Volume II Part 22 (2/2)

[Illustration: FIG 229--Statue of Horus, Louvre Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier]

Not less ree called Horus, which dates froranite and yet both limbs and torso are as delicately modelled as if they were of the softest limestone The attitude of the arure is freer and less constrained than anything we find in the ancient statues There is, too, a certain spirit of innovation discoverable in the feet The toes are well separated and slightly bent, instead of being flat and close together

[261] _Ibidem_, No 88

[Illustration: FIG 230--Bas-relief froht ten inches, Boulak Drawn by Bourgoin]

[Illustration: FIG 231--Continuation of Fig 230]

The saeneral tendency are to be found in the steles and in the decoration of the tombs In a few sepulchral bas-reliefs we can detect a desire to imitate the compositions on the walls of the mastabas Such attempts were quite natural, and we need feel no surprise that the Egyptians in their decline should have turned to the artistic fororous youth The old age of many other races has shown the same tendency in their arts and literature

The beautiful band of sculpture in low relief which was found, together with another very similar to it, at Mitrahineh, upon the site of ancient Meht for a production of the early centuries (Figs 230 and 231) It for from the Greek or Roman period, for which purpose it had doubtless been carried off fronified individual is seated upon a low-backed chair, in his left hand he holds the long wand of office, in his right a ribbon His naraved in front of him: he was a writer, and was called Psemethek-nefer-sam A scribe bends respectfully before him and introduces a procession of s of various kinds, jars of liquid, coffers, flowers, birds, and calves led by a string It is the favourite theain The attitudes are similar, but the execution is different There is a lack of fir, and considerably ance The children especially should be noticed; the fashi+on in which they all turn towards their elders betrays a desire on the part of the artist to give freshness and piquancy to his composition

[262] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee_, Nos 35-6

Most of those bronze figures of the Gods, which are so plentiful in the European museums, date from this period We have reproduced several of thes

34-37, Vol I) With the advent of Alexander and his successors, a nuypt; they employed their talents in the service of the priests and scribes without atteion, the institutions, or the habits of the people The Egyptian artists were heirs to the oldest of all civilizations, their traditions were so firmly established, and their professional education was so systematic, that they could hardly consent to modify their ideas at the first contact with a race whoh they were compelled to admit their political and yptian sculpture, and with it the written character and language, became debased as we find it in certain Roenerations had to coypto-Greek style, a style which preserved the yptian art while it lost all its native freshness and originality, imposed itself finally upon the country

The worst of the Saite statues are still national in style It is an Egyptian soul that inhabits their bodies, that breathes through the features, and places its mark upon every detail of the personality represented This is no longer the case with the figures which, froustus to that of Hadrian, seem to have been manufactured in such quantities for the embellishment of Roman villas

Costuyptian, but the inning of the present century archaeologists were deceived by the uish between pasticcios, ypt, and the really authentic works of the unspoiled Egyptian artists Such er probable, but even now it is difficult to say exactly where the art of Sais was blended into that of the Ptoleraph upon which to depend the ist ures in which the influence of the Greek works brought to Alexandria by the descendants of Lagus, e The yptian, but the e of the head, and the attitude are modified, and we see, almost by intuition, that the Greek style is about to syptian This evidence of transition is, we think, veryHorus_ in the Louvre (Fig 55, Vol I), and in _Horus enthroned supported by lions_ (Fig 232) And yet the difference between these things and those which are frankly Graeco-Roreat, and at once strikes those who coalleries of Boulak, where they are enius The distinction is equally obvious in works produced by foreign sculptors established in Egypt, and in those by Egyptians working under Greek masters Look at the head found at Tanis, which is reproduced both in full face and profile in Fig 233 It is of black granite, like so yptian statues, but we feel at once that there is nothing Egyptian about it but the e; the face is beardless, the curly hair cut short

During the Greek and Roman period the temple of San was enriched by the statues of private individuals, and doubtless this fraged to one of them Tradition says that the statue was placed in front of a pier hich it was connected by the Ionic ht side of the head With this exception the treatustan period The person represented ypt[263]

[263] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee_, No 18

[Illustration: FIG 232--Horus enthroned Bronze Louvre]

[Illustration: FIG 233--Rooin]

-- 6 The Principal Theyptian Sculpture

When we come to study Greek sculpture we shall find that the hest powers are displayed, are statues of divinities, such as the Athene of the Parthenon and the Olyyptian works of the sale God or Goddess Their representation was not, as in Greece, the aiures of deities were, indeed, nuypt, but the national artist did not show such originality in their conception as in those of kings and private individuals This phenomenon yptians and the place occupied by religion in their daily life; it is to be easily explained, however, by the origin of Egyptian sculpture and the part which the statues of the Gods played in it

Egyptian art began with portraiture As soon as it was capable of carving and painting stone it was realistic, not soit found great difficulty in raising itself above intelligent and faithful reproduction of fact

Such inventive powers as it possessed were spent in creating a type for the royal majesty, and in that case it had concrete reality as a starting point When it ca the Gods it had no such help It could not fall back upon fidelity to fact, and, unlike the Greeks of after ages, it was unable to give thenity of their physical contours and features

It was reduced to differentiating the it obtained an almost infinite nunizable on condition that its pose and accessories, once detere There was none of the uishes the dwellers on the Greek Oly the poverty and want of variety of a Horus or a Bast with the infinite diversity of an Apollo or an Arteyptian sculptor had to endow the national Gods with concrete forms he found himself, then, in a condition much less favourable than that of his Greek successors This position, too, was materially affected by the fact that the best site in the temple, the centre of the naos, was reserved for a sy, sometimes inanimate, which was looked upon as the true representative of the God It was to this syh priest and the king, that the prayers of the faithful were addressed It has been called a survival from the early fetish worshi+p Perhaps it was so But at present we are only concerned with its unfortunate results upon artistic develop excluded from the place of honour, the sculptor was not, as in Greece, stimulated to combine all the qualities ascribed by the nation to its Gods in one supree and skill; he was not raised above hiive point to the ht in insisting upon this difference ”The temples,”

he says, ”hardly contain a statue which is not votive Soularly distributed about the foundations or in the sand, so the walls, but they hardly ever exceed the life-size of a ure which could be specially called the statue of that teh; but each had its own particular ministration In the prayers addressed to it the na as a statue for its God without votive appropriation did not, perhaps, exist_”[264]

[264] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee_, p 16 See also his _Catalogue General_, c i

Figures of Sekhet, the Goddess with the head of a lioness, have been discovered in hundreds in the building at Karnak known as the Temple of Mouth, or Maut This mine of statues has been worked ever since 1760, and all theso nureat excellence of execution They were devotional objects produced inathe of having endowed the temple with a statue of Amen ”such that no other temple could show one equal to it”[266]

This Amen must have excelled its rivals in richness of material and in perfection of polish It is unlikely that it was much superior to them in nobility or true beauty