Volume II Part 30 (1/2)
[351] JOHN KENRICK, _Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs_, vol i
pp 269, 270
The drawings in this papyrus are not caricatures asunderstand the word Caricature is an exaggerated portrait; it founds itself upon reality while turning it into ridicule by the accentuation of its s in this manuscript are inspired by the same ideas and the same intellectual bent as our modern caricatures They respond to the universal taste of mankind for the mental relaxation afforded by parody, for the relief from the serious business of life which is to be found in coypt was a merry country Its inhabitants were as pleased as children over the simplest and most homely jokes; jests, fantastic tales, and fables in which animals acted like men and women, were as popular with them as with their successors in civilisation Their co scenes of this last description, and their works often remind us of those produced in much later times for the illustration of aesop or La Fontaine
[Illustration: FIG 278--Battle of the Cats and Rats Fro part of the Turin papyrus, and we have copied a fragroup, four animals--an ass, a lion, a crocodile, and aon such musical instruments as were then in fashi+on Next comes an ass dressed, arer he receives the offerings brought to hiree, to whom a bull is proud to act as conductor At the side a unicorn see cat with its harp The scenes drawn below, and on a smaller scale, are no more coherent than these In the first place we see a flock of geese in open rebellion against its conductors--three cats, one of whory birds Next we come to a sycamore in which an hippopotamus is perched; a hawk has climbed into the tree by e him; finally, we have a fortress defended by an army of cats, who are without other ar party of rats provided with arms offensive and defensive, and led by one of their own species, who is reyhounds
”The artist's idea--at least in the lower part of the picture--seems to have been to paint the cats defeated by the animals upon which they prey It is the world turned upside down, or if the painter , it is the revolt of the oppressed against the oppressor”[352]
[352] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, text, pp 142, 143
The lower part of the plate contains a scene of the same kind taken fro driven along by a cat, and a herd of goats by tolves with crook and wallet; one of the wolves is playing on the double flute At the other end there is a lion playing draughts with an antelope
One of the tombs has upon its walls a picture of a hu to propitiate a lion by the offering of a goose[353]
[353] _Ibid_ p 144
In the opinion of soion This is an evident exaggeration We have no reason to suppose that the Egyptian intellect ever arrived at the maturity required for scepticism Neither the authority of Pharaoh nor that of the priests seeh their anger was not stirred by the governh at in it In the cat presented to an ass we cannot fail to see a parody of Pharaoh receiving the hoe of so a goose to a lion The cat can only be that unlucky fellah who, in the Egypt of the Pharaohs as in that of the Khedives, has never succeeded in keeping clear of the bastinado and the _corvee_ except by giving presents to the _sheikh_ of his village or the _ this scene upon the wall the artist riting a page of his own biography and of the history of all the people about hireedy functionary to whos of his own farm-yard
[Illustration: FIG 279--The soles of a pair of sandals From Champollion]
[Illustration: FIGS 280, 281--The God Bes Fro spirit are to be found in other productions of Egyptian art Thus the soles of those leathern or wooden sandals which have coroup of two prisoners, the one a negro, and the other a native, perhaps, of Libya or Syria
There can be no yptian see ene upon the thenized in those figures of Bes which are so nueration of certain not uncoure of this paunchy das arrived at His aniue, his short legs and salient buttocks, s 280 and 281) The comic intention is very marked in a composition reproduced by Prisse, in which a person of proportions rather less curtailed than those of the ordinary Bes, but endoith the features, the head-dress, and the lion-like tail of that God, is shown playing upon a cithara[354]
[354] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'egypte_, text, p 146
These productions were not always decent The Turin papyrus contains a long priapic scene
-- 4_ Ornayptians covered every available surface, the figure played a more important part than in the case of any other people But yet the ious, and doroups of Gods, reat their developht be, these traditional themes could only supply a certain nuain, there were certain surfaces upon which the Egyptians did not, as a rule, place figures, either because they would be seen with difficulty, or, as in the case of ceilings, because taste warned them that it would be better to treat such a surface in some other fashi+on Between the lofty roofs of the hypostyle halls and the sky which covers our heads the Egyptian decorator established a relationshi+p which readily cos of the teround, upon which vultures with their great wings outspread, floated as 192 and 282)
Side by side with the paintings which deal with living form we find those painted ornaments which cover with their varied tints all the surfaces which are not occupied by the figure This systeh a continual process of enrichment and complication Its appearance in the early centuries is well shown in our two Plates, III and IV; the first shows the upper, the second the lower part of the western wall in the tomb of Ptah-hotep at Sakkarah They confirin of ornament[355] That writer was the first to show that the basket-inated by the mere play of their busy hands and implements those combinations of line and colour which the ornamentist turned to his own use when he had to decorate walls, cornices, and ceilings The industries we have named are certainly older than the art of decoration, and the forms used by the latter can hardly have been transferred froularity hich the lines and colours of early decoration are repeated it is easy to recognize the enforced arrangement of rushes, reeds, and flaxen threads, while chevrons and concentric circles are the obvious descendants of the er or rude implement of the potter upon the soft clay
[355] SEMPER (G), _Der Stil in den Technischen und Tektonischen Kunsten, oder Praktische aesthetik_ Munich, 1860-3, 2 vols 8vo, with 22 plates, sos in the text
[Illustration: FIG 282--Vultures on a ceiling]
In these exarasped
He has begun with a ground of rush-work, like that which is also found in the tomb of Ti[356] In the compartments between the vertical bars he has imitated the appearance of mat walls, and of s closed by the sa 165) As if to prevent s, and lath, by which the lower ends of the n of the ornament is quite similar to those produced to this day by the basket or es, and chevrons In the es we find little crosses or circles of a different colour, which help to lighten the effect Each mat has a red border at its lower end, which forht lath There are narrow grooves between thethe latter up and down seem to be imitated In any case, this latter detail is copied from the productions of one of the oldest of civilized industries--that of the blacksyptien_, text, p 418
[Illustration: FRAGMENT OF WESTERN WALL IN TOMB OF PTAH-HOTEP