These statuettes were cut in greenish basalt of fine grain, loved by the artists of the New Empire and the Saïte Period above all other stones. They formed part of the Salt collection, and are now exhibited in the Louvre.

The first represents a Pharaoh, as is proved by the serpent that rises above his forehead and the hawk’s head that terminates the dagger passed through his belt. He is standing, and walking quickly, the head erect on his shoulders, and slightly bent forward in the attitude of a man who is looking attentively at the point towards which he is going; the arms are not detached from the body, and hang down along the bust and the thigh. The composition is excellent, highly finished in spite of the hardness of the material, and the detail is rendered as freely as on the colossi of the Theban Period.

The face has a particular character which struck Egyptologists long since; it is short, wide at the height of the eyes, rounded at the bottom. The eye is long, prominent, surmounted by strong curved eyebrows, marked where they join on the forehead by two deep vertical furrows. The nose is aquiline, short, thick at the end, flanked by two nostrils the outside walls of which seem to be somewhat thin. The mouth is widely opened and protrudes; full lips, short chin receding a little under the shadow of the lips. On his return from his journey in Egypt, M. de Rougé was struck by the resemblance of this statuette, till then lying forgotten in the corner of a cupboard, with the portraits of the Shepherd Kings discovered at Sân by Mariette. Dévéria cleverly reproduced it in two plates in the Revue archéologique.88 He asserted what M. de Rougé had admitted as a mere hypothesis: that it was the portrait of a Shepherd King, and that it belonged to the disturbed period which immediately preceded the XVIIIth Dynasty. I must confess that these conclusions do not appear to me to be sound. The long list of Pharaohs includes many sovereigns whose faces present characteristics very different from those usually attributed to the Egyptian race, and yet who, all the same, were Egyptians born and bred. Without entering into the discussion, I will content myself with saying that several of those who reigned at periods relatively late, Taharqa (XXVth Dynasty) or Hakori (XXIXth Dynasty) for example, bear a singular likeness to the sovereign of our statuette in the structure and expression of the face. I cannot be certain here that it is a question of one of them, but the general composition reminds me of the style of the Saïte Period more than of that of the Theban. Without asserting anything, I am inclined to believe that our Pharaoh lived in the last centuries of Egyptian independence.

The second fragment is evidently Saïte; the somewhat harsh precision of the modelling, the heaviness of the head-dress, the roundness of shoulders and chest, sufficiently prove it. It is broken too high up for us to determine if it belonged to a standing statue like the Pharaoh, or a crouching figure like the third monument. It is a perfect type of the middle-class Egyptian, developed in width rather than in height.

The shoulders are soft and flabby; the smiling insignificance of the features, the sinking down of the trunk on the hips and the head on the shoulders, are just what we should expect in one of the scribes who led sedentary lives in offices, amid piles of documents, of whom some bas-reliefs exaggerate the obesity with an evident intention of caricature. The inscription engraved on the base tells us that he was named Aî, son of Hapi, and that besides his sacerdotal functions he possessed the dignity of director of the two store-houses of the money. The Turin papyrus informs us of the nature of his office. The financial system of Egypt rested on an entirely different principle from ours: coins not being yet invented, or only lately come into use at the Saïte Period, the payment of taxes and of the officials, the transactions of the State with private individuals, or of private individuals with each other, were valued and settled in kind. Every Egyptian owed the Treasury, according to his profession and his fortune, so many fish if he was a fisherman, so many bushels of grain or head of cattle if he was an agriculturist; the whole was duly received, registered, and stored by scribes who, in their turn, put aside for the Pharaoh what would keep, and used what was perishable for the daily disbursements. Silver and gold were articles of exchange in the same way as stuffs or oxen; Pharaoh brought them back in quantities from his expeditions abroad, and received them from his subjects as the equivalent of their share of the tax. Gold and silver circulated in powder, in sachets that contained a definite weight, in thin rings, in the form of couchant oxen, of half-oxen, of ox or gazelle heads, of jars full or empty, in curious shapes that generally were of no use in daily life, and which consequently were only, in spite of their artistic value, a sort of metallic reserve for the rich. The two store-houses or the double house of the money formed the treasury in which Pharaoh stored the quantities of gold and silver that belonged to him: taking into account the value attached to these metals, the directors of these establishments must have occupied a fairly high rank in the Egyptian hierarchy.

But for all that, we must not take the manuscript spread over Aî’s knees and that he is attentively reading for an account-book, or a document relating to his business. The portion of the scroll that he holds in his right hand, placed flat on his knees, is divided into vertical columns, which, cut by horizontal lines, presents a sort of chequered surface, the squares of which are not all of the same size. Each of the larger ones contains the name of an object, and each of the smaller a number. It is the list of the gifts composing the banquet offered to the dead person on the day of burial and during the funeral ceremonies. In the tombs both of the Ancient and the New Empire it is highly developed, and comprises the most varied materials: clear or coloured waters, beers of different kinds, wines of four vintages, seven or nine of the choice pieces of the victim, cakes of all sorts, essences, cosmetics, stuffs. On the scroll of our scribe where the space was restricted the list is shortened, and we only find the actual necessities: water, beer, some meat, a little perfume. It is to that of the tombs what the usual dinner of a middle-class family is to the ceremonial banquet of a noble; nevertheless, our scribe reads it with evident satisfaction: it is the menu of his meals for eternity, and, however scanty others may deem it, he probably considers it more pleasurable than that of his terrestrial dinners. We have here the natural development of the ideas that the Egyptians had of the other world. From the moment that the double was to feed materially, they sought to assure it the food of which it had need. The formulas of the stelæ which mention bread, wine, meat, deciphered by the first comer, secured the provisioning of the double; all that had been desired for him in reciting it would be assured him in the other world by virtue of the magic words. For lack of a passer-by to accomplish this pious duty, it occurred to them to place statues in the tomb which seemed to repeat for ever a written list held on their knees; this simulation of a perpetual reading was more than sufficient to nourish for ever the simulacrum of a man. Here, it is the defunct himself who renders himself this good office; elsewhere it is a friend, a scribe, a favourite servant.

The study of these three little monuments brings out very happily one of the qualities of Egyptian art: the skill with which the least of artists, in reproducing in a sometimes realistic manner the portrait of individuals, understood how to seize the physiognomy and bearing characteristic of their craft or of their social rank. Compare the submissive and sheepish face of the crouching scribe with the bold carriage and imperious head of the Pharaoh: the contrast is striking. With the scribe, all the muscles are relaxed; the whole body is bent, as with a man accustomed to obey and resigned to endure everything from his superiors. With the Pharaoh, the modelling is firm, the figure upright, the mien haughty; we feel that here is a person accustomed from childhood to walk upright in the midst of bowed backs. It is unfortunate that the legend has disappeared with the lower part of the second statuette; comparing it with several other monuments in the Louvre, it reminds me of several priests of the Saïte Period. The hardness in the eye and the corners of the lips is the same, the same furrow surrounds the nostril and the mouth, the outer walls of the nose are compressed in a similar fashion; in spite of the loss of the name and titles, I am tempted to think that the individual who bears on his face in so high a degree the peculiarities of the Egyptian priest belonged to the sacerdotal caste.