Volume II Part 15 (2/2)

CHAPTER III

SCULPTURE

-- 1 _The Origin of Statue- forypt than architecture We do not es when the first ancestors of the Egyptian people built their mud cabins upon the banks of the Nile; but as soon as their dwellings becaan to be affected by the desire for beauty, the figures of men and animals took a considerable place in their decoration The oldest mastabas that have been discovered have bas-reliefs upon their walls and statues in their mummy-pits

The existence of these statues and their relative perfection show that sculpture had advanced with strides no less rapid than those of the sister art It reater than that of architecture Given the particular kind of expressive beauty which foryptian sculptor, he produced masterpieces as early as the time of the Pyramid builders We cannot say as much of the architect The latter showed himself, indeed, astone, but the arrangeht say elementary, and many centuries had to pass before he had beco the sumptuous tereat hypostyle halls which were the culyptian architecture

In order to explain this curious inequality we need not inquire which of the two arts presents the fewest difficulties It is with nations as with individuals So thehbours It is a question of circus Aress of sculpture was accelerated by that national belief in a posthumous life for the body which we have described in connection with their funerary architecture By the existence of this constant and singular belief we yptian sculpture and the great originality of their ements which were necessary to enable the inhabitant of the toements were of two kinds, a provision of food and drink, which had to be constantly renewed, either in fact or by the ic multiplication which followed prayer, and a permanent support for the _ka_ or double, a support that should fill the place of the living body of which it had been deprived by dissolution This support was afforded to some extent by the mummy; but the mummy was liable to be destroyed or to perish by the action of tiainst such a catastrophe by the invention of the funerary statue In the cliypt, stone, and even wood, had far better chances of duration than the most carefully ee that they could beto prevent ten, twenty, any nu placed in a toes survived all the accidents of time, the _double_ would be saved from that annihilation to which it would otherwise be condemned

[170] The _serdabs_ of the tomb of Ti contained twenty, only one of which was recovered uninjured MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee de Boulak_, No 24

Working under the impulse of such an idea, the sculptor could not fail to do his best to endow his statue with the characteristic features of the original ”It is easy, then, to understand why those Egyptian statues which do not represent Gods are always portraits of some individual, executed with all the precision of which the artists were capable They were not ideal figures to which the desire for beauty of line and expression had much to say, they were stone bodies, bodies which had to reproduce all the individual contours of their flesh-and-blood originals When the latter was ugly, its reproduction had to be ugly also, and ugly in the saarded the double would be unable to find the support which was necessary to it”[171]

[171] MASPERO, in Rayet's _Monuyptian statue was not so raphy had been invented in the tiraphers would have ypt Those sun-portraits, which are supposed to present a perfect resemblance, would have been put in the tos, they were contented to copy his figure faithfully in stone or wood His ordinary attitude, his features and costume, were imitated with such scrupulous sincerity that the serdabs were filled with faithful duplicates of himself To obtain such a likeness the artist cannot have trusted to his memory His employer must have sat before him, the stone body must have been executed in presence of him whose iies have been produced whose iconic character is obvious at first sight, effigies to which a contehtest hesitation

This individuality is not, however, equally well preserved in all Egyptian sculpture, a remark which applies to the early dynasties as well as to the later ones, though not in the sayptian to inclose duplicates of his own body in his last resting-place were more powerful over his spirit, and the artist had to exert himself to satisfy the requireain, those centuries had not to struggle against such an accuainst so much conventionality as those which ca custoht and continual reference to nature; he was coeneral features of his race and those of his individual e Portraiture taken up with intelligence and practised with a passionate desire for truth has always been the best school for the formation of masters in the plastic arts

In those early centuries, then, Egypt produced a few statues which were masterpieces of artistic expression, which were adreat works are rare The sepulchral statues were far fro all equal in value to those of the Sheik-el-Beled, of Ra-Hotep froent and scientific interpretation of nature was not reached at a bound; Egyptian sculpture had its archaic period as well as that of Greece

Moreover, even when the art had come to maturity, there was, as in other countries a crowd of mediocre artists whose as to be obtained at a cost smaller than that of the e sculptors were fully ereat lords, by h rank: their less able brethren worked for that great class of functionaries of the second order, who coyptian h his as to be hidden in the darkness of the serdab, the artist took e whose appearance ht be known from one end of the Nile valley to the other, than when employed by so into the tomb, the statue must for a time have been open to inspection, and its creatorthose praises which neither poet nor artist has been able to do without, from the days of Memphis to those of Modern Europe

In most cases, however, he had to reproduce the features and contours of so the thousands who served Cheops or Chephren; and his conscience was more easily satisfied If we pass in review those li to be comparatively co theinals; they preserve the Egyptian type of feature, the individual e, the costume, the familiar attitude, and the attributes and accessories required by custoory of funerary steles aht in shops ready carved and painted, and that the ive them that iconic character upon which so much depended A naes, but it is always carved upon the tombs in which they were placed, and its appearance there was sufficient to consecrate the statues and all other contents of the sepulchre to the support of the double to which it belonged Whether it was copied froht ready-made, the statue became from the moment of its consecration an auxiliary body for the double It preserved more of the appearance of life than the corpse saturated with es; the half-open s lips seemed about to speak, and the eyes, to which the eular brilliance, seemed instinct with life

The first statues produced by the Egyptians were sepulchral in character, and in the intentions both of those who ave the commissions, they were portraits, executed with such fidelity that the double should confidingly attach himself to them and not feel that he had been despoiled of his corporeal support

As the power and wealth of the Egyptians grew, their artistic aspirations grew also They rose by degrees to the conception of an ideal, but even when they are in of their art may still be divined; in their happiest and most noble creations the persistent effect of their early habits of thought and belief is still to be surely traced

-- 2 _Sculpture under the Ancient Empire_

The n, if not a date, at least a chronological place in the list of Egyptian kings, is a rock-cut hara, and represents Snefrou, the lastbarbarian with his mace In spite of its historic i this bas-relief because its dilapidated state takes away its interest from an artistic point of view[172]

[172] All the ured in the _Denkmaeler_ of LEPSIUS (part ii plates 2, 39, and 61); casts of them have also been made

There are, besides, other statues in existence to which egyptologists ascribe a still greater age The Louvre contains three before which the historian of art must halt for a moment

Two of these are very e called Sepa, who enjoyed the style and dignity of _prophet and priest of the white bull_ The third is the present, and was, in all probability, the wife of Sepa (Fig 172) These statues were of soft lis with squared ends, which descend, in the case of the former, to the shoulders, in that of the latter, to the breasts

Sepa holds a long staff in his left hand, and in his right the sceptre called _pat_, a sign of authority His only robe is a plain _schenti_, a kind of cotton breeches fastened round his waist by a band His trunk and legs are bare, and the latter are only half freed from the stone in which they are carved Nesa is dressed in a long che between the breasts Upon her arure the wig, the pupils, eyelids, and eyebrows, are painted black, while there is a green stripe under the eyes The bracelets are also green

De Rouge asserted boldly that these were the oldest statues in the world[173] He believed them to date froerated; they would perhaps give the works in question an even e

[173] _Notice des Monuyptiennes, Salle du Rez-de-chausse et Palier de l'Escalier_, 1875, p 26

This ireat antiquity is not caused by the short inscriptions on the plinths The well-carved hieroglyphs which compose them are in relief, but this peculiarity is found in nonificant They betray an art whose aih it has not yet hly what he wants, but his hand still lacks assurance and decision He has set out upon the hich will be trodden with ever-increasing firmness by his successors He follows nature faithfully Observe how frankly the breadth of Sepa's shoulders is insisted upon, how clearly the collar-bones and the articulations of the knees are hs betray the same sincerity And yet there is a certain tiroup which becomes clearly perceptible e cohbourhood which date from the fifth dynasty The work is over-simplified The arms, which elsewhere are laid upon the knees, or, in the case of the woid One is held straight down by the body, the other is bent at a right angle across the stomach The pose is stiff, the placid features lack expression and will