Volume II Part 27 (2/2)

[323] In the Boulak catalogue

[324] MARIETTE, _La Galerie de l'egypte Ancienne a l'exposition du Trocadero_, pp 69, 70

[Illustration: FIG 260--Head of a Cynocephalus]

[Illustration: FIG 261--Head of a Lion]

[Illustration: FIG 262--Head of a Lioness]

From the style of these remains Mariette is disposed to think that they were not earlier than the Saite epoch As the Egyptian intellect gradually lost its inventive powers, the study of such models as these must have played a more and more important part in artistic education; but we have no reason to believe that their use was confined to the later ages of the monarchy As artists becaradually lost their familiarity with nature, and their works became ever more unifornized in Egyptian work long before the days of Aree it is found even in the productions of the Ancient Eeneral at the beginning of the Middle Empire But their introduction was not due to the priests, but to the masters in the arts, who saw that they offered a sure and rapidtheir scholars

Yet one yptian art after its first renascence reyptians were fully conscious of the great antiquity of their civilization They thought of other nations ht of those whom they called barbarians

When the scribes had to speak of foreigners they made use of a complete vocabulary of contemptuous terms, and, as always occurs, the pride of race upon which they were based long survived the condition of things which formed its justification The Greek conquest was necessary to cure the Egyptians of their disdain, or, at least, to con of their superiority was the beauty of the national type, as elaborated by judicious selection and represented in art since the earliest days of the yptian was proud of himself when he coraceful attitudes and sro or the hard and truculent features of the Libyan and the Syrian no the nobility of the type would be incurred The pressure of neighbouring races ended by throwing back the Egyptian frontiers At one time they were forcibly curtailed by victorious invasion; at others they eakened here and there, allowing the entrance of the shepherds, of foreign merchants, and of yptian blood was menaced, and at all hazards it was necessary to preserve without alteration the ideal ilorious past and the pledge of its high destinies It was thus that in Egypt progress was haression Perfection is impossible to those who fear a fall

Another obstacle that helped to prevent the Egyptians fro the perfection which their early achievements seemed to promise, was their love for colour They did not establish a sufficiently sharp line of de and sculpture They always painted their statues, except when they carved them in materials which had a rich natural hue of their own, a hue to which additional vivacity was given by a high polish By this means varied tints were obtained which were in harmony with the polychromatic decoration which was so near their hearts Their excuse is to be found in their ignorance of statuary marble and of the clear and flesh-like tones and texture which it puts on under the sculptor's chisel

The Egyptians, however, never co their statues in an iures

Their hues were always conventional Moreover, they were never either broken or shaded, which is sufficient to show that no idea of realistic imitation was implied in their use[325] Sculpture is founded upon an artificial understanding by which tangible form and visible colour are dissociated from each other When the sculptor looks to the help of the painter he runs great risk of failing to give all the precision and beauty of which forrasp this truth at once The Egyptians had at least a gli employed polychromy in their sculpture in a discreet fashi+on

[325] CH BLANC, _Voyage de la Haute-egypte_, p 99

-- 10 _The General Characteristics of the Egyptian Style_

We have attein of Greek sculpture, of its developes of taste and style which sometimes required a thousand years for their evolution, for a century in Egypt was hardly equal to a generation elsewhere After proving that Egypt did not escape the universal law of change, we studied the methods and conventions which were peculiar to her sculptors and impressed their works with certain common characteristics The union of these characteristics foryptian style We inality clear to our readers

In its coyptian art was entirely realistic It was made realistic both by the conceptions which presided at its birth and by the wants which it was called upon to satisfy The task to which it applied itself with a skill and conscience which are little less than marvellous, was the exact representation of all that met its vision

In the bas-relief it reproduced the every-day scenes of agricultural life and of the national worshi+p; in the statue it portrayed individuals with coination was not asleep It was continually seeking to invent forured the exploits of the king, the defender of the national civilization, in the for his mace over the heads of his eneulf between the Pharaoh and his subjects, their h in natural life there can have been no such distinction

Finally the Great Sphinx at Gizeh is sufficient to prove that the Egyptians, in their endeavour to reat deities whom they had conceived visible to the eye, had attempted to create composite types of which the elements were indeed existent in nature, but separate and distinct

After the first renascence their iinations played more freely They multiplied the combinations under which their Gods were personified

They transforantic proportions which they gave to it in the seated statues of the king, and in those upright colossi in which the majesty of Pharaoh and the divinity of Osiris are co in attitudes which had never been seen by mortal eyes So nourishment fro son, before his father Aesture to convey to hiain he is presented to us in the confusion of battle, towering so high above his adversaries that we can only wonder how they had the teainst hi and arduous caainst the Khetas and the _People of the sea_, in which more than one of the Theban Pharaohs spent their lives

Victory, when it was victory, was long and hotly disputed Superiority of discipline and armayptians, ere inferior in strength and stature to most of their enemies, especially to those who came from Asia Minor and the Grecian islands

It is hardly just, therefore, to say, as has been said,[326] that ”Egyptian art had only one ai of reality; in it all qualities of observation are developed to their utyptian art is not like the sensitized plate of the photographer It does not confine itself to the faithful reproduction of the objects placed before it

Painters and sculptors were not content, as has been pretended, with the art that can be _seen_, as opposed to the art that can be _iined_, and an injustice is done to them by those ould confine the latter to the Aryan race The apparent precision of such an assertion yptian art was realistic in its inception and always ree of tian to play a part in the production of plastic works; it added to and combined the eleinary beings which differed from natural fact by their proportions, their beauty, and their coyptian artist had his ideal as well as the Greek

[326] E MELCHIOR DE VOGuE, _Chez les Pharaons_

In saying, then, that the art of Egypt was realistic, we have only laid the first stone of the definition ish to establish Its original character was, perhaps, still more due to another feature, namely to its elimination or suppression of detail This eli with tirew older It may be traced to the action of two causes In the first place, the influence of the ideographic writing upon the national style can hardly be exaggerated The concrete is could only be introduced into it by eneralization In such a school the eye learnt to despoil form of all those details which were ht for the species, or even the genus, rather than the individual This tendency was increased by the peculiar properties of the yptians lavished their skill and patience The harder rocks turned the edges of their bronze chisels, and cohly-blocked-out sketches and a laborious polish which obliterated all thoseto the sex, the age, and the muscular exertion of the persons represented We see, then, that the rebellious nature of the granite, and the iun by that syste which dates froyptian civilization

There is an obvious contradiction between the tendency which we have just noticed, and those habits of realistic imitation whose existence has been explained by the desire to secure a posthuyptian sculpture, is, in fact, the history of a contest in theforces In the early years of the monarchy, his first duty was to supply a portrait statue, the chief merit of which should lie in the fidelity of its resemblance Of this task he acquitted hi every individual peculiarity, and even deforiven to the face, as being the uished one from another Even then, and in the funerary statues, the body was eneral in its fores the sculptor was able, whenever he wished to make a faithful portrait either of an individualthis faculty into play and to clearly mark the differences between races or between the individuals of a race, by the varying character of the head But yet his art showed an ever increasing tendency to follow the bent which had been given to it by the practice of glyptic writing, and by the long contest with unkindly yptian art becaher style Under the Theban Pharaohs it worked hard to attain it, and it knew no better means to the desired end than the continual sieneralization of form