Volume II Part 20 (2/2)

[230] MARIETTE, _Bulletin Archeologique de l'Athenaeu from this period which show the same desire for truth at any price One of the series of bas-reliefs discovered by Mariette in the Teiven as an instance The subject of these reliefs is the expedition undertaken by the regent Hatasu against the country of Punt[231]

[231] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee_, No 902, and _Dayr-el-Bahari_, plates

[Illustration: FIG 216--Statuette of Aht twenty inches Louvre Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier]

”In the e chief advances as a suppliant His alks behind him Her hair is carefully dressed and plaited into a thick tail at the back; a necklace of large discs is round her neck Her dress is a long yellow ches Her features are regular enough, but virile rather than feminine, and all the rest of her person is repulsive Her ars, and chest, are loaded with fat, while her person projects so far in the rear as to result in a deformity over which the artist has dith curious cos, so far as the cheest incipient elephantiasis The Egyptian artist was induced, no doubt, to dwell upon such a monstrosity by the instructive contrast which it presented with the cultivated beauty of his own race[232]

[232] MARIETTE, _Dayr-el-Bahari_, p 30, believed that Punt was in Africa, probably in the region of the Sos of e obesity is rather an African than an Arabian characteristic See SPEKE'S description of the favourite wife of Vouazerou, _Discovery of the Source of the Nile_, chap viii, and SCHWEINFURTH'S account of the Bongo women, _Heart of Africa_ (3rd edition) pp 136 and 137

Realist as he hen he chose to take up that vein, the Egyptian sculptor attained, however, to a high degree of grace and purity, especially in his representations of historic and religious scenes

When he had not the exceptional ugliness of an Aes in his bas-reliefs a look of serious gravity and nobility which cannot fail to ireatest enthusiast for Greek er content with the sincere imitation of what he saw, like the artists of the Early E foryptian kings, with their sons and favourites, who lived in hourly coyptian art at last had an ideal, which it never realized with more success than in certain bas-reliefs of this epoch

Mariette quotes, as one of the yptian chisel, a bas-relief at Gebel-Silsilis representing a Goddess nourishi+ng Horus fron of this composition is remarkable for its purity,” he says, ”and the whole picture breathes a certain soft tranquillity which both charms and surprises a modern connoisseur”[233]

[233] MARIETTE, _Itineraire_, p 246

We have not reproduced this work, but an idea of its style and composition may be formed from a bas-relief of the time of Rameses II, which we have taken fro 255, Vol I) The theme is the sa 176, Vol I) and, still e to Amen, to whom he is presented by Phre, may also be compared with the work at Gebel-Silsilis Thecould be estures of the two deities, than the attitude, at once proud and respectful, of the kneeling prince The whole scene is i 33, Vol I)

We find the saht variations, in the bas-relief at Abydos figured on page 390, Vol I The sculptures in the temple hich Seti I adorned this city yptian art in their own _genre_ Their firm and sober execution, and the severe simplicity of their conception, are well shown in our third plate This royal figure, which ere coive it on a scale large enough to be of service, forms part of a composition which has been thus described by M Charles Blanc: ”Seated upon the round base of a column, we examined the noblest bas-reliefs in the world Seti was present in his own temple His noble head, at once human and heroic, ard us with a gentle sht penetrated into the teentle salience of the sculptured figures, gave them a relief and aniirls, whose graceful forms are veiled only by their chastity, advance towards the hero with as much freedom as respect will allow Their beauty attracts us while their dignity forbids all approach The scene lives before us, and yet the stone is but grazed with the chisel and casts but the gentlest shadow

But the delicacy of the workn and such true sincerity of feeling that these young woypt, seem to live and breathe before us”[234]

[234] CH BLANC, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, p 265

The sah in less perfection, in those bas-reliefs which coreat Theban Pharaohs on the pylons and external faces of the teer, the scene to be represented ious pictures, which, as a rule, include very few actors The artist is no longer working for a narrow audience of Gods, kings, and priests His productions are addressed to the people at large, and he attempts therefore to dazzle and astonish the crowd rather than to please the more fastidious tastes of their social leaders His execution is htful, as may be seen in our illustrations taken from the battle scenes of Karnak, Luxor, the Ras 13, 85, 173, 174, 253, and 254, Vol I) In each of these scenes there is a central figure to which our attention is ier than those of his subjects and ene mace raised above the heads of his prisoners, who kneel before him and raise their hands in supplication, as in a fine bas-relief at Karnak (Fig 85, Vol I);in his chariot and do a panic-stricken crowd before him sword in hand, or about to cleave the head of some hostile chief, whose relaxed13, Vol I) Elsewhere we see hi barbarians (Fig 174, Vol

I) ”We could never look at this beautiful figure without fresh admiration,” say the authors of the _Description_, ”it is the Apollo Belvedere of Egypt”[235] Again we see the king returning victorious fro rows of prisoners march behind and before him, their hands tied at their backs and attached by a rope to the chariot of the conqueror The horses which, in the battle scenes,rearing and tra beneath their feet, advance quietly and under the control of the tightened rein, and their dainty walk suggests that they too have a share in the universal satisfaction that folloell ended

[235] _Antiquites_, vol ii p 110

In all these reliefs the principal figure, that of the prince, is free and bold in design, and full of pride and dignity These characteristics are also found in soures, such as those soldiers of the enen thes 13 and 85, Vol I)

But the wounded and fugitives in these battle pictures are curiously confused in drawing and arrangeures separately h, but, taken as a whole, they are huddled up into far too narrow a space, and seeyptian sculptor has been fired with the desire to ereat deeds of his royal norance, he has passed the limits which an art innocent of perspective cannot overleap without disaster

The persistent tendency towards slightness of proportion, which we have already noticed in speaking of the First Theban Eures of these reliefs than in the royal statues (Figs 13, 50, 53, 84, 165, and 175, Vol I) Neither in these historical bas-reliefs, nor in those of the toures which are so cos and bas-reliefs of Thebes this slenderness is ly oes to prove that it was considered essential to beauty in the feirls and hired ated proportions This propensity is more clearly seen perhaps in the pictures of the Alypt than anywhere else Look, for instance, at our reproduction of a bas-relief in the Boulak Museu 217) It represents a funeral dance to a sound of taetic songs, called ?????? by the Greeks, of which M

Maspero has translated so ments[236] All these wo transparent robes, wear their hair in thick pendent tresses Two young girls, quite nude, see froetic ment, and without a date It was found in the necropolis of Memphis and from its style Prisse ascribes it to the nineteenth dynasty, ”a time when artists were reat softness of contour with an impossible slenderness of build The execution is careless, but the h”[237] Our Plate XII shows figures of the sah rather better drawn

[236] MASPERO, _etudes sur quelques Peintures Funeraires_

Mariette, in describing this bas-relief (_Notice du Musee_, No

903), observes that these funeral dances are still in vogue in ypt The bas-reliefs fro shrieks hich these dances are accoyptien_ Text, p 418 This bas-relief has also been reproduced by MARIETTE, _Monuments Divers_, pl 68