I have treated briefly of the Noble
Arts; it remains to say something of the Industrial
Arts. All classes of society in Egypt were, from
an early period, imbued with the love of luxury, and
with a taste for the beautiful. Living or dead,
the Egyptian desired to have jewels and costly amulets
upon his person, and to be surrounded by choice furniture
and elegant utensils. The objects of his daily
use must be distinguished, if not by richness of material,
at least by grace of form; and in order to satisfy
his requirements, the clay, the stone, the metals,
the woods, and other products of distant lands were
laid under contribution.
I - STONE, CLAY, AND GLASS
It is impossible to pass through a
gallery of Egyptian antiquities without being surprised
by the prodigious number of small objects in pietra
dura which have survived till the present time.
As yet we have found neither the diamond, the ruby,
nor the sapphire; but with these exceptions, the domain
of the lapidary was almost as extensive as at the present
day. That domain included the amethyst, the emerald,
the garnet, the aquamarine, the chrysoprase, the innumerable
varieties of agate and jasper, lapis lazuli, felspar,
obsidian; also various rocks, such as granite, serpentine,
and porphyry; certain fossils, as yellow amber and
some kinds of turquoise; organic remains, as coral,
mother-of-pearl, and pearls; metallic ores and carbonates,
such as hematite and malachite, and the calaite, or
Oriental turquoise. These substances were for
the most part cut in the shape of round, square, oval,
spindle-shaped, pear-shaped, or lozenge-shaped beads.
Strung and arranged row above row, these beads were
made into necklaces, and are picked up by myriads
in the sands of the great cemeteries at Memphis, Erment,
Ekhmim, and Abydos. The perfection with which
many are cut, the deftness with which they are pierced,
and the beauty of the polish, do honour to the craftsmen
who made them. But their skill did not end here.
With the point, saw, drill, and grindstone, they fashioned
these materials into an infinity of shapeshearts,
human fingers, serpents, animals, images of divinities.
All these were amulets; and they were probably less
valued for the charm of the workmanship than for the
supernatural virtues which they were supposed to possess.
The girdle-buckle in carnelian symbolised
the blood of Isis, and washed away the sins of the
wearer. The frog was emblematic of
renewed birth. The little lotus-flower column
in green felspar typified the divine gift
of eternal youth. The “Uat,” or sacred
eye , tied to the wrist or the arm by a
slender string, protected against the evil eye, against
words spoken in envy or anger, and against the bites
of serpents. Commerce dispersed these objects
throughout all parts of the ancient world, and many
of them, especially those which represented the sacred
beetle, were imitated abroad by the Phoenicians and
Syrians, and by the craftsmen of Greece, Asia Minor,
Etruria, and Sardinia. This insect was called
kheper in Egyptian, and its name was supposed
to be derived from the root khepra, “to
become.” By an obvious play upon words,
the beetle was made the emblem of terrestrial life,
and of the successive “becomings” or developments
of man in the life to come. The scarabaeus amulet
is therefore a symbol of duration, present
or future; and to wear one was to provide against
annihilation. A thousand mystic meanings were
evolved from this first idea, each in some subtle
sense connected with one or other of the daily acts
or usages of life, so that scarabaei were multiplied
ad infinitum. They are found in all materials
and sizes; some having hawks’ heads, some with
rams’ heads, some with heads of men or bulls.
Some are wrought or inscribed on the underside; others
are left flat and plain underneath; and others again
but vaguely recall the form of the insect, and are
called scarabaeoids. These amulets are pierced
longwise, the hole being large enough to admit the
passage of a fine wire of bronze or silver, or of
a thread, for suspension. The larger sort were
regarded as images of the heart. These, having
outspread wings attached, were fastened to the breast
of the mummy, and are inscribed on the underside with
a prayer adjuring the heart not to bear witness against
the deceased at the day of judgment. In order
to be still more efficacious, some scenes of adoration
were occasionally added to the formula: e.g.,
the disc of the moon adorned by two apes upon the
shoulder; two squatting figures of Amen upon the wing-sheaths;
on the flat reverse, a representation of the boat of
the Sun; and below the boat, Osiris mummified, squatting
between Isis and Nephthys, who overshadow him with
their wings. The small scarabs, having begun as
phylacteries, ended by becoming mere ornaments without
any kind of religious meaning, just as crosses are
now worn without thought of significance by the women
of our own day. They were set as rings, as necklace
pendants, as earrings, and as bracelets. The underside
is often plain, but is more commonly ornamented with
incised designs which involve no kind of modelling.
Relief-cutting, properly so called (as in cameo-cutting),
was unknown to Egyptian lapidaries before the Greek
period. Scarabaei and the subjects engraved on
them have not as yet been fully classified and catalogued.
The subjects consist of simple combinations of lines;
of scrolls; of interlacings without any precise signification;
of symbols to which the owner attached a mysterious
meaning, unknown to everyone but himself; of the names
and titles of individuals; of royal ovals, which are
historically interesting; of good wishes; of pious
ejaculations; and of magic formulae. The earliest
examples known date from the Fourth Dynasty, and are
small and fine. Sometimes Sixth Dynasty scarabs
are of obsidian and crystal, and early Middle Kingdom
scarabs of amethyst, emerald, and even garnet.
From the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty scarabs may
be counted by millions, and the execution is more or
less fine according to the hardness of the stone.
This holds good for amulets of all kinds. The
hippopotamus-heads, the hearts, the Ba birds
, which one picks up at Taud, to the
south of Thebes, are barely roughed out, the amethyst
and green felspar of which they are made having presented
an almost unconquerable resistance to the point, saw,
drill, and wheel. The belt-buckles, angles, and
head-rests in red jasper, carnelian, and hematite,
are, on the contrary, finished to the minutest details,
notwithstanding that carnelian and red jasper are even
harder than green felspar. Lapis lazuli is insufficiently
homogeneous, almost as hard as felspar, and seems
as if it were incapable of being finely worked.
Yet the Egyptians have used it for images of certain
goddessesIsis, Nephthys, Neith, Sekhet,which
are marvels of delicate cutting. The modelling
of the forms is carried out as boldly as if the material
were more trustworthy, and the features lose none
of their excellence if examined under a magnifying
glass. For the most part, however, a different
treatment was adopted. Instead of lavishing high
finish upon the relief, it was obtained in a more
summary way, the details of individual parts being
sacrificed to the general effect. Those features
of the face which project, and those which retire,
are strongly accentuated. The thickness of the
neck, the swell of the breast and shoulder, the slenderness
of the waist, the fulness of the hips, are all exaggerated.
The feet and hands are also slightly enlarged.
This treatment is based upon a system, the results
being boldly and yet judiciously calculated.
When the object has to be sculptured in miniature,
a mathematical reduction of the model is not so happy
in its effect as might be supposed. The head
loses character; the neck looks too weak; the bust
is reduced to a cylinder with a slightly uneven surface;
the feet do not look strong enough to support the
weight of the body; the principal lines are not sufficiently
distinct from the secondary lines. By suppressing
most of the accessory forms and developing those most
essential to the expression, the Egyptians steered
clear of the danger of producing insignificant statuettes.
The eye instinctively tones down whatever is too forcible,
and supplies what is lacking. Thanks to these
subtle devices of the ancient craftsman, a tiny statuette
of this or that divinity measuring scarcely an inch
and a quarter in height, has almost the breadth and
dignity of a colossus.
The earthly goods of the gods and
of the dead were mostly in solid stone. I have
elsewhere described the little funerary obelisks, the
altar bases, the statues, and the tables of offerings
found in tombs of the ancient empire. These tables
were made of alabaster and limestone during the Pyramid
period, of granite or red sandstone under the Theban
kings, and of basalt or serpentine from the time of
the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. But the fashions were
not canonical, all stones being found at all periods.
Some offering-tables are mere flat discs, or discs
very slightly hollowed. Others are rectangular,
and are sculptured in relief with a service of loaves,
vases, fruits, and quarters of beef and gazelle.
In one instancethe offering-table of
Situthe libations, instead of running off,
fell into a square basin which is marked off in divisions,
showing the height of the Nile at the different seasons
of the year in the reservoirs of Memphis; namely,
twenty-five cubits in summer during the inundation,
twenty-three in autumn and early winter, and twenty-two
at the close of winter and in spring-time. In
these various patterns there was little beauty; yet
one offering-table, found at Sakkarah, is a real work
of art. It is of alabaster. Two lions, standing
side by side, support a sloping, rectangular tablet,
whence the libation ran off by a small channel into
a vase placed between the tails of the lions.
The alabaster geese found at Lisht are not without
artistic merit. They are cut length-wise down
the middle, and hollowed out, in the fashion of a
box. Those which I have seen elsewhere, and, generally
speaking, all simulacra of offerings, as loaves, cakes,
heads of oxen or gazelles, bunches of black grapes,
and the like, in carved and painted limestone, are
of doubtful taste and clumsy execution. They are
not very common, and I have met with them only in
tombs of the Fifth and Twelfth Dynasties. “Canopic”
vases, on the contrary, were always carefully wrought.
They were generally made in two kinds of stone, limestone
and alabaster; but the heads which surmounted them
were often of painted wood. The canopic vases
of Pepi I. are of alabaster; and those of a king buried
in the southernmost pyramid at Lisht are also of alabaster,
as are the human heads upon the lids. One, indeed,
is of such fine execution that I can only compare
it with that of the statue of Khafra. The most
ancient funerary statuettes yet foundthose,
namely, of the Eleventh Dynastyare of
alabaster, like the canopic vases; but from the time
of the Thirteenth Dynasty, they were cut in compact
limestone. The workmanship is very unequal in
quality. Some are real chefs-d’oeuvre,
and reproduce the physiognomy of the deceased as faithfully
as a portrait statue. Lastly, there are the perfume
vases, which complete the list of objects found in
temples and tombs. The names of these vases are
far from being satisfactorily established, and most
of the special designations furnished in the texts
remain as yet without equivalents in our language.
The greater number were of alabaster, turned and polished.
Some are heavy, and ugly , while others
are distinguished by an elegance and diversity of
form which do honour to the inventive talent of the
craftsmen. Many are spindle-shaped and pointed
at the end , or round in the body, narrow
in the neck, and flat at the bottom .
They are unornamented, except perhaps
by two lotus-bud handles, or two lions’ heads,
or perhaps a little female head just at the rise of
the neck . The smallest of these vases
were not intended for liquids, but for pomades, medicinal
ointments, and salves made with honey. Some of
the more important series comprise large-bodied flasks,
with an upright cylindrical neck and a flat cover
. In these, the Egyptians kept the
antimony powder with which they darkened their eyes
and eyebrows. The Kohl-pot was a universal toilet
requisite; perhaps the only one commonly used by all
classes of society. When designing it, the craftsman
gave free play to his fancy, borrowing forms of men,
plants, and animals for its adornment. Now it
appears in the guise of a full-blown lotus; now it
is a hedgehog; a hawk; a monkey clasping a column
to his breast, or climbing up the side of a jar; a
grotesque figure of the god Bes; a kneeling woman,
whose scooped-out body contained the powder; a young
girl carrying a wine-jar. Once started upon
this path, the imagination of the artists knew no
limits. As for materials, everything was made
to serve in turngranite, diorite, breccia,
red jade, alabaster, and soft limestone, which lent
itself more readily to caprices of form; finally,
a still more plastic and facile substanceclay,
painted and glazed.
[Ilustration: Fi - Perfume vase,
alabaster.]
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 fashioned 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 lustrous; 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.
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 classified
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 class 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
. 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 fashion from an oblong lump of
clay. A pinch of the craftsman’s fingers
brought out the nose; two tiny knobs 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 ushabtiu
of the scribe Hori, and those of the priest Horuta
(Saite) 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 mass of
clay, stamped at the larger end with a few rows of
hieroglyphs stating the name, parentage, and titles
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 substitutes
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
, such as concentric lines and circles , meanders, religious emblems , 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 Sennetmu
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. 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 goddess Khuit 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 Fayum, at Asuan, 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 coarsest 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.
Glass was known to the Egyptians from
the remotest period, and glass-blowing is represented
in tombs which date from some thousands of years before
our era . The craftsman, seated before
the furnace, takes up a small quantity of the fused
substance upon the end of his cane and blows it circumspectly,
taking care to keep it in contact with the flame,
so that it may not harden during the operation.
Chemical analysis shows the constituent parts of Egyptian
glass 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 glass 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 homogenous and limpid.
Colourless glass 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 masses which they obtained by these
unscientific means were nevertheless of very considerable
dimensions. The classic authors tell of stelae,
sarcophagi, and columns made in one piece.
Ordinarily, however, glass 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 glass-workers
imitated the emerald, jasper, lapis lazuli, and carnelian
to such perfection that even now we are sometimes embarrassed
to distinguish the real stones from the false.
The glass 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, gods and goddesses. Eyes
and eyebrows for the faces of statues in stone or
bronze were likewise made of glass, as also bracelets.
Glass was inserted into the hollows of incised hieroglyphs,
and hieroglyphs were also cut out in glass. 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
principal part of the ornamentation being formed of
glass enamels, which stand out in brilliant contrast
with the dead gold ground. Many Fayum mummies
were coated with plaster or stucco, the texts and
religious designs, which are generally painted, being
formed of glass enamels incrusted upon the surface
of the plaster. Some of the largest subjects
are made of pieces of glass joined together and retouched
with the chisel, in imitation of bas-relief. Thus
the face, hands, and feet of the goddess 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,
and upon a fragment of mummy-case in the Museum of
Turin, the hieroglyphic forms of many-coloured glass
are inlaid upon the sombre ground of the wood, the
general effect being inconceivably rich and brilliant.
Glass filigrees, engraved glass, cut glass, soldered
glass, glass 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 glass 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. One glass case in the
Gizeh Museum is entirely stocked with small
objects in coloured glass. 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 glass.
The greater number of these objects date from, and
after, the first Saite dynasty; but excavations
in Thebes and Tell el Amarna have proved that the
manufacture of coloured glass prevailed in Egypt earlier
than the tenth century before our era. At Kurnet
Murraee and Sheikh Abd el Gurneh, 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.
Here, for example, is a little aenochoe, of a light
blue semi-opaque glass ; 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 , 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 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 circumference.
The handles are pale green, and the thread round the
lip is pale blue. Princess Nesikhonsu had beside
her, in the vault at Deir el Baharí, some glass
goblets of similar work. Seven were in whole colours,
light green and blue; four were of black glass spotted
with white; one only was decorated with many-coloured
fronds arranged in two rows . The national
glass 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 Eshmuneyn.
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 substituted in its place
various sorts of earthsome 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 Asuan;
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 faience. 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
lustre 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. 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
at Drah Abu’l Neggeh 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 butterflies . This was his
naïve 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 Baharí. Green reappears under the Saite
dynasties, but paler than that of more ancient times,
and it prevailed in the north of Egypt, at Memphis,
Bubastis, and Sais, without entirely banishing 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 ushabtiu 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 Khuenaten;
at all events, it was at Tell el Amarna that I found
the brightest and most delicately fashioned specimens,
such as yellow, green, and violet rings, blue and
white fleurettes, fish, lutes, figs, and bunches
of grapes. 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 space, 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 . 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 . A Pharaoh’s head in dead
blue wears a klaft with dark-blue stripes.
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.
Glazed pottery was common from the
earliest times. Cups with a foot ,
blue bowls, rounded at the bottom and decorated in
black ink with mystic eyes, lotus flowers, fishes
, 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 ,
belong almost without exception to the reigns of Apries
and Amasis. Sistrum handles, saucers, drinking-cups
in the form of a half-blown lotus, plates, dishesin
short, all vessels in common usewere 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 pronounce
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.
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 . 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
. 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.
The three rows which frame in the doorway are inscribed
with the titles of an unclassed 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 Yahudeh.
This time the question of ornamentation concerned,
not a single chamber, but a whole temple. The
mass 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.
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 . Some of these rosettes are
framed in geometrical designs or spider-web
patterns; some represent open flowers. The central
boss is in relief; the petals and tracery are encrusted
in the mass. 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 . 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 ; and some heads of Asiatics
and negro prisoners . 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.
II - WOOD, IVORY, LEATHER, AND TEXTILE FABRICS.
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 , 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 gods
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 Tuai, 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.
Egypt produces few trees, and of these
few the greater number are useless to the sculptor.
The two which most aboundnamely, the date
palm and the dom palmare of too coarse
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
embarrassment, 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 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 , 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 apron. 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
Nai, who inhabits the same glass case, is also painted
reddish brown, instead of buff, which was the canonical
colour for women . 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 mass 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
fashionable 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 pass 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 substituted 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-cushion 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.
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 , 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 ; and here is a simple triangular
bowl, the handle decorated with a stem and two buds
. 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 . 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 , 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 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
; and sometimes a girl bearing offerings
is substituted 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, class. Two of them wear only a girdle,
and the third has a short garment negligently fastened.
The bearer of offerings wears the long pendent
tresses distinctive of childhood, and is one of those
slender, growing girls of the fellahin class 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 nobility were
wont to put on the garments of their sex before the
period of adolescence. Lastly, the slave , 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.
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 (fig 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 ; figures of
men, and animals, and terra-cotta boats, balls
of wood and stuffed leather, whip-tops, and tip-cats
.
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
much in favour among the Egyptians of all periods.
Sometimes, though rarely, it is gable-shaped, like
our house-roofs . 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 .
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 class
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 . 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 titles 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.
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 fashioned 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; or, as in the case of the wife
of Sennetmu 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 sparsely
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 Baharí, 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 . Two mummy-cases
found in the same placenamely, those of
Queen Ahmesnefertari and her daughter, Aahhotep II - are
of gigantic size, and measure more than ten and a
half feet in height . Standing upright,
they might almost be taken for two of the caryatid
statues from the first court at Medinet Habu, 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 mummieswhich were well-nigh lost
in the caseshad to be packed round with
an immense quantity of rags, to prevent them from
shifting, 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 fashion
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
gods 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 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 Saite
princes had succeeded in re-establishing 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 fashions 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 surpassed
by the Theban coffin-makers who lived and worked under
the latest princes of the royal line of Rameses.
A series of Graeco-Roman examples
from the Fayum 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 .
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. 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 coarse 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
assume 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.
The bed is surmounted by a kind of
canopy, under which the mummy lay in state. Rhind
had already found a similar canopy, which is now in
the Museum of Edinburgh . In shape
it is a temple, the rounded roof being supported by
elegant colonnettes of painted wood. A doorway
guarded by serpents is supposed to give access to
the miniature edifice. Three winged discs, each
larger than the one below it, adorn three superimposed
cornices above the door, the whole frontage being surmounted
by a row of erect uraei, crowned with the solar disc.
The canopy belonging to the Thirteenth Dynasty bed
is much more simple, being a mere balustrade in cut
and painted wood, in imitation of the water-plant pattern
with which temple walls were decorated; the whole
is crowned with an ordinary cornice. In the bed
of Graeco-Roman date , carved and painted
figures of the goddess Ma, sitting with her feather
on her knee, are substituted for the customary balustrades.
Isis and Nephthys stand with their winged arms outstretched
at the head and foot. The roof is open, save for
a row of vultures hovering above the mummy, which
is wept over by two kneeling statuettes of Isis
and Nephthys, one at each end. The sledges upon
which mummies were dragged to the sepulchre were also
furnished with canopies, but in a totally different
style. The sledge canopy is a panelled shrine,
like those which I discovered in 1886, in the tomb
of Sennetmu at Kurnet Murraee. If light was admitted,
it came through a square opening, showing the head
of the mummy within. Wilkinson gives an illustration
of a sledge canopy of this kind, from the wall paintings
of a Theban tomb . The panels were
always made to slide. As soon as the mummy was
laid upon his sledge, the panels were closed, the
corniced roof placed over all, and the whole closed
in. With regard to chairs, many of those in the
Louvre and the British Museum were made about the
time of the Eleventh Dynasty. These are not the
least beautiful specimens which have come down to us,
one in particular having preserved an extraordinary
brilliancy of colour. The framework, formerly
fitted with a seat of strong netting, was originally
supported on four legs with lions’ feet.
The back is ornamented with two lotus flowers, and
with a row of lozenges inlaid in ivory and ebony upon
a red ground. Stools of similar workmanship , and folding stools, the feet of which are in
the form of a goose’s head, may be seen in all
museums. Pharaohs and persons of high rank affected
more elaborate designs. Their seats were sometimes
raised very high, the arms being carved to resemble
running lions, and the lower supports being prisoners
of war, bound back to back . A foot-board
in front served as a step to mount by, and as a foot-stool
for the sitter. Up to the present time, we have
found no specimens of this kind of seat.
We learn from the tomb paintings that
netted or cane-bottomed chairs were covered with stuffed
seats and richly worked cushions. These cushions
and stuffed seats have perished, but it is to be concluded
that they were covered with tapestry. Tapestry
was undoubtedly known to the Egyptians, and a bas-relief
subject at Beni Hasan shows the process
of weaving. The frame, which is of the simplest
structure, resembles that now in use among the weavers
of Ekhmim. It is horizontal, and is formed of
two slender cylinders, or rather of two rods, about
fifty-four inches apart, each held in place by two
large pegs driven into the ground about three feet
distant from each other. The warps of the chain
were strongly fastened, then rolled round the top
cylinder till they were stretched sufficiently tight.
Mill sticks placed at certain distances facilitated
the insertion of the needles which carried the thread.
As in the Gobelins factory, the work was begun
from the bottom. The texture was regulated and
equalised by means of a coarse comb, and was rolled
upon the lower cylinder as it increased in length.
Hangings and carpets were woven in this manner; some
with figures, others with geometrical designs,
zigzags, and chequers . A careful
examination of the monuments has, however, convinced
me that most of the subjects hitherto supposed to represent
examples of tapestry represent, in fact, examples
of cut and painted leather. The leather-worker’s
craft flourished in ancient Egypt. Few museums
are without a pair of leather sandals, or a specimen
of mummy braces with ends of stamped leather bearing
the effigy of a god, a Pharaoh, a hieroglyphic legend,
a rosette, or perhaps all combined. These little
relics are not older than the time of the priest-kings,
or the earlier Bubastites. It is to the same
period that we must attribute the great cut-leather
canopy in the Gizeh Museum. The catafalque
upon which the mummy was laid when transported from
the mortuary establishment to the tomb, was frequently
adorned with a covering made of stuff or soft leather.
Sometimes the sidepieces hung down, and sometimes
they were drawn aside with bands, like curtains, and
showed the coffin.
The canopy of Deir el Baharí
was made for the Princess Isiemkheb, daughter of the
High Priest Masahirti, wife of the High Priest Menkheperra,
and mother of the High Priest Pinotem III. The centrepiece, in shape an oblong square, is divided
into three bands of sky-blue leather, now faded to
pearl-grey. The two side-pieces are sprinkled
with yellow stars. Upon the middle piece are
rows of vultures, whose outspread wings protect the
mummy. Four other pieces covered with red and
green chequers are attached to the ends and sides.
The longer pieces which hung over the sides are united
to the centre-piece by an ornamental bordering.
On the right, scarabaei with extended wings alternate
with the cartouches of King Pinotem II., and are
surmounted by a lance-head frieze. On the left
side, the pattern is more complicated .
In the centre we see a bunch of lotus lilies flanked
by royal cartouches. Next come two antelopes,
each kneeling upon a basket; then two bouquets of
papyrus; then two more scarabaei, similar to those
upon the other border. The lance-head frieze finishes
it above, as on the opposite side. The technical
process is very curious. The hieroglyphs and
figures were cut out from large pieces of leather;
then, under the open spaces thus left, were sewn thongs
of leather of whatever colour was required for those
ornaments or hieroglyphs. Finally, in order to
hide the patchwork effect presented at the back, the
whole was lined with long strips of white, or light
yellow, leather. Despite the difficulties of
treatment which this work presented, the result is
most remarkable. The outlines of the gazelles,
scarabaei, and flowers are as clean-cut and as elegant
as if drawn with the pen upon a wall-surface or a page
of papyrus. The choice of subjects is happy,
and the colours employed are both lively and harmonious.
The craftsmen who designed and executed
the canopy of Isiemkheb had profited by a long experience
of this system of decoration, and of the kind of patterns
suitable to the material. For my own part, I have
not the slightest doubt that the cushions of chairs
and royal couches, and the sails of funeral and sacred
boats used for the transport of mummies and divine
images, were most frequently made in leather-work.
The chequer-patterned sail represented in one of
the boat subjects painted on the wall of a chamber
in the tomb of Rameses III. , might be mistaken
for one of the side pieces of the canopy at Gizeh.
The vultures and fantastic birds depicted upon the
sails of another boat are neither more
strange nor more difficult to make in cut leather than
the vultures and gazelles of Isiemkheb.
We have it upon the authority of ancient
writers that the Egyptians of olden time embroidered
as skilfully as those of the Middle Ages. The
surcoats given by Amasis, one to the Lacedaemonians,
and the other to the temple of Athena at Lindos, were
of linen embroidered with figures of animals in gold
thread and purple, each thread consisting of three
hundred and sixty-five distinct filaments. To
go back to a still earlier period, the monumental
tableaux show portraits of the Pharaohs wearing garments
with borders, either woven or embroidered, or done
in applique work. The most simple patterns
consist of one or more stripes of brilliant colour
parallel with the edge of the material. Elsewhere
we see palm patterns, or rows of discs and points,
leaf-patterns, meanders, and even, here and there,
figures of men, gods, or animals, worked most probably
with the needle. None of the textile materials
yet found upon royal mummies are thus decorated; we
are therefore unable to pronounce upon the quality
of this work, or the method employed in its production.
Once only, upon the body of one of the Deir el Baharí
princesses, did I find a royal cartouche embroidered
in pale rose-colour. The Egyptians of the best
periods seem to have attached special value to plain
stuffs, and especially to white ones. These they
wove with marvellous skill, and upon looms in every
respect identical with those used in tapestry work.
Those portions of the winding sheet of Thothmes III.
which enfolded the royal hands and arms, are as fine
as the finest India muslin, and as fairly merit the
name of “woven air” as the gauzes of the
island of Cos. This, of course, is a mere question
of manufacture, apart from the domain of art.
Embroideries and tapestries were not commonly used
in Egypt till about the end of the Persian period,
or the beginning of the period of Greek rule.
Alexandria became partly peopled by Phoenician, Syrian,
and Jewish colonists, who brought with them the methods
of manufacture peculiar to their own countries, and
founded workshops which soon developed into flourishing
establishments. It is to the Alexandrians that
Pliny ascribes the invention of weaving with several
warps, thus producing the stuff called brocades (polymita);
and in the time of the first Caesars, it was a recognised
fact that “the needle of Babylon was henceforth
surpassed by the comb of the Nile.” The
Alexandrian tapestries were not made after exclusively
geometrical designs, like the products of the old
Egyptian looms; but, according to the testimony of
the ancients, were enriched with figures of animals,
and even of men. Of the masterpieces which adorned
the palaces of the Ptolemies no specimens remain.
Many fragments which may be attributed to the later
Roman time have, however, been found in Egypt, such
as the piece with the boy and goose described by Wilkinson,
and a piece representing marine divinities bought
by myself at Coptos. The numerous embroidered winding
sheets with woven borders which have recently been
discovered near Ekhmim, and in the Fayum, are nearly
all from Coptic tombs, and are more nearly akin to
Byzantine art than to the art of Egypt.
III - METALS.
The Egyptians classified metals under
two headsnamely, the noble metals, as
gold, electrum, and silver; and the base metals, as
copper, iron, lead, and, at a later period, tin.
The two lists are divided by the mention of certain
kinds of precious stones, such as lapis lazuli and
malachite.
Iron was reserved for weapons of war,
and tools, in use for hard substances, such as sculptors’
and masons’ chisels, axe and adze heads, knife-blades,
and saws. Lead was comparatively useless, but
was sometimes used for inlaying temple-doors, coffers,
and furniture. Also small statuettes of
gods were occasionally made in this metal, especially
those of Osiris and Anubis. Copper was too yielding
to be available for objects in current use; bronze,
therefore, was the favourite metal of the Egyptians.
Though often affirmed, it is not true that they succeeded
in tempering bronze so that it became as hard as iron
or steel; but by varying the constituents and their
relative proportions, they were able to give it a
variety of very different qualities. Most of the
objects hitherto analysed have yielded precisely the
same quantities of copper and tin commonly used by
the bronze founders of the present day. Those
analysed by Vauquelin in 1825 contained 84 per cent.
of copper 14 per cent. of tin, and 1 per cent. of
iron and other substances. A chisel brought from
Egypt by Sir Gardner Wilkinson contained only from
5 to 9 per cent. of tin, 1 per cent. of iron, and
94 of copper. Certain fragments of statuettes
and mirrors more recently subjected to analysis have
yielded a notable quantity of gold and silver, thus
corresponding with the bronzes of Corinth. Other
specimens resemble brass, both in their colour and
substance. Many of the best Egyptian bronzes
offer a surprising resistance to damp, and oxidise
with difficulty. While yet hot from the mould,
they were rubbed with some kind of resinous varnish
which filled up the pores and deposited an unalterable
patina upon the surface. Each kind of bronze had
its special use. The ordinary bronze was employed
for weapons and common amulets; the brazen alloys
served for household utensils; the bronzes mixed with
gold and silver were destined only for mirrors, costly
weapons, and statuettes of value. In none
of the tomb-paintings which I have seen is there any
representation of bronze-founding or bronze-working;
but this omission is easily supplemented by the objects
themselves. Tools, arms, rings, and cheap vases
were sometimes forged, and sometimes cast whole in
moulds of hard clay or stone. Works of art were
cast in one or several pieces according to circumstances;
the parts were then united, soldered, and retouched
with the burin. The method most frequently employed
was to prepare a core of mixed clay and charcoal,
or sand, which roughly reproduced the modelling of
the mould into which it was introduced. The layer
of metal between this core and the mould was often
so thin that it would have yielded to any moderate
pressure, had they not taken the precaution to consolidate
it by having the core for a support.
Domestic utensils and small household
instruments were mostly made in bronze. Such
objects are exhibited by thousands in our museums,
and frequently figure in bas-reliefs and mural paintings.
Art and trade were not incompatible in Egypt; and
even the coppersmith sought to give elegance of form,
and to add ornaments in a good style, to the humblest
of his works. The saucepan in which the cook
of Rameses III. concocted his masterpieces is supported
on lions’ feet. Here is a hot-water jug
which looks as if it were precisely like its modern
successors ; but on a closer examination
we shall find that the handle is a full-blown lotus,
the petals, which are bent over at an angle to the
stalk, resting against the edge of the neck . The handles of knives and spoons are almost
always in the form of a duck’s or goose’s
neck, slightly curved. The bowl is sometimes
fashioned like an animalas, for instance,
a gazelle ready bound for the sacrifice .
On the hilt of a sabre we find a little crouching
jackal; and the larger limb of a pair of scissors in
the Gizeh Museum is made in the likeness
of an Asiatic captive, his arms tied behind his back.
A lotus leaf forms the disk of a mirror, and its stem
is the handle. One perfume box is a fish, another
is a bird, another is a grotesque deity. The
lustration vases, or situlae, carried by priests
and priestesses for the purpose of sprinkling either
the faithful, or the ground traversed by religious
processions, merit the special consideration of connoisseurs.
They are ovoid or pointed at the bottom, and decorated
with subjects either chased or in relief. These
sometimes represent deities, each in a separate frame,
and sometimes scenes of worship. The work is
generally very minute.
Bronze came into use for statuary
purposes from a very early period; but time unfortunately
has preserved none of those idols which peopled the
temples of the ancient empire. Whatsoever may
be said to the contrary, we possess no bronze
statuettes of any period anterior to the expulsion
of the Hyksos. Some Theban figures date quite
certainly from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties.
The chased lion’s head found with the jewels
of Queen Aahhotep, the Harpocrates of Gizeh inscribed
with the names of Kames and Ahmes I., and several
statuettes of Amen, said to have been discovered
at Medinet Habu and Sheikh Abd el Gurneh, are of that
period. Our most important bronzes belong, however,
to the Twenty-second Dynasty, or, later still, to
the time of the Saite Pharaohs. Many are
not older than the first Ptolemies. A fragment
found in the ruins of Tanis and now in the possession
of Count Stroganoff, formed part of a votive statue
dedicated by King Pisebkhanu. It was originally
two-thirds the size of life, and is the largest specimen
known. A portrait statuette of the Lady Takushet,
given to the Museum of Athens by M. Demetrio, the
four statuettes from the Posno collection
now at the Louvre, and the kneeling genius of Gizeh,
are all from the site of Bubastis, and date probably
from the years which immediately preceded the accession
of Psammetichus I. The Lady Takushet is standing,
the left foot advanced, the right arm hanging down,
the left raised and brought close to the body . She wears a short robe embroidered with
religious subjects, and has bracelets on her arms and
wrists. Upon her head she has a wig with flat
curls, row above row. The details both of her
robe and jewels are engraved in incised lines upon
the surface of the bronze, and inlaid with silver
threads. The face is evidently a portrait, and
represents a woman of mature age. The form, according
to the traditions of Egyptian art, is that of a younger
woman, slender, firm, and supple. The copper
in this bronze is largely intermixed with gold, thus
producing a chastened lustre which is admirably suited
to the richness of the embroidered garment. The
kneeling genius of Gizeh is as rude and repellent
as the Lady Takushet is delicate and harmonious.
He has a hawk’s head, and he worships the sun,
as is the duty of the Heliopolitan genii. His
right arm is uplifted, his left is pressed to his breast.
The style of the whole is dry, and the granulated
surface of the skin adds to the hard effect of the
figure. The action, however, is energetic and
correct, and the bird’s head is adjusted with
surprising skill to the man’s neck and shoulders.
The same qualities and the same faults distinguish
the Horus of the Posno collection .
Standing, he uplifted a libation vase; now lost, and
poured the contents upon a king who once stood face
to face with him. This roughness of treatment
is less apparent in the other three Posno figures;
above all in that which bears the name of Mosu engraved
over the place of the heart . Like the
Horus, this Mosu stands upright, his left foot advanced,
and his left arm pendent. His right hand is raised,
as grasping the wand of office. The trunk is naked,
and round his loins he wears a striped cloth with
a squared end falling in front. His head is clad
in a short wig covered with short curls piled one
above the other. The ear is round and large.
The eyes are well opened, and were originally of silver;
but have been stolen by some Arab. The features
have a remarkable expression of pride and dignity.
After these, what can be said for the thousands of
statuettes of Osiris, of Isis, of Nephthys, of
Horus, of Nefertum, which have been found in the sands
and ruins of Sakkarah, Bubastis, and other cities
of the Delta? Many are, without doubt, charming
objects for glass-cases, and are to be admired for
perfection of casting and delicacy of execution; but
the greater number are mere articles of commerce,
made upon the same pattern, and perhaps in the self-same
moulds, century after century, for the delight of devotees
and pilgrims. They are rounded, vulgar, destitute
of originality, and have no more distinction than
the thousands of coloured statuettes of saints
and Virgins which stock the shelves of our modern
dealers in pious wares. An exception must, however,
be made in favour of the images of animals, such as
rams, sphinxes, and lions, which to the last retained
a more pronounced stamp of individuality. The
Egyptians had a special predilection for the feline
race. They have represented the lion in every
attitudegiving chase to the antelope;
springing upon the hunter; wounded, and turning to
bite his wound; couchant, and disdainfully calmand
no people have depicted him with a more thorough knowledge
of his habits, or with so intense a vitality.
Several gods and goddesses, as Shu, Anhur, Bast, Sekhet,
Tefnut, have the form of the lion or of the cat; and
inasmuch as the worship of these deities was more
popular in the Delta than elsewhere, so there never
passes a year when from amid the ruins of Bubastis,
Tanis, Mendes, or some less famous city, there is
not dug up a store of little figures of lions and
lionesses, or of men and women with lions’ heads,
or cats’ heads. The cats of Bubastis and
the lions of Tell es Seba crowd our museums.
The lions of Horbeit may be reckoned among the chefs-d’oeuvre
of Egyptian statuary. Upon one of the largest
among them is inscribed the name of Apries ;
but if even this evidence were lacking, the style of
the piece would compel us to attribute it to the Saite
period. It formed part of the ornamentation of
a temple or naos door; and the other side was
either built into a wall or imbedded in a piece of
wood. The lion is caught in a trap, or, perhaps,
lying down in an oblong cage, with only his head and
fore feet outside. The lines of the body are
simple and full of power; the expression of the face
is calm and strong. In breadth and majesty he
almost equals the fine limestone lions of Amenhotep
III.
The idea of inlaying gold and other
precious metals upon the surface of bronze, stone,
or wood was already ancient in Egypt in the time of
Khufu. The gold is often amalgamated with pure
silver. When amalgamated to the extent of 20
per cent, it changes its name, and is called electrum
(asimu). This electrum is of a fine light-yellow
colour. It pales as the proportion of silver
becomes larger, and at 60 per cent. it is nearly white.
The silver came chiefly from Asia, in rings, sheets,
and bricks of standard weight. The gold and electrum
came partly from Syria in bricks and rings; and partly
from the Soudan in nuggets and gold-dust. The
processes of refining and alloying are figured on
certain monuments of the early dynasties. In
a bas-relief at Sakkarah, we see the weighed gold entrusted
to the craftsman for working; in another example (at
Beni Hasan) the washing and melting down of the ore
is represented; and again at Thebes, the goldsmith
is depicted seated in front of his crucible, holding
the blow-pipe to his lips with the left hand, and
grasping his pincers with the right, thus fanning
the flame and at the same time making ready to seize
the ingot . The Egyptians struck neither
coins nor medals. With these exceptions, they
made the same use of the precious metals as we do
ourselves. We gild the crosses and cupolas of
our churches; they covered the doors of their temples,
the lower part of their wall-surfaces, certain bas-reliefs,
pyramidions of obelisks, and even whole obelisks,
with plates of gold. The obelisks of Queen Hatshepsut
at Karnak were coated with electrum. “They
were visible from both banks of the Nile, and when
the sun rose between them as he came up from the heavenly
horizon, they flooded the two Egypts with their dazzling
rays." These plates of metal were forged with
hammer and anvil. For smaller objects, they made
use of little pellets beaten flat between two pieces
of parchment. In the Museum of the Louvre we
have a gilder’s book, and the gold-leaf which
it contains is as thin as the gold-leaf used by the
German goldsmiths of the past century. Gold was
applied to bronze surfaces by means of an ammoniacal
solvent. If the object to be gilt were a wooden
statuette, the workman began by sticking a piece of
fine linen all over the surface, or by covering it
with a very thin coat of plaster; upon this he laid
his gold or silver leaf. It was thus that wooden
statuettes of Thoth, Horus, and Nefertum were
gilded, from the time of Khufu. The temple of
Isis, the “Lady of the Pyramid,” contained
a dozen such images; and this temple was not one of
the largest in the Memphite necropolis. There
would seem to have been hundreds of gilded statues
in the Theban temples, at all events in the time of
the victorious dynasties of the new empire; and as
regards wealth, the Ptolemaic sanctuaries were in no
wise inferior to those of the Theban period.
Bronze and gilded wood were not always
good enough for the gods of Egypt. They exacted
pure gold, and their worshippers gave them as much
of it as possible. Entire statues of the precious
metals were dedicated by the kings of the ancient
and middle empires; and the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Dynasties, who drew at will upon the
treasures of Asia, transcended all that had been done
by their predecessors. Even in times of decadence,
the feudal lords kept up the traditions of the past,
and, like Prince Mentuemhat, replaced the images of
gold and silver which had been carried off from Karnak
by the generals of Sardanapalus at the time of the
Assyrian invasions. The quantity of metal thus
consecrated to the service of the gods must have been
considerable, If many figures were less than an inch
in height, many others measured three cubits, or more.
Some were of gold, some of silver; others were part
gold and part silver. There were even some which
combined gold with sculptured ivory, ebony, and precious
stones, thus closely resembling the chryselephantine
statues of the Greeks. Aided by the bas-relief
subjects of Karnak, Medinet Habu, and Denderah, as
well as by the statues in wood and limestone which
have come down to our day, we can tell exactly what
they were like. However the material might vary,
the style was always the same. Nothing is more
perishable than works of this description. They
are foredoomed to destruction by the mere value of
the materials in which they are made. What civil
war and foreign invasion had spared, and what had
chanced to escape the rapacity of Roman princes and
governors, fell a prey to Christian iconoclasm.
A few tiny statuettes buried as amulets upon
the bodies of mummies, a few domestic divinities buried
in the ruins of private houses, a few ex-votos
forgotten, perchance, in some dark corner of a fallen
sanctuary, have escaped till the present day.
The Ptah and Amen of Queen Aahhotep, another golden
Amen also at Gizeh, and the silver vulture found
in 1885 at Medinet Habu, are the only pieces of this
kind which can be attributed with certainty to the
great period of Egyptian art. The remainder are
of Saite or Ptolemaic work, and are remarkable
only for the perfection with which they are wrought.
The gold and silver vessels used in the service of
the temples, and in the houses of private persons,
shared the fate of the statues. At the beginning
of the present century, the Louvre acquired some flat-bottomed
cups which Thothmes III. presented as the reward of
valour to one of his generals named Tahuti. The
silver cup is much mutilated, but the golden cup is
intact and elegantly designed . The
upright sides are adorned with a hieroglyphic legend.
A central rosette is engraved at the bottom.
Six fish are represented in the act of swimming round
the rosette; and these again are surrounded by a border
of lotus-bells united by a curved line. The five
vases of Thmuis, in the Gizeh Museum, are
of silver. They formed part of the treasure of
the temple, and had been buried in a hiding-place,
where they remained till our own day. We have
no indication of their probable age; but whether they
belong to the Greek or the Theban period, the workmanship
is purely Egyptian. Of one vessel, only the cover
is left, the handle being formed of two flowers upon
one stem. The others are perfect, and are decorated
in repousse work with lotus-lilies in bud and
blossom .
The form is simple and elegant, the
ornamentation sober and delicate; the relief low.
One is, however, surrounded by a row of ovoid bosses
, which project in high relief, and somewhat
alter the shape of the body of the vase. These
are interesting specimens; but they are so few in
number that, were it not for the wall-paintings, we
should have but a very imperfect idea of the skill
of the Egyptian goldsmiths.
The Pharaohs had not our commercial
resources, and could not circulate the gold and silver
tribute-offerings of conquered nations in the form
of coin. When the gods had received their share
of the booty, there was no alternative but to melt
the rest down into ingots, fashion it into personal
ornaments, or convert it into gold and silver plate.
What was true of the kings held good also for their
subjects. For the space of at least six or eight
centuries, dating from the time of Ahmes I., the taste
for plate was carried to excess. Every good house
was not only stocked with all that was needful for
the service of the table, such as cups, goblets, plates,
ewers, and ornamental baskets chased with figures
of fantastic animals ; but also with large
ornamental vases which were dressed with flowers, and
displayed to visitors on gala days. Some of these
vases were of extraordinary richness. Here, for
instance, is a crater, the handles modelled as two
papyrus buds, and the foot as a full-blown papyrus.
Two Asiatic slaves in sumptuous garments are represented
in the act of upheaving it with all their strength
. Here, again, is a kind of hydria
with a lid in the form of an inverted lotus flanked
by the heads of two gazelles . The
heads and necks of two horses, bridled and fully caparisoned,
stand back to back on either side of the foot of the
vase. The body is divided into a series of horizontal
zones, the middle zone being in the likeness of a
marshland, with an antelope coursing at full speed
among the reeds. Two enamelled cruets
have elaborately wrought lids, one fashioned as the
head of a plumed eagle, and the other as the head
of the god Bes flanked by two vipers .
But foremost among them all is a golden centrepiece
offered by a viceroy of Ethiopia to Amenhotep III.
The design reproduces one of the most popular subjects
connected with the foreign conquests of Egypt . Men and apes are seen gathering fruits
in a forest of dom palms. Two natives, each with
a single feather on his head and a striped kilt about
his loins, lead tame giraffes with halters. Others,
apparently of the same nationality, kneel with upraised
hands, as if begging for quarter. Two negro prisoners
lying face downwards upon the ground, lift their heads
with difficulty. A large vase with a short foot
and a lofty cone-shaped cover stands amid the trees.
The craftsmen who made this piece evidently valued
elegance and beauty less than richness. They
cared little for the heavy effect and bad taste of
the whole, provided only that they were praised for
their skill, and for the quantity of metal which they
had succeeded in using. Other vases of the same
type, pictured in a scene of presentations to Rameses
II. in the great temple of Abu Simbel, vary the subject
by showing buffaloes running in and out among the
trees, in place of led giraffes. These were costly
playthings wrought in gold, such as the Byzantine emperors
of the ninth century accumulated in their palace of
Magnaura, and which they exhibited on state occasions
in order to impress foreigners with a profound sense
of their riches and power. When a victorious Pharaoh
returned from a distant campaign, the vessels of gold
and silver which formed part of his booty figured
in the triumphal procession, together with his train
of foreign captives. Vases in daily use were
of slighter make and less encumbered with inconvenient
ornaments. The two leopards which serve as handles
to a crater of the time of Thothmes III.
are not well proportioned, neither do they combine
agreeably with the curves of the vase; but the accompanying
cup , and a cruet belonging to the same
service , are very happily conceived, and
have much purity of form. These vessels of engraved
and repousse gold and silver, some representing
hunting scenes and incidents of battle, were imitated
by Phoenician craftsmen, and, being exported to Asia
Minor, Greece, and Italy, carried Egyptian patterns
and subjects into distant lands. The passion for
precious metals was pushed to such extremes under the
reigns of the Ramessides that it was no longer enough
to use them only at table.
Rameses II. and Rameses III. had thrones
of goldnot merely of wood plated with
gold, but made of the solid metal and set with precious
stones. These things were too valuable to escape
destruction, and were the first to disappear.
Their artistic value, however, by no means equalled
their intrinsic value, and the loss is not one for
which we need be inconsolable.
Orientals, men and women alike,
are great lovers of jewellery. The Egyptians
were no exception to this rule. Not satisfied
to adorn themselves when living with a profusion of
trinkets, they loaded the arms, the fingers, the neck,
the ears, the brow, and the ankles of their dead with
more or less costly ornaments. The quantity thus
buried in tombs was so considerable that even now,
after thirty centuries of active search, we find from
time to time mummies which are, so to say, cuirassed
in gold. Much of this funerary jewellery was
made merely for show on the day of the funeral, and
betrays its purpose by the slightness of the workmanship.
The favourite jewels of the deceased person were,
nevertheless, frequently buried with him, and the
style and finish of these leave nothing to be desired.
Chains and rings have come down to us in large numbers,
as indeed might be expected. The ring, in fact,
was not a simple ornament, but an actual necessary.
Official documents were not signed, but sealed; and
the seal was good in law. Every Egyptian, therefore,
had his seal, which he kept about his person, ready
for use if required. The poor man’s seal
was a simple copper or silver ring; the ring of the
rich man was a more or less elaborate jewel covered
with chasing and relief work. The bezel was movable,
and turned upon a pivot. It was frequently set
with some kind of stone engraved with the owner’s
emblem or device; as, for example, a scorpion , a lion, a hawk, or a cynocephalous ape.
As in the eyes of her husband his ring was the one
essential ornament, so was her necklace in the estimation
of the Egyptian lady. I have seen a chain in silver
which measured sixty-three inches in length.
Others, on the contrary, do not exceed two, or two
and a half inches. They are of all sizes and patterns,
some consisting of two or three twists, some of large
links, some of small links, some massive and heavy,
others as light and flexible as the finest Venetian
filigree. The humblest peasant girl, as well as
the lady of highest rank, might have her necklet;
and the woman must be poor indeed whose little store
comprised no other ornament. No mere catalogue
of bracelets, diadems, collarettes, or insignia of
nobility could give an idea of the number and variety
of jewels known to us by pictured representations
or existing specimens. Pectorals of gold cloisonne
work inlaid with vitreous paste or precious stones,
and which bear the cartouches of Amenemhat II.,
Usertesen II., and Usertesen III. , exhibit
a marvellous precision of taste, lightness of touch,
and dexterity of fine workmanship. So fresh and
delicate are they we forget that the royal ladies
to whom they belonged have been dead, and their bodies
stiffened and disfigured into mummies, for nearly
five thousand years. At Berlin may be seen the
parure of an Ethiopian Candace; at the Louvre
we have the jewels of Prince Psar; at Gizeh are
preserved the ornaments of Queen Aahhotep. Aahhotep
was the wife of Kames, a king of the Seventeenth Dynasty,
and she was probably the mother of Ahmes I., first
king of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Her mummy had
been stolen by one of the robber bands which infested
the Theban necropolis towards the close of the Twentieth
Dynasty. They buried the royal corpse till such
time as they might have leisure to despoil it in safety;
and they were most likely seized and executed before
they could carry that pretty little project into effect.
The secret of their hiding-place perished with them,
till discovered in 1860 by some Arab diggers.
Most of the objects which this queen took with her
into the next world were exclusively women’s
gear; as a fan-handle plated with gold, a bronze-gilt
mirror mounted upon an ebony handle enriched with a
lotus in chased gold . Her bracelets
are of various types. Some are anklets and armlets,
and consist merely of plain gold rings, both solid
and hollow, bordered with plaited chainwork in imitation
of filigree. Others are for wearing on the wrist,
like the bracelets of modern ladies, and are made of
small beads in gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, and green
felspar. These are strung on gold wire in a chequer
pattern, each square divided diagonally in halves
of different colours. Two gold plates, very lightly
engraved with the cartouches of Ahmes I., are
connected by means of a gold pin, and form the fastening.
A fine bracelet in the form of two semicircles joined
by a hinge , also bears the name of Ahmes
I. The make of this jewel reminds us of cloisonne
enamels. Ahmes kneels in the presence of the god
Seb and his acolytes, the genii of Sop and Khonu.
The figures and hieroglyphs are cut
out in solid gold, delicately engraved with the burin,
and stand in relief upon a ground-surface filled in
with pieces of blue paste and lapis lazuli artistically
cut. A bracelet of more complicated workmanship,
though of inferior execution, was found on the wrist
of the queen . It is of massive gold,
and consists of three parallel bands set with turquoises.
On the front a vulture is represented with outspread
wings, the feathers composed of green enamel, lapis
lazuli, and carnelian, set in “cloisons”
of gold. The hair of the mummy was drawn through
a massive gold diadem, scarcely as large as a bracelet.
The name of Ahmes is incrusted in blue paste upon
an oblong plaque in the centre, flanked at each side
by two little sphinxes which seem as if in the act
of keeping watch over the inscription .
Round her neck was a large flexible gold chain, finished
at each end by a goose’s head reversed.
These heads could be linked one in the other, when
the chain needed to be fastened. The scarabaeus
pendant to this chain is incrusted upon the shoulder
and wing-sheaths with blue glass paste rayed with gold,
the legs and body being in massive gold. The
royal parure was completed by a large collar
of the kind known as the Usekh .
It is finished at each end with a golden hawk’s
head inlaid with blue enamel, and consists of rows
of scrolls, four-petalled fleurettes, hawks, vultures,
winged uraei, crouching jackals, and figures of antelopes
pursued by tigers. The whole of these ornaments
are of gold repousse work, and they were sewn
upon the royal winding sheet by means of a small ring
soldered to the back of each. Upon the breast,
below this collar, hung a square jewel of the kind
known as “pectoral ornaments” .
The general form is that of a naos, or shrine.
Ahmes stands upright in a papyrus-bark, between Amen
and Ra, who pour the water of purification upon his
head and body. Two hawks hover to right and left
of the king, above the heads of the gods. The
figures are outlined in cloisons of gold, and
these were filled in with little plaques of precious
stones and enamel, many of which have fallen out.
The effect of this piece is somewhat heavy, and if
considered apart from the rest of the parure,
its purpose might seem somewhat obscure. In order
to form a correct judgment, we have, however, to remember
in what fashion the women of ancient Egypt were clad.
They wore a kind of smock of semi-transparent material,
which came very little higher than the waist.
The chest and bosom, neck and shoulders, were bare;
and the one garment was kept in place by only a slender
pair of braces. The rich clothed these uncovered
parts with jewellery. The Usekh collar half hid
the shoulders and chest. The pectoral masked
the hollow between the breasts. Sometimes even
the breasts were covered with two golden cups, either
painted or enamelled. Besides the jewels found
upon the mummy of Queen Aahhotep, a number of arms
and amulets were heaped inside her coffin; namely,
three massive gold flies hanging from a slender chain;
nine small hatchets, three of gold and six of silver;
a golden lion’s head of very minute workmanship;
a wooden sceptre set in gold spirals; two anklets;
and two poignards. One of these poignards has a golden sheath and a wooden hilt inlaid
with triangular mosaics of carnelian, lapis lazuli, felspar, and gold. Four female heads in gold
repousse form the pommel; and a bull’s
head reversed covers the junction of blade and hilt.
The edges of the blade are of massive gold; the centre
of black bronze damascened with gold. On one side
is the solar cartouche of Ahmes, below which a lion
pursues a bull, the remaining space being filled in
with four grasshoppers in a row. On the other
side we have the family name of Ahmes and a series
of full-blown flowers issuing one from another and
diminishing towards the point. A poignard
found at Mycenae by Dr. Schliemann is similarly decorated;
the Phoenicians, who were industrious copyists of
Egyptian models, probably introduced this pattern
into Greece. The second poignard is of a
make not uncommon to this day in Persia and India
. The blade is of yellowish bronze fixed
into a disk-shaped hilt of silver. When wielded,
this lenticular disk fits to the hollow of the
hand, the blade coming between the first and second
fingers. Of what use, it may be asked, were all
these weapons to a woman and a dead woman?
To this we may reply that the other world was peopled
with foesTyphonian genii, serpents, gigantic
scorpions, tortoises, monsters of every descriptionagainst
which it was incessantly needful to do battle.
The poignards placed inside the coffin for the
self-defence of the soul were useful only for fighting
at close quarters; certain weapons of a projectile
kind were therefore added, such as bows and arrows,
boomerangs made in hard wood, and a battle-axe.
The handle of this axe is fashioned of cedar-wood
covered with sheet gold . The legend
of Ahmes is inlaid thereon in characters of lapis
lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, and green felspar.
The blade is fixed in a cleft of the wood, and held
in place by a plait-work of gold wire. It is of
black bronze, formerly gilt. On one side, it
is ornamented with lotus flowers upon a gold ground;
on the other, Ahmes is represented in the act of slaying
a barbarian, whom he grasps by the hair of the head.
Beneath this group, Mentu, the Egyptian war-god, is
symbolised by a griffin with the head of an eagle.
In addition to all these objects, there were two small
boats, one in gold and one in silver, emblematic of
the bark in which the mummy must cross the river to
her last home, and of that other bark in which she
would ultimately navigate the waters of the West, in
company with the immortal gods. When found, the
silver boat rested upon a wooden truck with four bronze
wheels; but as it was in a very dilapidated state,
it has been dismounted and replaced by the golden
boat . The hull is long and slight,
the prow and stem are elevated, and terminate in gracefully-curved
papyrus blossoms. Two little platforms surrounded
by balustrades on a panelled ground are at the prow
and on the poop, like quarter-decks. The pilot
stands upon the one, and the steersman before the other,
with a large oar in his hand. This oar takes
the place of the modern helm. Twelve boatmen
in solid silver are rowing under the orders of these
two officers; Kames himself being seated in the centre,
hatchet and sceptre in hand. Such were some of
the objects buried with one single mummy; and I have
even now enumerated only the most remarkable among
them. The technical processes throughout are
irreproachable, and the correct taste of the craftsman
is in no wise inferior to his dexterity of hand.
Having arrived at the perfection displayed in the
parure of Aahhotep, the goldsmith’s art
did not long maintain so high a level. The fashions
changed, and jewellery became heavier in design.
The ring of Rameses II., with his horses standing upon
the bezel , and the bracelet of Prince Psar,
with his griffins and lotus flowers in cloisonne
enamel , both in the Louvre, are less happily
conceived than the bracelets of Ahmes. The craftsmen
who made these ornaments were doubtless as skilful
as the craftsmen of the time of Queen Aahhotep, but
they had less taste and less invention. Rameses
II. was condemned either to forego the pleasure of
wearing his ring, or to see his little horses damaged
and broken off by the least accident. Already
noticeable in the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, this
decadence becomes more marked as we approach the Christian
era. The earrings of Rameses IX. in the Gizeh
Museum are an ungraceful assemblage of filigree
disks, short chains, and pendent uraei, such as no
human ear could have carried without being torn, or
pulled out of shape. They were attached to each
side of the wig upon the head of the mummy. The
bracelets of the High Priest Pinotem III., found upon
his mummy, are mere round rings of gold incrusted with
pieces of coloured glass and carnelian, like those
still made by the Soudanese blacks. The Greek
invasion began by modifying the style of Egyptian
gold-work, and ended by gradually substituting Greek
types for native types. The jewels of an Ethiopian
queen, purchased from Ferlini by the Berlin Museum,
contained not only some ornaments which might readily
have been attributed to Pharaonic times, but others
of a mixed style in which Hellenic influences are
distinctly traceable. The treasure discovered
at Zagazig in 1878, at Keneh in 1881, and at Damanhur
in 1882, consisted of objects having nothing whatever
in common with Egyptian traditions. They comprise
hairpins supporting statuettes of Venus, zone-buckles,
agraffes for fastening the peplum, rings and bracelets
set with cameos, and caskets ornamented at the four
corners with little Ionic columns. The old patterns,
however, were still in request in remote provincial
places, and village goldsmiths adhered “indifferent
well” to the antique traditions of their craft.
Their city brethren had meanwhile no skill to do aught
but make clumsy copies of Greek and Roman originals.
In this rapid sketch of the industrial
arts there are many lacunae. When referring to
examples, I have perforce limited myself to such as
are contained in the best-known collections.
How many more might not be discovered if one had leisure
to visit provincial museums, and trace what the hazard
of sales may have dispersed through private collections!
The variety of small monuments due to the industry
of ancient Egypt is infinite, and a methodical study
of those monuments has yet to be made. It is
a task which promises many surprises to whomsoever
shall undertake it.