, out of a mountain side, or, as at Thebes, Memphis, and Tanis out of a gigantic monolith, their proportions were all far beyond those of mankind. Sometimes the mortals who frequented the temples came nearly as high as their knees, but oftener they failed to reach their ankle-bones. The New Empire had a mania for these colossal figures. It sprinkled them over the whole country, but at Thebes they are more thickly gathered than elsewhere. In the immediate neighbourhood of the two seated statues of Amenophis III., the savants of the French Commission found the remains of fifteen more colossi.[221]
There were at least as many on the right bank. On the avenue leading through the four southern pylons at Karnak, the same explorers found twelve colossal monoliths, each nearly thirty-five feet high but all greatly mutilated, and the former existence of others was revealed to them by fragments scattered about the ground. They were able to reckon up eighteen altogether on this south side of the building.[222]
Similar stone giants peopled the other religious or political capitals of Egypt—Abydos, Memphis, Tanis, Sais, etc. The largest of all, however, are the colossi at Ipsamboul representing Rameses II. They are about seventy feet high. Among those cut from one enormous block brought from Syene or elsewhere, the best known are those of Amenophis III. at Thebes. They are fifty-two feet high without the pedestal. But the statue of Rameses II., which stood in the second court of the Ramesseum, must have been more than fifty-six feet high, as we may calculate from the fragments which remain. The head is greatly mutilated but the foot is over thirteen feet long.[223]
These statues were generally seated in the attitude which we have already described in speaking of Chephren and Sebek-hotep. Some, however, were standing, such as the colossal figure of Rameses which stood before the Temple of Ptah at Memphis. This figure, which is about forty-four feet high, is cut from a single block of very fine and hard limestone. It lies face downwards and surrounded by palm trees, in a depression of the soil near the village of Mitrahineh. In this position it is covered by the annual inundation. The English, to whom it belongs, have hitherto failed to take possession of it owing to the difficulty of transport, and yet it is one of the most careful productions of the nineteenth dynasty. The head is full of individuality and its execution excellent.
THE QUEEN TAIA
BOULAK MUSEUM
J. Bourgon del. Imp. Ch. Chardon Ramus sc.
In spite of their taste for these colossal figures, the Egyptian sculptors of this period rivalled their predecessors in the skill and sincerity with which they brought out their sitter's individuality. It was not, perhaps, their religious beliefs which imposed this effort upon them. The readiness which successive kings showed in appropriating the statues of their ancestors to themselves by simply placing their ovals upon them, proved that the ideas which were attached by the fathers of the Egyptian race to their graven images had lost their force. Effigies which were brought into the service of a new king by a mere change of inscription, were nothing more than monuments to his pride, destined to transmit his name and glory to future generations. The early taste, however, was not extinguished. When the sculptor was charged with the representation of one of those kings who had made Egypt great, or one of the queens who were often associated in the sovereign power, he took the same pains as those of the early Empire to make a faithful copy of his august model.
Fig. 214.—Thothmes III. Boulak. Granite.
Among the monuments of faithful portraiture which this period has left us the statues of Thothmes III. are conspicuous. The features of this prince are to be recognized in a standing figure at Boulak (Fig. 214), but they are much more strongly marked in a head which was found at Karnak and is now in the British Museum (Fig. 215). It formerly belonged to a colossal statue erected by that prince in the part of the temple built by himself. The features seem in no way Egyptian. The form of the nose, the upturned corners of the eyes, the curves of the lips, and the general contours of the face are all suggestive of Armenian blood.[224] Others have thought it showed traces of negro descent. In the first-named statue these characteristics are less conspicuous because its execution as a whole is less careful and masterly. The same physiognomy is to be found in a porphyry sphinx belonging to the Boulak collection.[225]
There is a strong contrast between the features of Thothmes and those of Amenophis III. the founder of Luxor. Of this we may judge by a head, as well preserved as that of Thothmes, which was found behind one of the statues of Amenophis at Gournah. It also is in the British Museum. The face is long and finely cut, with an expression and general appearance which we should call distinguished; the nose is long and thin; the chin well chiselled and bold in outline.[226]
Obliged to draw the line somewhere we have not reproduced this figure, but in Plate XI. we give a female head, discovered by Mariette at Karnak, and believed to be that of Taia, the queen of Amenophis III. Whether rightly named or not, this colossal fragment is one of the masterpieces of Egyptian sculpture.[227]
Mariette enumerates various reasons for believing Taia to have been neither of royal nor even of Egyptian blood. She might have been Asiatic; the empire of her husband extended as far as Mesopotamia. The point has little importance, but as M. Charmes says, "when we stop in admiration before the head of Taia, at Boulak, we feel ourselves unconsciously driven by her charms ... to forge a whole history, an historical romance, of which her enigmatic personality is the centre and inspiration, and to fancy her the chief author of these religious tragedies which disturbed her epoch and left a burning trace which has not yet disappeared."[228]
M. Charmes here alludes to the changes which Amenophis IV. wished to introduce into the national religion when he attempted to destroy the name and images of Amen, and to replace them with those of a solar god, who was represented by a symbol not previously encountered in the monuments (Fig. 2). If Mariette's hypotheses remain uncontradicted by later discoveries, we may admit Taia to be the mother of Amenophis IV., and to her influence in all probability would her son's denial and persecution of the great Theban deity be due. Our present interest, however, is with the features of Amenophis. They have been faithfully handed down to us by the artists employed at Tell-el-Amarna.[229] By the help of these bas-reliefs a statuette in yellow steatite, now in the Louvre (Fig. 216), has been recognized as a portrait of this Pharaoh. Its workmanship is very fine.