Manual of Egyptian Archaeology and Guide to the Study of Antiquities in Egypt Part 12

[65] _Klaft, i.e._, a headdress of folded linen. The beautiful little head here referred to is in the Gizeh Museum, and is a portrait of the Pharaoh Necho.--A.B.E.

[66] _Apries_, in Egyptian "Uahabra," the biblical "Hophra;"

_Amasis_, Ahmes II.; both of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.--A.B.E.

[67] Some specimens of these tiles may be seen in the Egyptian department at the British Museum.--A.B.E.

2.--WOOD, IVORY, LEATHER, AND TEXTILE FABRICS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 242.--Spoon.]

Objects in ivory, bone, and horn are among the rarities of our museums; but we must not for this reason conclude that the Egyptians did not make ample use of those substances. Horn is perishable, and is eagerly devoured by certain insects, which rapidly destroy it. Bone and ivory soon deteriorate and become friable. The elephant was known to the Egyptians from the remotest period. They may, perhaps, have found it inhabiting the Thebaid when first they established themselves in that part of the Nile Valley, for as early as the Fifth Dynasty we find the pictured form of the elephant in use as the hieroglyphic name of the island of Elephantine. Ivory in tusks and half tusks was imported into Egypt from the regions of the Upper Nile.

It was sometimes dyed green or red, but was more generally left of its natural colour. It was largely employed by cabinet makers for inlaying furniture, as chairs, bedsteads, and coffers. Combs, dice, hair-pins, toilette ornaments, delicately wrought spoons (fig. 242), Kohl bottles hollowed out of a miniature column surmounted by a capital, incense-burners in the shape of a hand supporting a bronze cup in which the perfumes were burned, and boomerangs engraved with figures of G.o.ds and fantastic animals, were also made of ivory. Some of these objects are works of fine art; as for instance at Gizeh, a poignard-handle in the form of a lion; the plaques in bas-relief which adorn the draught-box of one Ta, who lived towards the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty; a Fifth Dynasty figure, unfortunately mutilated, which yet retains traces of rose colour; and a miniature statue of Abi, who died at the time of the Thirteenth Dynasty. This little personage, perched on the top of a lotus-flower column, looks straight before him with a majestic air which contrasts somewhat comically with the size and prominence of his ears. The modelling of the figure is broad and spirited, and will bear comparison with good Italian ivories of the Renaissance period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 243.--Wooden statuette of officer, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 244.--Wooden statuette of priest, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 245.--Wooden statuette of the Lady Na.]

Egypt produces few trees, and of these few the greater number are useless to the sculptor. The two which most abound--namely, the date palm and the dom palm--are of too coa.r.s.e a fibre for carving, and are too unequal in texture. Some varieties of the sycamore and acacia are the only trees of which the grain is sufficiently fine and manageable to be wrought with the chisel. Wood was, nevertheless, a favourite material for cheap and rapid work. It was even employed at times for subjects of importance, such as Ka statues; and the Wooden Man of Gizeh shows with what boldness and amplitude of style it could be treated. But the blocks and beams which the Egyptians had at command were seldom large enough for a statue. The Wooden Man himself, though but half life-size, consists of a number of pieces held together by square pegs. Hence, wood-carvers were wont to treat their subjects upon such a scale as admitted of their being cut in one block, and the statues of olden time became statuettes under the Theban dynasties. Art lost nothing by the reduction, and more than one of these little figures is comparable to the finest works of the ancient empire. The best, perhaps, is at the Turin Museum, and dates from the Twentieth Dynasty. It represents a young girl whose only garment is a slender girdle. She is of that indefinite age when the undeveloped form is almost as much like that of a boy as of a girl. The expression of the head is gentle, yet saucy. It is, in fact, across thirty centuries of time, a portrait of one of those graceful little maidens of Elephantine, who, without immodesty or embarra.s.sment, walk unclothed in sight of strangers. Three little wooden men in the Gizeh Museum are probably contemporaries of the Turin figure.

They wear full dress, as, indeed, they should, for one was a king's favourite named Hori, and surnamed Ra. They are walking with calm and measured tread, the bust thrown forward, and the head high. The expression upon their faces is knowing, and somewhat sly. An officer who has retired on half-pay at the Louvre (fig. 243) wears an undress uniform of the time of Amenhotep III.; that is to say, a small wig, a close-fitting vest with short sleeves, and a kilt drawn tightly over the hips, reaching scarcely half-way down the thigh, and trimmed in front with a piece of puffing plaited longwise. His companion is a priest (fig. 244), who wears his hair in rows of little curls one above the other, and is clad in a long petticoat falling below the calf of the leg and spreading out in front in a kind of plaited ap.r.o.n. He holds a sacred standard consisting of a stout staff surmounted by a ram's head crowned with the solar disc. Both officer and priest are painted red brown, with the exception of the hair, which is black; the cornea of the eyes, which is white; and the standard, which is yellow. Curiously enough, the little lady Na, who inhabits the same gla.s.s case, is also painted reddish brown, instead of buff, which was the canonical colour for women (fig. 245). She is taken in a close-fitting garment trimmed down the front with a band of white embroidery. Round her neck she wears a necklace consisting of a triple row of gold pendants. Two golden bracelets adorn her wrists, and on her head she carries a wig with long curls. The right arm hangs by her side, the hand holding some object now lost, which was probably a mirror. The left arm is raised, and with the left hand she presses a lotus lily to her breast. The body is easy and well formed, the figure indicates youth, the face is open, smiling, pleasant, and somewhat plebeian. To modify the unwieldy ma.s.s of the headdress was beyond the skill of the artist, but the bust is delicately and elegantly modelled, the clinging garment gives discreet emphasis to the shape, and the action of the hand which holds the flower is rendered with grace and naturalness. All these are portraits, and as the sitters were not persons of august rank, we may conclude that they did not employ the most fas.h.i.+onable artists. They, doubtless, had recourse to more unpretending craftsmen; but that such craftsmen were thus highly trained in knowledge of form and accuracy of execution, shows how strongly even the artisan was influenced by the great school of sculpture which then flourished at Thebes.

This influence becomes even more apparent when we study the knick-knacks of the toilet table, and such small objects as, properly speaking, come under the head of furniture. To pa.s.s in review the hundred and one little articles of female ornament or luxury to which the fancy of the designer gave all kinds of ingenious and novel forms, would be no light task. The handles of mirrors, for instance, generally represented a stem of lotus or papyrus surmounted by a full-blown flower, from the midst of which rose a disk of polished metal. For this design is sometimes subst.i.tuted the figure of a young girl, either nude, or clad in a close-fitting garment, who holds the mirror on her head. The tops of hair-pins were carved in the semblance of a coiled serpent, or of the head of a jackal, a dog, or a hawk. The pin- cus.h.i.+on in which they are placed is a hedgehog or a tortoise, with holes pierced in a formal pattern upon the back. The head-rests, which served for pillows, were decorated with bas-reliefs of subjects derived from the myths of Bes and Sekhet, the grimacing features of the former deity being carved on the ends or on the base. But it is in the carving of perfume-spoons and kohl-bottles that the inventive skill of the craftsman is most brilliantly displayed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 246.--Spoon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 247.--Spoon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fib. 248.--Spoon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 249.--Spoon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 250.--Spoon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 251.--Spoon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 252.--Spoon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 253.--Spoon.]

Not to soil their fingers the Egyptians made use of spoons for essences, pomades, and the variously-coloured preparations with which both men and women stained their cheeks, lips, eyelids, nails, and palms. The designer generally borrowed his subjects from the fauna or flora of the Nile valley.

A little case at Gizeh is carved in the shape of a couchant calf, the body being hollowed out, and the head and back forming a removable lid. A spoon in the same collection represents a dog running away with an enormous fish in his mouth (fig. 246), the body of the fish forming the bowl of the spoon. Another shows a cartouche springing from a full-blown lotus; another, a lotus fruit laid upon a bouquet of flowers (fig. 247); and here is a simple triangular bowl, the handle decorated with a stem and two buds (fig. 248). The most elaborate specimens combine these subjects with the human figure. A young girl, clad in a mere girdle, is represented in the act of swimming (fig. 249). Her head is well lifted above the water, and her outstretched arms support a duck, the body of which is hollowed out, while the wings, being movable, serve as a cover. We have also a young girl in the Louvre collection, but she stands in a maze of lotus plants (fig.

250), and is in the act of gathering a bud. A bunch of stems, from which emerge two full-blown blossoms, unites the handle to the bowl of the spoon, which is in reverse position, the larger end being turned outwards and the point inwards. Elsewhere, a young girl (fig. 251) playing upon a long- necked lute as she trips along, is framed in by two flowering stems.

Sometimes the fair musician is standing upright in a tiny skiff (fig. 252); and sometimes a girl bearing offerings is subst.i.tuted for the lute player.

Another example represents a slave toiling under the weight of an enormous sack. The age and physiognomy of each of these personages is clearly indicated. The lotus gatherer is of good birth, as may be seen by her carefully plaited hair and tunic. The Theban ladies wore long robes; but this damsel has gathered up her skirts that she may thread her way among the reeds without wetting her garments. The two musicians and the swimming girl belong, on the contrary, to an inferior, or servile, cla.s.s. Two of them wear only a girdle, and the third has a short garment negligently fastened. The bearer of offerings (fig. 253) wears the long pendent tresses distinctive of childhood, and is one of those slender, growing girls of the fellahin cla.s.s whom one sees in such numbers on the banks of the Nile. Her lack of clothing is, however, no evidence of want of birth, for not even the children of n.o.bility were wont to put on the garments of their s.e.x before the period of adolescence. Lastly, the slave (fig. 254), with his thick lips, his high shoulders, his flat nose, his heavy, animal jaw, his low brow, and his bare, conical head, is evidently a caricature of some foreign prisoner. The dogged sullenness with which he trudges under his burden is admirably caught, while the angularities of the body, the type of the head, and the general arrangement of the parts, remind one of the terra-cotta grotesques of Asia Minor. In these subjects, all the minor details, the fruits, the flowers, the various kinds of birds, are rendered with much truth and cleverness. Of the three ducks which are tied by the feet and slung over the arms of the girl bearing offerings, two are resigned to their fate, and hang swinging with open eyes and outstretched necks; but the third flaps her wings and lifts her head protestingly. The two small water-fowl perched upon the lotus flowers listen placidly to the lute-player's music, their beaks resting on their crops. They have learned by experience not to put themselves out of the way for a song, and they know that there is nothing to fear from a young girl, unless she is armed.

They are put to flight in the bas-reliefs by the mere sight of a bow and arrows, just as a company of rooks is put to flight nowadays by the sight of a gun. The Egyptians were especially familiar with the ways of animals and birds, and reproduced them with marvellous exactness. The habit of minutely observing minor facts became instinctive, and it informed their most trifling works with that air of reality which strikes us so forcibly at the present day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 254.--Spoon.]

Household furniture was no more abundant in ancient Egypt than it is in the Egypt of to-day. In the time of the Twelfth Dynasty an ordinary house contained no bedsteads, but low frameworks like the Nubian _angareb_; or mats rolled up by day on which the owners lay down at night in their clothes, pillowing their heads on earthenware, stone, or wooden head-rests.

There were also two or three simple stone seats, some wooden chairs or stools with carved legs, chests and boxes of various sizes for clothes and tools, and a few common vessels of pottery or bronze. For making fire there were fire-sticks, and the bow-drill for using them (figs. 255 and 181); children's toys were even then found in great variety though of somewhat quaint construction. There were dolls with wigs and movable limbs, made in stone, pottery, and wood (fig. 256); figures of men, and animals, and terra-cotta boats, b.a.l.l.s of wood and stuffed leather, whip-tops, and tip- cats (fig. 257).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 255.--Fire-sticks, bow, and unfinished drill-stock, Twelfth Dynasty; _Illahn, Kahun, and Gurob,_ W.M.F. Petrie, Plate VII., p.

11.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 256.--Remains of two Twelfth Dynasty dolls; _Kahun, Gurob and Hawara,_ W.M.F. Petrie, Plate VIII. p. 30.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 257.--Tops, tip-cat, and a terra-cotta toy boat, Twelfth Dynasty; _Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara,_ W.M.F. Petrie, Plates VIII., IX., p. 30.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 258.--Chest]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 259.--Chest.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 260.--Chest.]

The art of the cabinet-maker was nevertheless carried to a high degree of perfection, from the time of the ancient dynasties. Planks were dressed down with the adze, mortised, glued, joined together by means of pegs cut in hard wood, or acacia thorns (never by metal nails), polished, and finally covered with paintings. Chests generally stand upon four straight legs, and are occasionally thus raised to some height from the ground. The lid is flat, or rounded according to a special curvature (fig. 258) much in favour among the Egyptians of all periods. Sometimes, though rarely, it is gable-shaped, like our house-roofs (fig. 259). Generally speaking, the lid lifts off bodily; but it often turns upon a peg inserted in one of the uprights. Sometimes, also, it turns upon wooden pivots (fig. 260). The panels, which are large and admirably suited for decorative art, are enriched with paintings, or inlaid with ivory, silver, precious woods, or enamelled plaques. It may be that we are scarcely in a position justly to appraise the skill of Egyptian cabinet-makers, or the variety of designs produced at various periods. Nearly all the furniture which has come down to our day has been found in tombs, and, being destined for burial in the sepulchre, may either be of a character exclusively destined for the use of the mummy, or possibly a cheap imitation of a more precious cla.s.s of goods.

The mummy was, in fact, the cabinet-maker's best customer. In other lands, man took but a few objects with him into the next world; but the defunct Egyptian required nothing short of a complete outfit. The mummy-case alone was an actual monument, in the construction of which a whole squad of workmen was employed (fig. 261). The styles of mummy-cases varied from period to period. Under the Memphite and first Theban empires, we find only rectangular chests in sycamore wood, flat at top and bottom, and made of many pieces joined together by wooden pins. The pattern is not elegant, but the decoration is very curious. The lid has no cornice. Outside, it is inscribed down the middle with a long column of hieroglyphs, sometimes merely written in ink, sometimes laid on in colour, sometimes carved in hollowed-out signs filled in with some kind of bluish paste. The inscription records only the name and t.i.tles of the deceased, accompanied now and then by a short form of prayer in his favour. The inside is covered with a thick coat of stucco or whitewash.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 261.--Construction of a mummy-case, wall scene, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 262.--Mask of Twenty-first Dynasty coffin of Rameses II.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 263.--Mummy-case of Queen Ahmesnefertari.]

Upon this surface, the seventeenth chapter of _The Book of the Dead _was generally written in red and black inks, and in fine cursive hieroglyphs.

The body of the chest is made with three horizontal planks for the bottom, and eight vertical planks, placed two and two, for the four sides. The outside is sometimes decorated with long strips of various colours ending in interlaced lotus-leaves, such as are seen on stone sarcophagi. More frequently, it is ornamented on the left side with two wide-open eyes and two monumental doors, and on the right with three doors exactly like those seen in contemporary catacombs. The sarcophagus is in truth the house of the deceased; and, being his house, its four walls were bound to contain an epitome of the prayers and _tableaux_ which covered the walls of his tomb.

The necessary formulae and pictured scenes were, therefore, reproduced inside, nearly in the same order in which they appear in the mastabas. Each side is divided in three registers, each register containing a dedication in the name of the deceased, or representations of objects belonging to him, or such texts from the Ritual as need to be repeated for his benefit.

Skilfully composed, and painted upon a background made to imitate some precious wood, the whole forms a boldly-designed and harmoniously-coloured picture. The cabinet-maker's share of the work was the lightest, and the long boxes in which the dead of the earliest period were buried made no great demand upon his skill. This, however, was not the case when in later times the sarcophagus came to be fas.h.i.+oned in the likeness of the human body. Of this style we have two leading types. In the most ancient, the mummy serves as the model for his case. His outstretched feet and legs are in one. The form of the knee, the swell of the calf, the contours of the thigh and the trunk, are summarily indicated, and are, as it were, vaguely modelled under the wood. The head, apparently the only living part of this inert body, is wrought out in the round. The dead man is in this wise imprisoned in a kind of statue of himself; and this statue is so well balanced that it can stand on its feet if required, as upon a pedestal. In the other type of sarcophagus, the deceased lies at full length upon his tomb, and his figure, sculptured in the round, serves as the lid of his mummy-case. On his head is seen the ponderous wig of the period. A white linen vest and a long petticoat cover his chest and legs. His feet are shod with elegant sandals. His arms lie straight along his sides, or are folded upon his breast, the hands grasping various emblems, as the _Ankh_, the girdle-buckle, the _Tat_;[69] or, as in the case of the wife of Sennetm at Gizeh, a garland of ivy. This mummiform type of sarcophagus is rarely met with under the Memphite dynasties, though that of Menkara, the Mycerinus of the Greeks, affords a memorable example. Under the Eleventh Dynasty, the mummy-case is frequently but a hollowed tree-trunk, roughly sculptured outside, with a head at one end and feet at the other. The face is daubed with bright colours, yellow, red, and green; the wig and headdress are striped with black and blue, and an elaborate collar is depicted on the breast. The rest of the case is either covered with the long, gilded wings of Isis and Nephthys, or with a uniform tint of white or yellow, and spa.r.s.ely decorated with symbolic figures, or columns of hieroglyphs painted blue and black. Among the sarcophagi belonging to kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty which I recovered from Deir el Bahari, the most highly finished belonged to this type, and were only remarkable for the really extraordinary skill with which the craftsman had reproduced the features of the deceased sovereigns. The mask of Ahmes I., that of Amenhotep I., and that of Thothmes II., are masterpieces in their way. The mask of Rameses II. shows no sign of paint, except a black line which accentuates the form of the eye. The face is doubtless modelled in the likeness of the Pharaoh Herhor, who restored the funerary outfit of his puissant ancestor, and it will almost bear comparison with the best works of contemporary sculpture (fig. 262). Two mummy-cases found in the same place--namely, those of Queen Ahmesnefertari and her daughter, Aahhotep II.--are of gigantic size, and measure more than ten and a half feet in height (fig. 263). Standing upright, they might almost be taken for two of the caryatid statues from the first court at Medinet Hab, though on a smaller scale. The bodies are represented as bandaged, and but vaguely indicate the contours of the human form. The shoulders and bust of each are covered with a kind of network in relief, every mesh standing out in blue upon a yellow ground. The hands emerge from this mantle, are crossed upon the breast, and grasp the _Ankh_, or Tau-cross, symbolic of eternal life. The heads are portraits. The faces are round, the eyes large, the expression mild and characterless. Each is crowned with the flat-topped cap and lofty plumes of Amen or Maut. We cannot but wonder for what reason these huge receptacles were made. The two queens were small of stature, and their mummies--which were well-nigh lost in the cases--had to be packed round with an immense quant.i.ty of rags, to prevent them from s.h.i.+fting, and becoming injured. Apart from their abnormal size, these cases are characterised by the same simplicity which distinguishes other mummy-cases of royal or private persons of the same period. Towards the middle of the Nineteenth Dynasty, the fas.h.i.+on changed.

The single mummy-case, soberly decorated, was superseded by two, three, and even four cases, fitting the one into the other, and covered with paintings and inscriptions. Sometimes the outer receptacle is a sarcophagus with convex lid and square ears, upon which the deceased is pictured over and over again upon a white ground, in adoration before the G.o.ds of the Osirian cycle. When, however, it is shaped in human form, it retains somewhat of the old simplicity. The face is painted; a collar is represented on the chest, a band of hieroglyphs extends down the whole length of the body to the feet, and the rest is in one uniform tone of black, brown, or dark yellow. The inner cases were extravagantly rich, the hands and faces being red, rose-coloured, or gilded; the jewellery painted, or sometimes imitated by means of small morsels of enamel encrusted in the wood-work; the surfaces frequently covered with many-coloured scenes and legends, and the whole heightened by means of the yellow varnish already mentioned. The lavish ornamentation of this period is in striking contrast with the sobriety of earlier times; but in order to grasp the reason of this change, one must go to Thebes, and visit the actual sepulchres of the dead.

The kings and private persons of the great conquering dynasties[70] devoted their energies, and all the means at their disposal, to the excavation of catacombs. The walls of those catacombs were covered with sculptures and paintings. The sarcophagus was cut in one enormous block of granite or alabaster, and admirably wrought. It was therefore of little moment if the wooden coffin in which the mummy reposed were very simply decorated. But the Egyptians of the decadence, and their rulers, had not the wealth of Egypt and the spoils of neighbouring countries at command. They were poor; and the slenderness of their resources debarred them from great undertakings. They for the most part gave up the preparation of magnificent tombs, and employed such wealth as remained to them in the fabrication of fine mummy-cases carved in sycamore wood. The beauty of their coffins, therefore, but affords an additional proof of their weakness and poverty.

When for a few centuries the Sate princes had succeeded in re-establis.h.i.+ng the prosperity of the country, stone sarcophagi came once more into requisition, and the wooden coffin reverted to somewhat of the simplicity of the great period. But this Renaissance was not destined to last. The Macedonian conquest brought back the same revolution in funerary fas.h.i.+ons which followed the fall of the Ramessides, and double and triple mummy cases, over-painted and over-gilded, were again in demand. If the craftsmen of Graeco-Roman time who attired the dead of Ekhmim for their last resting places were less skilful than those of earlier date, their bad taste was, at all events, not surpa.s.sed by the Theban coffin-makers who lived and worked under the latest princes of the royal line of Rameses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 264.--Panel portrait from the Graeco-Roman Cemetery at Hawara, now in the National Gallery, London. (_Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe_, W.M.F. Petrie, Plate X., page 10.)]

A series of Graeco-Roman examples from the Faym exhibit the stages by which portraiture in the flat there replaced the modelled mask, until towards the middle of the second century A.D. it became customary to bandage over the face of the mummy a panel-portrait of the dead, as he was in life (fig. 264).

The remainder of the funerary outfit supplied the cabinet-maker with as much work as the coffin-maker. Boxes of various shapes and sizes were required for the wardrobe of the mummy, for his viscera, and for his funerary statuettes. He must also have tables for his meals; stools, chairs, a bed to lie upon, a boat and sledge to convey him to the tomb, and sometimes even a war-chariot and a carriage in which to take the air.[71]

The boxes for canopic vases, funerary statuettes, and libation-vases, are divided in several compartments. A couchant jackal is sometimes placed on the top, and serves for a handle by which to take off the lid. Each box was provided with its own little sledge, upon which it was drawn in the funeral procession on the day of burial. Beds are not very uncommon. Many are identical in structure with the Nubian _angarebs_, and consist merely of some coa.r.s.e fabric, or of interlaced strips of leather, stretched on a plain wooden frame. Few exceed fifty-six inches in length; the sleeper, therefore, could never lie outstretched, but must perforce a.s.sume a doubled-up position. The frame is generally horizontal, but sometimes it slopes slightly downwards from the head to the foot. It was often raised to a considerable height above the level of the floor, and a stool, or a little portable set of steps, was used in mounting it. These details were known to us by the wall-paintings only until I myself discovered two perfect specimens in 1884 and 1885; one at Thebes, in a tomb of the Thirteenth Dynasty, and the other at Ekhmim, in the Graeco-Roman necropolis. In the former, two accommodating lions have elongated their bodies to form the framework, their heads doing duty for the head of the bed, and their tails being curled up under the feet of the sleeper.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 265.--Carved and painted mummy canopy.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 266.--Canopied mummy-couch, Graeco-Roman.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 267.--Mummy-sledge and canopy.]