Manual of Egyptian Archaeology and Guide to the Study of Antiquities in Egypt Part 11

[Il.u.s.tration: Fig. 218.--Perfume vase, alabaster.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 219.--Vase for antimony powder.]

It was not for want of material that the art of modelling and baking clays failed to be as fully developed in Egypt as in Greece, The valley of the Nile is rich in a fine and ductile potter's clay, with which the happiest results might have been achieved, had the native craftsman taken the trouble to prepare it with due care. Metals and hard stone were, however, always preferred for objects of luxury; the potter was fain, therefore, to be content with supplying only the commonest needs of household and daily life. He was wont to take whatever clay happened to be nearest to the place where he was working, and this clay was habitually badly washed, badly kneaded, and fas.h.i.+oned with the finger upon a primitive wheel worked by the hand. The firing was equally careless. Some pieces were barely heated at all, and melted it they came into contact with water, while others were as hard as tiles. All tombs of the ancient empire contain vases of a red or yellow ware, often mixed, like the clay of bricks, with finely-chopped straw or weeds. These are mostly large solid jars with oval bodies, short necks, and wide mouths, but having neither foot nor handles. With them are also found pipkins and pots, in which to store the dead man's provisions; bowls more or less shallow; and flat plates, such as are still used by the fellahin. The poorer folk sometimes buried miniature table and kitchen services with their dead, as being less costly than full-sized vessels. The surface is seldom glazed, seldom smooth and l.u.s.trous; but is ordinarily covered with a coat of whitish, unbaked paint, which scales off at a touch.

Upon this surface there is neither incised design, nor ornament in relief, nor any kind of inscription, but merely some four or five parallel lines in red, black, or yellow, round the neck.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 220.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 221.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 222.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 223.]

The pottery of the earliest Theban dynasties which I have collected at El Khozam and Gebeleyn is more carefully wrought than the pottery of the Memphite period. It may be cla.s.sified under two heads. The first comprises plain, smooth-bodied vases, black below and dark red above. On examining this ware where broken, we see that the colour was mixed with the clay during the kneading, and that the two zones were separately prepared, roughly joined, and then uniformly glazed. The second cla.s.s comprises vases of various and sometimes eccentric forms, moulded of red or tawny clay.

Some are large cylinders closed at one end; others are flat; others oblong and boat-shaped; others, like cruets, joined together two and two, yet with no channel of communication[56] (fig. 220). The ornamentation is carried over the whole surface, and generally consists of straight parallel lines, cross lines, zigzags, dotted lines, or small crosses and lines in geometrical combination; all these patterns being in white when the ground is red, or in reddish brown when the ground is yellow or whitish. Now and then we find figures of men and animals interspersed among the geometrical combinations. The drawing is rude, almost childish; and it is difficult to tell whether the subjects represent herds of antelopes or scenes of gazelle-hunting. The craftsmen who produced these rude attempts were nevertheless contemporary with the artists who decorated the rock-cut tombs at Beni Hasan. As regards the period of Egypt's great military conquests, the Theban tombs of that age have supplied objects enough to stock a museum of pottery; but unfortunately the types are very uninteresting. To begin with, we find hand-made sepulchral statuettes modelled in summary fas.h.i.+on from an oblong lump of clay. A pinch of the craftsman's fingers brought out the nose; two tiny k.n.o.bs and two little stumps, separately modelled and stuck on, represented the eyes and arms. The better sort of figures were pressed in moulds of baked clay, of which several specimens have been found. They were generally moulded in one piece; then lightly touched up; then baked; and lastly, on coming out of the oven, were painted red, yellow, or white, and inscribed with the pen. Some are of very good style, and almost equal those made in limestone. The _shabti_ of the scribe Hori, and those of the priest Horta (Sate) found at Hawara, show what the Egyptians could have achieved in this branch of the art if they had cared to cultivate it. Funerary cones were objects purely devotional, and the most consummate art could have done nothing to make them elegant. A funerary cone consists of a long, conical ma.s.s of clay, stamped at the larger end with a few rows of hieroglyphs stating the name, parentage, and t.i.tles of the deceased, the whole surface being coated with a whitish wash.

These are simulacra of votive cakes intended for the eternal nourishment of the Double. Many of the vases buried in tombs of this period are painted to imitate alabaster, granite, basalt, bronze, and even gold; and were cheap subst.i.tutes for those vases made in precious materials which wealthy mourners were wont to lavish on their dead. Among those especially intended to contain water or flowers, some are covered with designs drawn in red and black (fig. 221), such as concentric lines and circles (fig. 222), meanders, religious emblems (fig. 223), cross-lines resembling network, festoons of flowers and buds, and long leafy stems carried downward from the neck to the body of the vase, and upward from the body of the vase to the neck. Those in the tomb of Sennetm were decorated on one side with a large necklace, or collar, like the collars found upon mummies, painted in very bright colours to simulate natural flowers or enamels. Canopic vases in baked clay, though rarely met with under the Eighteenth Dynasty, became more and more common as the prosperity of Thebes declined. The heads upon the lids are for the most part prettily turned, especially the human heads.[57] Modelled with the hand, scooped out to diminish the weight, and then slowly baked, each was finally painted with the colours especially pertaining to the genius whose head was represented. Towards the time of the Twentieth Dynasty, it became customary to enclose the bodies of sacred animals in vases of this type. Those found near Ekhmim contain jackals and hawks; those of Sakkarah are devoted to serpents, eggs, and mummified rats; those of Abydos hold the sacred ibis. These last are by far the finest. On the body of the vase, the protecting G.o.ddess Khit is depicted with outspread wings, while Horus and Thoth are seen presenting the bandage and the unguent vase; the whole subject being painted in blue and red upon a white ground. From the time of the Greek domination, the national poverty being always on the increase, baked clay was much used for coffins as well as for canopic vases. In the Isthmus of Suez, at Ahnas el Medineh, in the Faym, at Asan, and in Nubia, we find whole cemeteries in which the sarcophagi are made of baked clay. Some are like oblong boxes rounded at each end, with a saddle-back lid. Some are in human form, but barbarous in style, the heads being surmounted by a pudding-shaped imitation of the ancient Egyptian head-dress, and the features indicated by two or three strokes of the modelling tool or the thumb. Two little lumps of clay stuck awkwardly upon the breast indicate the coffin of a woman. Even in these last days of Egyptian civilisation, it was only the coa.r.s.est objects which were left of the natural hue of the baked clay. As of old, the surfaces were, as a rule, overlaid with a coat of colour, or with a richly gilded glaze.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 224.--Gla.s.s-blowers from Twelfth Dynasty tomb.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 225.--Parti-coloured gla.s.s vase, inscribed Thothmes III.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 226.--Parti-coloured gla.s.s vase.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 227.--Parti-coloured gla.s.s vase.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 228.--Parti-coloured gla.s.s goblets of Nesikhons.]

Gla.s.s was known to the Egyptians from the remotest period, and gla.s.s- blowing is represented in tombs which date from some thousands of years before our era (fig. 224). The craftsman, seated before the furnace, takes up a small quant.i.ty of the fused substance upon the end of his cane and blows it circ.u.mspectly, taking care to keep it in contact with the flame, so that it may not harden during the operation. Chemical a.n.a.lysis shows the const.i.tuent parts of Egyptian gla.s.s to have been nearly identical with our own; but it contains, besides silex, lime, alumina, and soda, a relatively large proportion of extraneous substances, as copper, oxide of iron, and oxide of manganese, which they apparently knew not how to eliminate. Hence Egyptian gla.s.s is scarcely ever colourless, but inclines to an uncertain shade of yellow or green. Some ill-made pieces are so utterly decomposed that they flake away, or fall to iridescent dust, at the lightest touch.

Others have suffered little from time or damp, but are streaky and full of bubbles. A few are, however, perfectly h.o.m.ogenous and limpid. Colourless gla.s.s was not esteemed by the Egyptians as it is by ourselves; whether opaque or transparent, they preferred it coloured. The dyes were obtained by mixing metallic oxides with the ordinary ingredients; that is to say, copper and cobalt for the blues, copperas for the greens, manganese for the violets and browns, iron for the yellows, and lead or tin for the whites.

One variety of red contains 30 per cent of bronze, and becomes coated with verdegris if exposed to damp. All this chemistry was empirical, and acquired by instinct. Finding the necessary elements at hand, or being supplied with them from a distance, they made use of them at hazard, and without being too certain of obtaining the effects they sought. Many of their most harmonious combinations were due to accident, and they could not reproduce them at will. The ma.s.ses which they obtained by these unscientific means were nevertheless of very considerable dimensions. The cla.s.sic authors tell of stelae, sarcophagi, and columns made in one piece.

Ordinarily, however, gla.s.s was used only for small objects, and, above all, for counterfeiting precious stones. However cheaply they may have been sold in the Egyptian market, these small objects were not accessible to all the world. The gla.s.s-workers imitated the emerald, jasper, lapis lazuli, and carnelian to such perfection that even now we are sometimes embarra.s.sed to distinguish the real stones from the false. The gla.s.s was pressed into moulds made of stone or limestone cut to the forms required, as beads, discs, rings, pendants, rods, and plaques covered with figures of men and animals, G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. Eyes and eyebrows for the faces of statues in stone or bronze were likewise made of gla.s.s, as also bracelets. Gla.s.s was inserted into the hollows of incised hieroglyphs, and hieroglyphs were also cut out in gla.s.s. In this manner, whole inscriptions were composed, and let into wood, stone, or metal. The two mummy-cases which enclosed the body of Netemt, mother of the Pharaoh Herhor Seamen, are decorated in this style.

Except the headdress of the effigy and some minor details, these cases are gilded all over; the texts and the princ.i.p.al part of the ornamentation being formed of gla.s.s enamels, which stand out in brilliant contrast with the dead gold ground. Many Faym mummies were coated with plaster or stucco, the texts and religious designs, which are generally painted, being formed of gla.s.s enamels incrusted upon the surface of the plaster. Some of the largest subjects are made of pieces of gla.s.s joined together and retouched with the chisel, in imitation of bas-relief. Thus the face, hands, and feet of the G.o.ddess Ma are done in turquoise blue, her headdress in dark blue, her feather in alternate stripes of blue and yellow, and her raiment in deep red. Upon a wooden shrine recently discovered in the neighbourhood of Daphnae,[58] and upon a fragment of mummy-case in the Museum of Turin, the hieroglyphic forms of many-coloured gla.s.s are inlaid upon the sombre ground of the wood, the general effect being inconceivably rich and brilliant. Gla.s.s filigrees, engraved gla.s.s, cut gla.s.s, soldered gla.s.s, gla.s.s imitations of wood, of straw, and of string, were all known to the Egyptians of old. I have under my hand at this present moment a square rod formed of innumerable threads of coloured gla.s.s fused into one solid body, which gives the royal oval of one of the Amenemhats at the part where it is cut through. The design is carried through the whole length of the rod, and wherever that rod may be cut, the royal oval reappears.[59] One gla.s.s case in the Gizeh Museum is entirely stocked with small objects in coloured gla.s.s. Here we see an ape on all fours, smelling some large fruit which lies upon the ground; yonder, a woman's head, front face, upon a white or green ground surrounded by a red border. Most of the plaques represent only rosettes, stars, and single flowers or posies. One of the smallest represents a black-and-white Apis walking, the work being so delicate that it loses none of its effect under the magnifying gla.s.s. The greater number of these objects date from, and after, the first Sate dynasty; but excavations in Thebes and Tell el Amarna have proved that the manufacture of coloured gla.s.s prevailed in Egypt earlier than the tenth century before our era. At Krnet Murraee and Sheikh Abd el Grneh, there have been found, not only amulets for the use of the dead, such as colonnettes, hearts, mystic eyes, hippopotami walking erect, and ducks in pairs, done in parti-coloured pastes, blue, red, and yellow, but also vases of a type which we have been accustomed to regard as of Phoenician and Cypriote manufacture.[60] Here, for example, is a little aenochoe, of a light blue semi-opaque gla.s.s (fig. 225); the inscription in the name of Thothmes III., the ovals on the neck, and the palm-fronds on the body of the vase being in yellow. Here again is a lenticular phial, three and a quarter inches in height (fig. 226), the ground colour of a deep ocean blue, admirably pure and intense, upon which a fern-leaf pattern in yellow stands out both boldly and delicately. A yellow thread runs round the rim, and two little handles of light green are attached to the neck. A miniature amphora of the same height (fig. 227) is of a dark, semi-transparent olive green. A zone of blue and yellow zigzags, bounded above and below by yellow bands, encircles the body of the vase at the part of its largest circ.u.mference. The handles are pale green, and the thread round the lip is pale blue. Princess Nesikhons had beside her, in the vault at Deir el Bahari, some gla.s.s goblets of similar work. Seven were in whole colours, light green and blue; four were of black gla.s.s spotted with white; one only was decorated with many-coloured fronds arranged in two rows (fig. 228).

The national gla.s.s works were therefore in full operation during the time of the great Theban dynasties. Huge piles of scoriae mixed with slag yet mark the spot where their furnaces were stationed at Tell el Amarna, the Ramesseum, at El Kab, and at the Tell of Eshmneyn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 229.--Hippopotamus in blue glaze.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 230.--Glazed ware from Thebes.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 231.--Glazed ware from Thebes.]

The Egyptians also enamelled stone. One half at least of the scarabaei, cylinders, and amulets contained in our museums are of limestone or schist, covered with a coloured glaze. Doubtless the common clay seemed to them inappropriate to this kind of decoration, for they subst.i.tuted in its place various sorts of earth--some white and sandy; another sort brown and fine, which they obtained by the pulverisation of a particular kind of limestone found in the neighbourhood of Keneh, Luxor, and Asan; and a third sort, reddish in tone, and mixed with powdered sandstone and brick-dust. These various substances are known by the equally inexact names of Egyptian porcelain and Egyptian faence. The oldest specimens, which are hardly glazed at all, are coated with an excessively thin slip. This vitreous matter has, however, generally settled into the hollows of the hieroglyphs or figures, where its l.u.s.tre stands out in strong contrast with the dead surface of the surrounding parts. The colour most frequently in use under the ancient dynasties was green; but yellow, red, brown, violet, and blue were not disdained.[61] Blue predominated in the Theban factories from the earliest beginning of the Middle Empire. This blue was brilliant, yet tender, in imitation of turquoise or lapis lazuli. The Gizeh Museum formerly contained three hippopotamuses of this shade, discovered in the tomb of an Entef[62] at Drah Ab'l Neggeh[63] One was lying down, the two others were standing in the marshes, their bodies being covered by the potter with pen-and-ink sketches of reeds and lotus plants, amid which hover birds and b.u.t.terflies (fig. 229). This was his nave way of depicting the animal amid his natural surroundings. The blue is splendid, and we must overleap twenty centuries before we again find so pure a colour among the funerary statuettes of Deir el Bahari. Green reappears under the Sate dynasties, but paler than that of more ancient times, and it prevailed in the north of Egypt, at Memphis, Bubastis, and Sais, without entirely banis.h.i.+ng the blue. The other colours before mentioned were in current use for not more than four or five centuries; that is to say, from the time of Ahmes I. to the time of the Ramessides. It was then, and only then, that _shabti_ of white or red glaze, rosettes and lotus flowers in yellow, red, and violet, and parti-coloured kohl-pots abounded. The potters of the time of Amenhotep III. affected greys and violets. The olive-shaped amulets which are inscribed with the names of this Pharaoh and the princesses of his family are decorated with pale blue hieroglyphs upon a delicate mauve ground. The vase of Queen Tii in the Gizeh collection is of grey and blue, with ornaments in two colours round the neck. The fabrication of many- coloured enamels seems to have attained its greatest development under Khenaten; at all events, it was at Tell el Amarna that I found the brightest and most delicately fas.h.i.+oned specimens, such as yellow, green, and violet rings, blue and white fleurettes, fish, lutes, figs, and bunches of grapes.[64] One little statuette of Horus has a red face and a blue body; a ring bezel bears the name of a king in violet upon a ground of light blue. However restricted the s.p.a.ce, the various colours are laid in with so sure a hand that they never run one into the other, but stand out separately and vividly. A vase to contain antimony powder, chased and mounted on a pierced stand, is glazed with reddish brown (fig. 230).

Another, in the shape of a mitred hawk, is blue picked out with black spots. It belonged of old to Ahmes I. A third, hollowed out of the body of an energetic little hedgehog, is of a changeable green (fig. 231). A Pharaoh's head in dead blue wears a _klaft_[65] with dark-blue stripes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 232.]

Fine as these pieces are, the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the series is a statuette of one Ptahmes, first Prophet of Amen, now in the Gizeh Museum. The hieroglyphic inscriptions as well as the details of the mummy bandages are chased in relief upon a white ground of admirable smoothness afterwards filled in with enamel. The face and hands are of turquoise blue; the head- dress is yellow, with violet stripes; the hieroglyphic characters of the inscription, and the vulture with outspread wings upon the breast of the figure, are also violet. The whole is delicate, brilliant, and harmonious; not a flaw mars the purity of the contours or the clearness of the lines.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 233.--Interior decoration of cup, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 234.--Lenticular vase, glazed ware, Sate.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 235.--Chamber decorated with tiles in step pyramid of Sakkarah.]

Glazed pottery was common from the earliest times. Cups with a foot (fig.

232), blue bowls, rounded at the bottom and decorated in black ink with mystic eyes, lotus flowers, fishes (fig. 233), and palm-leaves, date, as a rule, from the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, or Twentieth Dynasties. Lenticular ampullae coated with a greenish glaze, flanked by two crouching monkeys for handles, decorated along the edge with pearl or egg-shaped ornaments, and round the body with elaborate collars (fig. 234), belong almost without exception to the reigns of Apries and Amasis.[66] Sistrum handles, saucers, drinking-cups in the form of a half-blown lotus, plates, dishes--in short, all vessels in common use--were required to be not only easy to keep clean, but pleasant to look upon. Did they carry their taste for enamelled ware so far as to cover the walls of their houses with glazed tiles? Upon this point we can p.r.o.nounce neither affirmatively nor negatively; the few examples of this kind of decoration which we possess being all from royal buildings. Upon a yellow brick, we have the family name and _Ka_ name of Pepi I.; upon a green brick, the name of Rameses III.; upon certain red and white fragments, the names of Seti I. and Sheshonk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 236.--Tile from step pyramid of Sakkarah.]

Up to the beginning of the present century, one of the chambers in the step pyramid at Sakkarah yet retained its mural decoration of glazed ware (fig.

235). For three-fourths of the wall-surface it was covered with green tiles, oblong in shape, flat at the back, and slightly convex on the face (fig. 236). A square tenon, pierced through with a hole large enough to receive a wooden rod, served to fix them together in horizontal pyramid of rows.[67] The three rows which frame in the doorway are inscribed with the t.i.tles of an uncla.s.sed Pharaoh belonging to one of the first Memphite dynasties. The hieroglyphs are relieved in blue, red, green, and yellow, upon a tawny ground. Twenty centuries later, Rameses III. originated a new style at Tell el Yahdeh. This time the question of ornamentation concerned, not a single chamber, but a whole temple. The ma.s.s of the building was of limestone and alabaster; but the pictorial subjects, instead of being sculptured according to custom, were of a kind of mosaic made with almost equal parts of stone tesserae and glazed ware.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 237.--Tile inlay, Tell el Yahdeh.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 238.--Tile inlay, Tell el Yahdeh.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 239.--Inlaid tiles, Tell el Yahdeh.]

The most frequent item in the scheme of decoration was a roundel moulded of a sandy frit coated with blue or grey slip, upon which is a cream-coloured rosette (fig. 237). Some of these rosettes are framed in geometrical designs (fig. 238) or spider-web patterns; some represent open flowers. The central boss is in relief; the petals and tracery are encrusted in the ma.s.s. These roundels, which are of various diameters ranging from three- eighths of an inch to four inches, were fixed to the walls by means of a very fine cement. They were used to form many different designs, as scrolls, foliage, and parallel fillets, such as may be seen on the foot of an altar and the base of a column preserved in the Gizeh Museum. The royal ovals were mostly in one piece; so also were the figures. The details, either incised or modelled upon the clay before firing, were afterwards painted with such colours as might be suitable. The lotus flowers and leaves which were carried along the bottom of the walls or the length of the cornices, were, on the contrary, made up of independent pieces; each colour being a separate morsel cut to fit exactly into the pieces by which it was surrounded (fig. 239). This temple was rifled at the beginning of the present century, and some figures of prisoners brought thence have been in the Louvre collection ever since the time of Champollion. All that remained of the building and its decoration was demolished a few years ago by certain dealers in antiquities, and the _debris_ are now dispersed in all directions. Mariette, though with great difficulty, recovered some of the more important fragments, such as the name of Rameses III., which dates the building; some borderings of lotus flowers and birds with human hands (fig. 240); and some heads of Asiatics and negro prisoners (fig. 241).[68]

The destruction of this monument is the more grievous because the Egyptians cannot have constructed many after the same type. Glazed bricks, painted tiles, and enamelled mosaics are readily injured; and in the judgment of a people enamoured of stability and eternity, that would be the gravest of radical defects.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 240.--Relief tile, Tell el Yahdeh.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 241.--Relief tile, Tell el Yahdeh.]

[55] Works on scarabaei are the Palin collection, published in 1828; Mr.

Loftie's charming _Essay of Scarabs_, which is in fact a catalogue of his own specimens, admirably ill.u.s.trated from drawings by Mr. W.M.F. Petrie; and Mr. Petrie's _Historical Scarabs_, published 1889.--A.B.E.

[56] These twin vases are still made at Asan. I bought a small specimen there in 1874.--A.B.E.

[57] The sepulchral vases commonly called "canopic" were four in number, and contained the embalmed viscera of the mummy. The lids of these vases were fas.h.i.+oned to represent the heads of the four genii of Amenti, Hapi, Tatmtf, Kebhsennef, and Amset; i.e. the Ape-head, the Jackal-head, the Hawk-head, and the human head.--A.B.E.

[58] The remains of this shrine, together with many hundreds of beautiful gla.s.s hieroglyphs, figures, emblems, etc., for inlaying, besides moulds and other items of the gla.s.sworker's stock, were discovered by Mr. F. Ll. Griffith at Tell Gemayemi, about equidistant from the mounds of Tanis and Daphnae (San and Defenneh) in March 1886. For a fuller account see Mr. Griffith's report, "_The Antiquities of Tell el Yahudiyeh," in Seventh Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund_.

--A.B.E.

[59] Some of these beautiful rods were also found at Tell Gemayemi by Mr.

F. Ll. Griffith, and in such sound condition that it was possible to cut them in thin slices, for distribution among various museums.-- A.B.E.

[60] That is, of the kind known as the "false murrhine."--A.B.E.

[61] The yellows and browns are frequently altered greens.--A.B.E.

[62] One of the Eleventh Dynasty kings.

[63] There is a fine specimen at the Louvre, and another in the museum at Leydeu.--A.B.E.

[64] For an account of every stage and detail in the gla.s.s and glaze manufactures of Tell el Amarna, see W.M.F. Petrie's _Tell el Amarna_.