Mariette found the statuette by chance when searching the Serapeum. It had formerly been taken from the pit in which it was shut up and thrown amid the rubbish of the great sphinx avenue that leads to the tomb of Apis. The individual was named Pehournowri; he was cousin royal, and fulfilled functions that I do not know how to define. Nothing in the inscription helps us to conjecture with what king he claimed relationship, but its style proves that he lived under the Vth Dynasty. That he was of mature age is indicated by the plenitude of form, by the fine proportions and the benevolent and benign aspect. A short wig, a necklace, a loin-cloth scarcely reaching the knees, completes his costume. His statue is not one in front of which we naturally pause when walking through a museum. I do not think that during the thirty years it has been in the Louvre it has attracted the attention of any one except experts in Egyptology. Not that it lacks merit: the modelling is exact, the execution skillful and delicate, the expression frank and successful, but the pose differs very slightly from that which hundreds of other artists have given to hundreds of other statues. The careless visitor who passes from one seated man to a second, and then to many others, does not think of looking for the details of execution that distinguish them. He thinks that when he has seen one or two he has seen all, and departs with the idea that the chief attribute of Egyptian art is monotony.

Egyptian sculptors did not greatly vary the pose of their sitters. Sometimes they represented them standing and walking, one leg in advance of the other, sometimes standing, but motionless, with the feet together, sometimes sitting on a seat or a stone pedestal, sometimes kneeling, more often crouching, the chin against the knees like the fellahs of to-day, or the legs flat on the ground like the scribe of the Louvre.40 The details of arrangement and costume may be modified ad infinitum, but the attitude is nearly always regulated by the six types I have enumerated. Some modern critics attribute this fact to the inexperience of the sculptors, others to the inflexibility of certain hieratical rules. But having seen not only the few incomplete pieces to be found in Europe, but also the monuments still existing in Egypt, I cannot admit those reasons. Everywhere in the bas-reliefs of the temples and tombs a multiplicity of gestures or attitudes are to be seen which show to what point the artists could, when they pleased, diversify the human figure: the peasant bends over the hoe, the joiner leans over his bench, the scribe stoops over his paper, the dancers, girls and men, twist and balance their bodies, the soldiers brandish their lances or march in time, as naturally as possible. And the sculptors even reproduced positions in their statues very different from those we are accustomed to see at the Louvre: the kneeling woman who is grinding her corn, the baker who is kneading the dough, the slave who coats the amphora with pitch before pouring in the wine, the crouching mourner of Boulaq,41 are all composed and modelled with a lightness of action and a perfection of expression that leaves no doubt as to the skill of the artist. It is true that hieratical rules existed, and no one will dispute that fact, but they were reserved for matters of religion and for those alone. They exacted, for instance, that Amon must always, in every case, have the attributes, costume, and attitude proper to the god, but they in no wise ordered that all men were to be confined to one of the five attitudes I have just described. The freedom of composition to which the large historical pictures of the temples or the domestic scenes of the tombs testify, does not agree with what we are told concerning the inflexibility of the hieratical rules.

I shall not now touch on the statues of kings or divinities: I shall have an opportunity later of treating them at leisure. Those of private individuals represent for the most part persons of rank, great nobles, people of the court, officers, magistrates, priests, employees of birth or fortune; they come from nearly all the cemeteries, and are portraits of the man for whom the tomb was hollowed out or of people of his house. The master stands in an attitude of command, or sits like Pehournowri, and he could only have one or the other of those attitudes. The tomb is, in fact, his private house, where he rests from the fatigues of life, as he used to do in his terrestrial home. A soldier when at home does not carry his arms, a magistrate does not wear his robe: soldier or magistrate, the insignia of the profession are laid aside when he returns home. Thus the master of the tomb always wears his civil costume, and leaves the marks of his profession at the door.

Then, also, the accessible part of his dwelling has a special destination which regulates the pose of the statues: it is, in fact, his reception-room, where on certain days the family assembled to present the offerings to him, in more prosaic words, to dine with him. Whether his statue was visible in one of the open chambers or invisible in the Serdâb,42 it was his substitute. It is sufficient to look at the neighbouring bas-reliefs to discover what were the official attitudes of the dead man in the tomb. He was present at the preliminaries of the sacrifice, the sowing and the harvest, the rearing of the cattle, fishing, hunting, the execution of crafts, and he saw all the works carried out for the eternal dwelling: he was then standing, one foot in advance, head erect, hands hanging down, or armed with the staff of command. Elsewhere, one after the other, the different courses of the meal are served him, cakes, wines, canonical meats, fruits which he needs in the world of the dead: then he is seated in an armchair alone or with his wife. The sculptor employed for his statues the two positions he has in the paintings: standing, he receives the homage of his vassals; seated, he takes part in the meal. And in the same way the statues which embody the members of the family and of the household have likewise the attitude suited to their rank and occupation. The wife is sometimes standing, sometimes sitting on the same seat as her husband, or on a separate one; sometimes, as in life, crouching at his feet. The son wears the costume of childhood, if the statue was carved while he was still a child, or the costume and attitude of his office if he was an adult. The acting scribe crouches, the roll spread on his knees, as if he was writing from dictation or reading from an account-book.43 The slave grinds the corn, the bakers knead the dough, the cellarers pitch their amphoras, the mourners lament and tear their hair as it was their duty to do in the world above; each individual is occupied according to his condition. The social hierarchy followed the Egyptian after death, and it regulated the pose of the statue after, as it had regulated that of the model before, death. Up to a certain point it is the same to-day, and he who carves the statue of a printer is careful not to attribute to him the action and costume of a miner or a sailor. These statues, shut up in the tomb, formed a sort of tableau in which each person held for ever the pose characteristic of his rank or his profession. The artist was free to vary the detail and regulate the accessories according to his fancy, but he could not change the general disposition without injuring the utility of his work.

At bottom, it is with the statues of Ancient Egypt as with the pictures of saints of the Italian schools. The painters had to treat their subject on lines from which they could not depart without falsifying or disfiguring it. Bring sixty or eighty St. Sebastians together in a room: how many of those who saw them would escape the boredom that infallibly results from constant repetition? When the tenth St. Sebastian was reached only a few professional artists would not have already gone away. I am supposing, too, that only choice pictures had been collected in which the qualities of a master are easily recognized. If, on the contrary, there had been collected at random all the available St. Sebastians without first eliminating the bad pictures, the finest St. Sebastians in the world, lost in the crowd, would be likely to attract no more attention from the public than the Crouching Scribe or the other masterpieces of Egyptian sculpture in the Louvre. The hypothesis appears absurd, because no one will easily admit that any one could have the idea of making such a collection. I agree so far as modern or ancient works, the value of which is known, are concerned; but Egyptian Museums have so far always been classified as depôts of archæological objects, not as art galleries. Each statue is a scribe, a god, a king; it is the scribe Hor of the XIXth Dynasty, or the scribe Skhemka of the Vth, or the king Sovkhotpou, wearing the head-dress of the pschent, and that is all. The trumpery scribes and the scribes that emanate from the hands of a master are confused under the same rubric, and no mark is placed to distinguish the good from the bad. Pehournowri is a scribe, Ramke a second scribe, Rahotpou a third scribe, just as the St. Sebastian of such or such a great Italian master and the St. Sebastians of the Epinal pictures are two St. Sebastians: the public which is not warned, and which has no more interest in one scribe than in another, passes on without looking.

The impression of monotony is produced by the perpetual repetition of the same types and by the method of classification adopted in the museums. If it was decided to do for Egypt what has been done for Greece and Rome, to separate the productions of art and the objects of archæology, people’s opinion would be promptly modified. The impression of monotony would not wholly disappear, because the number of types studied by the Egyptian sculptors was not sufficiently numerous: it would be lessened and would no longer blind the crowd to the real beauty and perfection that reside in Egyptian sculpture.