A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 32

Certain buildings in Memphis seem to have been decorated in the same fas.h.i.+on. "The most curious thing brought by me from Mitrahineh,"

writes Jomard, "is a fragment of enamelled and sculptured terra-cotta, which probably belonged to a wall lined with that fine material. It is remarkable for the brilliant blue, the blue of the lapis-lazuli, which covers it.... The outlines of the hieroglyphs are as firm, and their edges as sharp as if they were the work of a skilful carver, and had never been subjected to the heat of a furnace. They are of blue stucco, inlaid into the body of the enamel. I look upon this kind of decoration as a.n.a.logous to that of the Cairo divans, in which we see walls covered with earthenware tiles which are painted with various ornaments and subjects."[372] Now that attention has been attracted to this kind of decoration, traces of it will no doubt be found at many other points of Ancient Egypt.[373]

[372] _Description, Antiquites_, vol. v. p. 543, and _Atlas_, vol. v. plate 87, Fig. 1.

[373] The collection of M. Gustave Posno, which will, we hope, be soon absorbed into that of the Louvre, contains many enamelled bricks from decorative compositions like those in the stepped pyramid and the temple of Rameses III. (Nos. 8, 9, 11, 20, 58, 59, 60, 61 of the Catalogue published at Cairo in 1874).

One of these, which has a yellow enamel, bears in relief the oval and the royal banner of Papi, of the sixth dynasty. Another has the name Seti I.; others those of Rameses III. and Sheshonk.

The reliefs upon which prisoners' heads appear must have come from Tell-el-Yahoudeh.

These enamels were not always used upon stone or faience; their charming varieties of tone are also found upon wooden grounds. M.

Maspero mentions as an example of this the fragments of a mummy case in the Turin Museum. An inscription upon the wood is surrounded by faience ornament of a very rich colour. Mariette also mentions bronzes in which the remains of enamel and of _pietra dura_ inlays are yet to be seen.[374]

[374] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee de Boulak_, p. 69.

Enamel is gla.s.s coloured by means of a metallic oxide and spread thinly over a surface, with which it is combined by means of heat. The Egyptians must therefore have understood the manufacture of gla.s.s at a very early date. It is represented in the paintings at Beni-Ha.s.san.[375] Workmen are shown crouched by a fire and blowing gla.s.s bottles by means of a hollow cane, exactly as they do to this day. This industry continued to flourish in Egypt down to the Roman epoch. The gla.s.s manufacturers of Alexandria told Strabo that Egypt possessed a peculiar vitrifiable earth, without which the magnificent works in many-coloured gla.s.s could not be executed.[376] It is generally supposed that this "earth" was soda. The Venetians of the middle ages imported the soda required for their gla.s.s-making from Alexandria. It is said that Egyptian soda is the best known. It comes from the ashes of a plant called by botanists _Mesem Bryanthemum coptic.u.m_.[377]

[375] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, vol. ii. p. 140.

[376] STRABO, xvi. ch. ii. -- 25.

[377] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, text, p. 313.

Vessels of Egyptian gla.s.s are to be found in most museums, which recall those of Venice by their bands and fillets of brilliant colours. As for ordinary gla.s.s it seems never to have been quite transparent and colourless; it was always tinged with green and slightly opaque. It was upon their productions in colour that the fame of the Egyptian gla.s.s-makers depended. They produced vases, cups, paterae, goblets, beads and other ornaments for necklaces and bracelets, amulets and everything else that the material would allow, in prodigious quant.i.ties, both for domestic consumption and for exportation. At one time mummies were covered with a kind of garment composed of mult.i.tudinous strings of beads.

Statuettes, such as the two figured below, were also made of gla.s.s.

The larger of the two, which still has the hook, by which it was suspended, in its head, is entirely covered with parti-coloured ornaments similar to those shown upon its right shoulder. Our draughtsman at Boulak had no time to finish the drawing he had begun, and we have reproduced it in its actual condition rather than omit it or have it completed in any degree conjecturally. The details given afford a sufficiently good idea of the motives employed by the Egyptian artist. The ornamentation of the other figure is more simple (Fig. 307), but the att.i.tude is the same. There are two colours on the very well modelled head which acts as tail-piece to the _Introduction_ in our first volume. The globe of the eye and its contours stand out in black against the yellow of the flesh. The wig is also black.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 306.--Gla.s.s statuette. Boulak. Actual size.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 307.--Gla.s.s statuette. Boulak. Actual size.]

Nothing can have been more surprising to the ancient traveller who set foot upon the soil of Egypt for the first time, than the vast number of these objects in coloured gla.s.s and in green or blue faience. They appeared everywhere; upon the walls of buildings and upon the persons of their inhabitants, upon every article which helped to furnish tombs or temples, palaces or private houses. Everything shone with the brilliant colours of this enamel, whose unchanging brightness was so grateful to a southern eye. It harmonized to perfection with the whiteness of the fine linen worn by the richer cla.s.ses of Egyptians, and formed happy combinations with the rich red and blue fringes which bordered their robes and girdles. Enamel was much more easily cleaned than cloth. When it was tarnished by dust or dirt, a few drops of water would restore all its brightness. The lavish employment of such a material doubtless did much to give the persons of the Egyptians and their dwellings that neat and smiling aspect which so charmed foreign visitors. Herodotus tells us that one of the features which most strongly warned the traveller that he was in the presence of a very ancient and refined civilization, was the national pa.s.sion for a cleanliness that was almost too fastidious, for fine linen constantly renewed, for frequent ablutions, for the continual use of the razor. A nation dressed in spotless white, shaved, circ.u.mcised and continually washed, afforded a curious contrast to s.h.a.ggy barbarians clothed in wool that was dirty with long usage. Even in the time of Herodotus more than one tribe of Greek mountaineers was still in existence, that hardly differed in habits and costume from those early ancestors of the h.e.l.lenes who, as Homer tells us, "slept upon the bare ground and never washed their feet."

-- 3. _Metal-work and Jewelry._

Egypt had, perhaps, her age of stone. MM. Hamy and Francois Lenormant have called attention to the cut and polished flints which have been found in Egypt, and Mariette brought a whole series of them to the Universal Exhibition of 1878. Mariette, however, was careful to remark that some of these flint implements, exactly similar in appearance to those found in the open air, were discovered in the tombs, among the mummies.[378]

[378] MARIETTE, _De la Galerie de l'egypte Ancienne a l'Exposition Retrospective du Trocadero_, 1878, pp. 111, 112.

WILKINSON, _The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, etc. vol. ii. p. 261.

These flint knives, therefore, are not necessarily anterior to the commencement of Egyptian history, that is to say to the first dynasties mentioned by Manetho. Moreover, Herodotus tells us that it was with a flint knife that the Egyptian embalmer made his first incision upon the corpse entrusted to him.[379] It would, then, be difficult to distinguish between prehistoric flint objects and those which belong to the civilization whose remains we are now studying, while our examination of the latter leads us quite as deeply into the past as we desire to go.

[379] HERODOTUS, ii. 86.

Even under the earliest dynasties the Egyptians were metal-workers.

Several bronze objects are in existence which date at least from the end of the Ancient Empire,[380] and in the bas-reliefs of the tomb of Ti, we see smiths directing the flame, by means of long tubes, upon the block of metal which they are forging (Fig. 21, Vol. I.). This is a kind of elementary blow-pipe, such as those still used by certain savage tribes.

[380] See page 197.

The Egyptians began by making use of pure copper, which they could obtain from Sinai and other mines within easy reach. Various indications allow us to conclude that they were long ignorant of the fact that by mixing it with a little tin its hardness could be enormously increased.[381] In any case, they had certainly discovered the secret during the fifth, or, at latest, the sixth, dynasty. As to where they found the tin, we can say nothing positively. No deposit of that metal is known either in Egypt or in the neighbouring countries.

It may possibly have come from India, pa.s.sing through various hands on its way. In later years the Phnicians brought it from Spain and the southern sh.o.r.es of Britain. The metal must then have become common enough, and it was used in large quant.i.ties by the Egyptian founders.

Thus when the pavement of the room in the north-western corner of the Temple of Rameses III. at Medinet-Abou was raised, nearly a thousand bronze statues, all representing Osiris, were found. The existence of this deposit bears witness to the Egyptian habit of sanctifying the site of a new temple by sowing it broad-cast with sacred images.[382]

[381] See BIRCH, notes to Wilkinson's _Manners and Customs_, vol. ii. p. 232, edition of 1878.

[382] MARIETTE, _Itineraire_, p. 210.

Bronze was employed for all kinds of domestic purposes. The graceful mirror-handle reproduced below (Fig. 308) is in the Boulak Museum. So too, are the bronze hair-pin (Fig. 309) and the curiously designed dagger (Fig. 310).

The a.n.a.lysis of various specimens of Egyptian bronze shows that the proportion of tin which it contained was not constant. It varies from about five to fifteen per cent.[383] Traces of iron are also found in it.

[383] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. ii. pp. 232 and 401.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 308.--Mirror-handle.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 309.--Bronze hair-pin.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 310.--Bronze dagger.]

The date at which this last named metal was introduced into the country is still matter of dispute. Various facts brought together by Dr. Birch, lead us to think that the Egyptians were acquainted with iron at least as soon as the commencement of the Theban supremacy,[384] but it would seem that they always made a greater use of bronze.

[384] _Ibid._ Vol. II. PP. 250, 251.

The word that signifies gold appears in the oldest inscriptions, and in the pictures at Beni-Ha.s.san contemporary with the twelfth dynasty the whole process of making gold ornaments is represented.[385] From that time onward the Egyptian Pharaohs caused the veins of quartz in the mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea to be worked; they also obtained large supplies of the precious metal from Ethiopia. Silver came from Asia. It seems to have been rarer than gold, at least during the last centuries of the monarchy. As Belzoni remarked, while gold is lavished upon the mummies and upon all the sepulchral furniture about them silver is only met with in exceptional cases.[386] In 1878, Mariette exhibited in Paris five ma.s.sive patera-shaped silver vases, which, from the style of their ornaments, he attributed to the Saite epoch.

[385] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, vol. ii. pp. 233-237.

[386] BELZONI, _Narrative_, etc. vol. i. p. 277.

The finest specimens of Egyptian jewelry now extant belong to the three great Theban dynasties. We may give as instances the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, which are among the most precious treasures of the Boulak Museum,[387] and those found in the tomb of Kha-em-uas, son of Rameses II. These are in the Louvre. The splendid breast ornament figured on the opposite page (Fig. 311), is one of them. It is made of lapis-lazuli and gold, and is thus described by M. Pierret: "Jewel in the form of a naos, in which a vulture and an uraeus are placed side by side; above them floats a hawk with extended wings; in his claws are seals, the emblems of eternity. Under the frieze of the naos an oval with the prenomen of Rameses II. is introduced. Two _tet_ are placed in the lower angles of the frame."[388] These jewels were funerary in character. They consist of a little chapel in the middle of which there is usually a scarab--emblem of transformation and immortality--adoring the G.o.ddesses Isis and Nephthys. They are called _pectorals_ because they were placed upon the bosoms of the dead.

Great numbers of them have been found in the tombs, in metal, in wood, and in earthenware; few, however, are as rich as that of Kha-em-uas. Each compartment of the golden frame-work is filled in either with coloured gla.s.s or with a piece of some _pietra dura_ with a rich hue of its own.

[387] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee de Boulak_, Nos. 810-839.

Coloured reproductions of them are published in M. CeSAR DALY'S _Revue de l'Architecture_, a sequel to the _Histoire d'egypte d'apres les Monuments_ (published in 1860) of M. ERNEST DESJARDINS.

[388] PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, Louvre, No.

521. This jewel is reproduced, with many others from the same tomb, in two fine coloured plates in MARIETTE'S unfinished work, _Le Serapeum de Memphis_. Folio, 1857.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 311.--Pectoral. Actual size. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

In the same case as this pectoral there are two golden hawks incrusted in the same fas.h.i.+on, which may have belonged to a similar jewel. The larger of the two (Fig. 312) has a ram's head.[389] There is a necklace about its throat, and in its talons it grasps a pair of seals, the symbols of reproduction and eternity. The same emblem is held by the smaller hawk (Fig. 313), whose wings form a large crescent.[390]

[389] PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, Louvre, No.

535.

[390] _Ibid._ No. 534.