nude princesses on their cushion, caressing one
another with gentle and ingenuous gestures
(Fig. 290). The composition, too, has matured,
and is almost equal to the drawing. The Mem-
phite artist had been wont to resolve the simul-
taneous operations of an agricultural scene or
of a battle into their simple elements, which
he superposed in independent rows. The Theban,
under the Ahmessids and their successors, did
not discard the artifice of the various registers; he even ad-
hered to it strictly in the treatment of religious subjects;
neither in a temple nor in a tomb
did he cease to observe the tradition
bequeathed to him by antiquity. But
it was no longer the same when he
passed from pictures ef the divine to
those of civil or military life , and
this greater liberty is explained at
least in part by the constant progress
made by painting from the preceding
age onwards. Without entirely aban-
doning its part as the auxiliary of
sculpture, it had learned to separate
itself from it, and to dispense with
its collaboration upon occasion. As
I have already indicated , the nature
of the Theban mountains had a good
deal to do with this. They consist
of a very fine limestone, the strata ā ^ ā
-,.,ā¢/ ... ' , KK;. :^U. ā STATIK OF A MONKEY
or which were dislocated by some (Museum, Cairo). fP/jo/.Ā£.firugscA.;
163 M 2
ART IN EGYPT
remote cataclysm, in such a manner that it does not
themselves everywhere to the work of the chisel with the
facility. Though
FIG. 314.
ONE OF THE LIOXS OF GEBEL-BARKAL
(British Museum, London).
lend
same
solid
enough in the Valley of
the Kings, it cracks in
every direction at Sheikh-
Abd-el-Kurnah, and is full
of huge flints, which had
first to be removed, and
then replaced by in-
serted fragments. Hence,
inm any cases the decor-
rators of tombs were
content to cover the
surface with a plaster
which hid the defects,
and to paint on this in distemper what they would have carved
under more favourable conditions. Seduced by the facilities of
the brush, they became even more emancipated than their pre-
cursors of the Twelfth Dynasty. They multiplied the motives on
their ceilings, and added to the stars and geometrical designs
which had hitherto pre-
dominated, elements bor-
rowed from nature, single
florets , bouquets of
lotus, bulls' heads, flying
birds, groups of hiero-
glyphs of the happiest
effect. They continued,
from a lingering respect
for the traditions of the
past , to surround their
figures with a line which
recalled the effects of the
primitive reliefs (Fig. 291),
but they grouped them
in attitudes increasingly
natural , and they broke
down the tyranny of
the superposed registers.
Thenceforth , if , wishing
to represent work in the
fields, they chose to
FK;. 31^. ā (MAI
(Museum, Cii
iro).
IK TIIK COW JIA'l HOI
(Phot. E. Bnigsih.)
164
THE SECOND THEBAN AGE
1 U.. 310. ā UAS-RKLIKF OF THK ( ()\V HaTHOR
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
express it , as we do , by the normal methods of perspective,
they were free to do so. As in the tomb of Nakht, they set
upon the walls, at
various heights , ac-
cording to distance,
the persons who play
a part in the action:
the dead man super-
intending his work-
men, ploughmen turn-
ing the furrow , the
sower scattering seed,
labourers breaking
the sod with pickaxes,
a woodman cutting
down a tree , the
thirsty toiler taking
a draught from his
leather jar (Fig. 292).
The experiment is a
clumsy one, more akin to the scenes on a Chinese screen than
to our landscapes, but it is an essay in perspective, and this
is no isolated example; we find several others in the painted
hypogea of Sheikh-Abd-el-Kurnah. From
fresco, the method passed rapidly to
bas-relief, and we find it on pylons; here
the artist gives us, not offerings and sacri-
fices , but battles, as at Luxor and the
Ramesseum , where the entire surface is
one vast composition, in which the actors
assemble and disperse without any sepa-
ration of the planes by lines (Fig. 293).
There is no unity of action , but a com-
plete narrative is set forth, some of the
incidents of which are historical, as, for
instance, the battle of Kadesh, the council
of war held by the Egyptian generals,
and the report of the spies, the surprise
of the camp by the Hittites , Rameses II.
charging, the arrival of the reinforcements,
the battle on the banks of the Orontes,
the sortie of the Amorrhaeans who saved
the remnant of the Asiatic army. As we
165
FIG. 317.ā THF: C ()\V UK
DFR-KL-BAHARI
(Museum , Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
ART IN EGYPT
FIG. 318. ā STATUE
OF AMENOPHIS III.
CLOTHED IN THE
ASSYRIAN MANNER.
(Phot. Chassinat.)
know the main theme from literary texts, we
do not find any great difficulty in inter-
preting the artistic developments of it, but
it must be admitted that if we had only the
picture , it would be very difficult for us
to establish the chronology of events and
distinguish their progress with any certainty.
The Ramesside artist was as yet incapable
of discerning the decisive moments and
seizing the critical point of a battle; he piled
up his incidents in a more or less haphazard
fashion, without troubling about the time
when they happened, and their influence upon
the final result. His chief concern was to
make the presence of Pharaoh conspicuous,
and to rivet attention upon him. In every
crisis, he grouped the secondary personages
round the king, and the better to draw the
eye of the spectator to this figure, he made
him of heroic size. At Luxor as in the
Ramesseum. Rameses II., standing in his
chariot, and piercing the flying Asiatics with
his shafts, is the centre of the action. The
artifice which
consists in attributing colossal pro-
portions to the prince, is puerile
in itself; but in a huge "machine"
such as the illustrated record of
a battle, it is, after all, the only
means of giving a kind of unity
to the decoration.
Progress in less apparent in
sculpture, and it was long sup-
posed that here artists had merely
carried on the Memphite tradition,
while falsifying and degrading it.
We so often recognise the formulae
of the age of the Pyramids in their
works, that we get the impression
that nothing had been changed ;
but as soon as we examine their
details, we find that novelties
abound. Let us take, for instance,
166
FKi. 3ig. ā COLOSSAL (iHOl^l' OF
AMENOPHIS HI. AND THI (Museum,
Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugscli.)
THE SECOND THEBAN AGE
JHH|'M,
m^
^^^
m
mk
fe^ ]^^^^^^BSL^y '' ' *~
i .3
FIG 320.ā THE TWO COLOSSAL FIGURES
OF MEMNOX AT THEBES. (Phot. Beato.J
the erect fig^ure , sovereign
or subject, receivinir homage.
He stands straight and firm,
one foot advanced , but his
hands, which formerly were
either empty, or grasped a
fragment of a sceptre or a
handkerchief, are now loaded
with gigantic emblems. These
are in general sacred ensigns,
stout halberds surmounted by
the head of a human or
animal divinity; sometimes
he is content with one, some-
times he demands two
(Fig. 294), the lower extre-
mities of which rest on the
ground beside his feet, while
their faces enframe his head
right and left. Groups of
two seated persons, or triads
incorporated with a supporting slab at the back, like the Ra-
meses II. between Amon and Mut (Fig. 295), are conceived
entirely in the ancient taste, but
in the isolated figures, the sitter
does not merely lay his right hand
on his breast, like the Rahetep
at Medum ; he grasps an Osirian
crook, a scourge, a scroll, or, if
a woman , a handkerchief, a spray
of blossom, a sistrum. The kneeling
or crouching figure, which has
become frequent, bears in front
of it an altar, a naos , a triad
(Fig. 297), a statuette of a divi-
nity (Fig. 296) ; a roll of rope,
surmounted by a ram's head, denotes
the calling of land-surveyor exer-
cised by the model (Fig. 299). Other
types present themselves which
never occurred among the earlier
works , such as that of a person
seated with one knee drawn up,
167
^ "*-^': -'
1
FIG. 321.
AMEXOPHIS, SON OF HAPU
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. Legrain.)
ART IN EGYPT
FIG. 322.
AMENOPHIS, THE CROUCHING SCRIBE
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
the other flat against the ground
under him (Fig. 298), and that
of the kneeling king who drags
himself along the ground in
front of the god, pushing an
object of worship or an of-
fering , an altar , a jar , or a
sacred boat (Fig. 300). In
like manner, scenes which exist-
ed only in bas-reliefs on the
walls , are detached from it,
and become stone groups ; the
king standing between Horus
and Set, and receiving from
them the waves of the water
of life, the king escorted by his
lion and conducting a chained
barbarian to the god, a lion
devouring a captive, a seated
scribe reading a book and
carrying a little monkey on his neck, (an incarnation of the god
Thoth), a foster father squatting on his haunches and holding to
his breast the royal child whose education is confided to him.
The Asiatic or negro prisoners bound
back to back are treated with an
amazing realism, sometimes verging
on caricature (Fig. 302). The beasts
themselves play their part , and the
cow Hathor or the serpent Maritsakro
attach themselves to a Pharaoh in
order to protect him (Fig. 301). All
these are in stone, sometimes life-
size, and show a facility of invention
and a flexibility of execution we
should hardly look for in the second
Theban period. Wood was less in
favour for statues than formerly, save
for those ritual figures of which only
fragments remain, but it was com-
monly used for the statuettes which
took the place of the c/ow^/f-statues
in the tombs of the lower middle
class, and for certain objects of
168
FIG. 323. ā SENNKFER, HIS WII- E
AND DAUfiHTER (Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
THE SECOND THEBAN AGE
industrial art wliich demanded the human fig^ure , such , for in-
stance , as the bearers of jars of kohol ; here , the number of
new forms is considerable : foreign
slaves bowed beneath a sack or a jar
(Figs. 303, 304), children gathering
flowers, young girls swimming and
pushing a duck or a goose before
them. There was the same variety in
metal-work, but the majority of the
gold and silver statues have disappear-
ed, and only s small number of bronze
examples remain. Statuary, whether
in stone, wood, or metal, may be said
to have developed in every direction; far
from being inferior to that of preceding
ages, it surpasses it, as we have just
seen , in variety of motive , and very
often equals it in beauty of handling.
The first monuments we possess of
the time of the Ahmessids are still
fairly faithful to the style of the preceding schools. This is
notably the case in the figure of Queen Tuitishere , in London
(Fig. 305), and in the two statues of Amenophis I. at Turin
324.ā h?:ai) of a man
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch).
FIG. 325.ā TORSO AXD HEAD
OK A WOMAN (Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
169
FIG. 326.ā MOND'S STATIKTTE.
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
ART IN EGYPT
-THE EGYPTIAN FLEET, AT DER-EE-BAHARI. (Phot. Beato.)
and Cairo. That at Turin (Fig. 305) is an admirably preserved
work in white limestone; the king is seated, confronting the
spectator, in the hieratic attitude, and but for the cartouches,
we might well take it for a work of the Twelfth Dynasty.
The Cairo statue (Fig. 307) is mutilated, but the face and bust
are intact; the king was invested with the insignia of Ta-Tenen
and his flesh was painted. It has all the delicacy of the ancient
Memphite schools, together with the
P- vy r ^v -^w^ firmness of chisel and the virile
,^H -4ā rSlHB ^i^ which are characteristic of the
^ J yj:^::^Ā„T* Thebans. The head of one of the
-V . /5v _ J ' X Atlantes now at Cairo, erected by
Thothmes I. in the court of the
obelisk at Karnak , establishes, I
think, the transition from the an-
cient to the modern style. As it
retains the red colouring, it is
very life-like in appearance, in
spite of the loss of the head-dress
(Fig. 308). The Pharaoh himself
seems to be welcomitig the visitor,
and his round face, his smiling
eyes, his dimpled cheeks and amiable
mouth, recall the features of the
Sesostris at Lisht; it is further
characterised by a firmness of touch
170
IK.. 3JS. g IK I.N AAII.MI'-.S AT
IJKK-EI.-BAHAKI. (Phot. BvuUt.)
THE SECOND THEBAN AGE
KK;. 329. ā OIKKN THI, AT SHKIKH-
ABD-EL-KURNAH. (Phot. Weigall.)
and an individuality of expression
lacking in the others. When once
the royal workshop was organised,
the multiplicity of orders that flowed
in soon awoke in it qualities quies-
cent since the invasion of the Shep-
herds , to which it added new ele-
ments, derived, I think, from in-
fluences coming from other parts
of the valley. The Thebans alone
would not have sufficed for the
decoration of monuments, temples,
or tombs. They received provincial
auxiliaries, and borrowed from them
something of the traditions and
temperament these brought with them
from their native cities. Thus rein-
forced , the school subdivided into
several branches, each of which
soon assumed its personal physiog-
nomy. I should, for instance, attribute a good proportion of the
royal statues at Turin, and others recently brought to light in
the favissa, the Isis, the Thothmes III. and the Senmut, to a
single workshop , probably
established at Karnak. The
statuette of the queen Isis
(Fig. 309) reveals the initiator
of the facial type which pre-
vailed under the Ahmessids for
three generations, the hooked
nose, tae large prominent eyes,
the fleshy mouth , the round
face. The heavy wig which
encases the head was not calcu-
lated to make the sculptor's
task easier ; he managed, how-
ever, to minimise its dis-
astrous effect. Thothmes III.
has his mother's face, but the
type is less hard (Fig. 310).
The statue is of fine schist,
and no reproduction could do
justice to the delicacy of the
I
^^^L _lr ' '
1
\
111
FICi. 330.ā HEAD OF A STATIETTE OF
QUEEN THI (Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.J
ART IN EGYPT
modelling; the play of the muscles is noted discreetly, with
extraordinary felicity, and as the imperceptible shadows it pro-
duces vary as we pass round the figure,
the expression of the features seems to
change every moment. The kneeling
statues of Amenophis II. offering wine
or water, are not unworthy of the series;
although they show less individuality
than the Thothmes III. and the couple,
Thothmes IV. and his mother, they are
not wanting in natural grace (Fig. 311).
The touch of the chisel is identical in
all, and reveals a common origin. I may
say the same of the group representing
the little princess Neferu-Ra and her
guardian Senmut. Nothing could be less
conventional than the free gesture with
which the worthy man clasps the child,
and the confident self-abandonment with
which it nestles against his breast. The
natural movement harmonises well with
the intellectual benevolence of the face
and the smile in the eyes and on the
thick lips. We have here further a direct proof that the Thebans,
like the Memphite artists, were concerned above all things to
get likeness in their portraits. The mummy of Thothmes III.
has certainly suffered ; the face
shrivelled in the course of em-
balming, and the shrinking of
the flesh, the sinking of the
eyes, the discoloration of the
skin, the flattening of the nose,
make it very different to what
it was in life. Nevertheless, if
superficial relief has been lost,
that of the substructure has en-
dured ; when we compare it
with the modelhng of the statue,
we are obliged to admit that
they are alike, and that the
sculptor has perpetuated the
expression of life which has
passed away from the mummy.
172
FIG. 331.ā STATUETTE OK
AMENOPHIS IV.
(The Louvre, Paris).
Fif;. 332.ā HEAD oi- oM". 01 rill-;
fA.NOHIC jAKS OI' A.MI-.NOIMIIS l\.
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
THE SECOND THEBAN AGE
It would have been
strange if people so skil-
ful in rendering the human
form had not been masters
of the treatment of ani-
mals. The lion and its
offspring the sphinx,
the ram , the monkey
(Fig. 313), the falcon, the
vulture, inspired the The-
bans in admirable works.
Never was the faculty
of welding the members
of different beings into
a single body carried
further than in such cre-
ations as the sphinx of
Queen Hatshepset at
Rome, the sphinx of
Thothmes III. at Cairo,
the Sekhet with the lion's
head, standing (Fig. 312)
or sitting, the various
hieracocephalous (falcon-headed) and criocephalous (ram-headed)
sphinxes, and rams. The
lions of Amenophis III. at
Gebel-Barkal (Fig. 314),
have a nobility of atti-
tude and a truth of
physiognomy which was
always lacking in the lions
of the Greek and Roman
sculptors. They were pro-
ducts of the royal work-
shops, and to one of
these, no doubt, we must
also attribute the Amen-
ophis II. in black gran-
ite, standing and leaning
against the swelling neck
of the goddess of the
dead, the serpent Marit-
sakro, who is thus in-
FKi. 333.~WAI.I. IX ONF. OK TUK TOMBS OF
EL-AMAKNA. (Phot. Bouriant.)
FlCi. 334. ā AMKNOFHIS IV. AM) THE QIEEN
(Museum, Berlin).
173
ART IN EGYPT
^
I
&\A
dicated as his pro-
tector. The execu-
tion here is minute
and trivial; the work
is faithfully rendered
mythology and no-
thing more. But the
cow discovered by
Naville in an almost
perfect chapel at Der-
el-Bahari (Fig. 315), is
a work of a very dif-
ferent order. This is
equal, if not superior
to the best achieve-
ments of Greece and
Rome in this genre,
and we have to come
down through the ages
to the greatest animal sculptors of our own days before we
find a work of such striking reality. She is encumbered with
mystic emblems, the head-dress of discs and feathers between
IE
J,
AMEXOPHIS IV
FIG. 335.
THE yUEEX, AND THEIR CHILDREN
(Museum, Berlin).
l-Ki. ^^(K
CAST OK THE HEAD OK AMEXO-
PHIS IV. (Mu.seum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Briigsch.)
174
em;. 337. ā STIDY WITH THE POINT
FOR THE PORTRAIT OK A PERSON OF
THE TIME OK AMl.NOPHIS IV.
(Mu.seum, Berlin).
THE SECOND THEBAN AGE
FIG. 338. ā HIST OF AMOX AT
KARNAK. (Phot. Legrain.)
her horns, and two tufts of lotus, springinir from tlie ground
at her feet, rise to her shoulders (Fig. 317). In her the faithful
adored Hathor, posted at the edge
of the western marsh to intercept
those who had lately died, and ini-
tiate them into the life beyond the
tomb; nevertheless, the sculptor
reduced the religious paraphernalia
to their simplest expression. Was
it he who created the theme, or
who, in other words, detached it
from the bas-reliefs (Fig. 316) to
translate it into the round? His
goddess is no conventional cow
modelled upon a traditional form;
she is an individual creature chosen
for her beauty from among the
sacred flock. In spite of her trap-
pings and her Pharaoh , we recog-
nise in her the kindly maternal beast,
gentle, strong, vigorous, and natural.
The master she inspired modelled
the relief of sides and hind-quarters lovingly, and we almost see
the quivering of the skin under the caresses of the light. In
the head he even
had recourse to
technical artifices
which appear for
the first time in
this example , as
far as I know; he
treated the nostrils
and cheeks with a
fine rasp or file,
and the furrows
left by the tool
express in a very
curious manner the
perpetual tremor
that agitates the
face. Life has been
breathed into the stone; the nostrils quiver with the breath that
passes through them, and the eyes are half closed in indolent
175
F1G.33Q.ā TRIUMPHAL BAS-RELIEF OF SETI I. AT KARNAK.
ART IN EGYPT
VUi. 340. ā FKACiMKXT OF A STA-
TUETTE OK FERTRIFIEI) WOOO
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
reverie. The figure of Pharaoh does not rise above the average;
I am nevertheless inclined to think that the group , taken as a
whole , is the finest achievement of
the Theban School under the Ahmes-
sids. The mutilated statue of Amen-
ophis III. in Assyrian dress (Fig. 31 8)
is an eccentricity. The gigantic
group of Amenophis III. and Thi or
Ti, in the Cairo Museum (Fig. 319)
is a marvel of purely material dex-
terity, but it is nothing more, and
it has no merit save the immensity
of its proportions. The colossal
figures in red sandstone which this
same Pharaoh placed at the entrance
of his sepulchral temple on the left
bank of Thebes, the two Memnons,
measure 65 feet in height (Fig. 320).
They are correct in style , and
highly elaborated; in their present
mutilated condition, they are chiefly
effective as mass, and they impress
by their isolation in the middle of
the plain rather than by their beauty.
The art of the private workshops
is perhaps less familiar to us than
that of the royal studios, but it
was far from inferior to this. The
high priest Amenophis, son of
Hapu , is a very happy creation,
in spite of those retouches of the
Ptolemaic period which have modi-
fied the expression of the face
(Fig. 321). His namesake provides
us with a good example of the
type of the seated scribe treated
in the new manner (Fig. 322). Let
us turn to the trio in black granite
from Karnak (Fig. 323), the husband
and wife seated on the same seat,
the child standing between the two.
They are Theban notables , heavy
(MuIeum!cairo).r/^/
176
THE SECOND THEBAN AGE
Sennefer is well pleased with himself, and not without reason;
he is commandant of the Thebaid ; he wears round his neck the
necklace of four rows , and on his
breast the two circular ornaments , the
insignia of his rank; his wife was the
king's foster-mother, and their daughter
appears to be well married. The artist
has fixed on the stone, perhaps with
a touch of irony, the expression of
gratified vanity that irradiated their
persons. The handling is very searching,
and the only touch of convention is to
be found in the torso of the man,
where the loose folds caused by age
and soft living are noted with an ex-
cess of symmetry. It is a pity that
only fragments have survived of a couple
contemporary with the last Ahmessids,
who were buried at Sheikh -Abd-el-
Kurnah. The head only (Fig. 324) of
the man has come down to us, and
even this has lost the nose, the chin,
and part of the mouth, but the woman
has suffered less (Fig. 325). In spite of the mutilation of the
nose, the face is charming, with the
low forehead almost concealed by
the wig, the narrow eyes slanting
upwards towards the temples, the
slightly prominent cheek-bones, and
the full mouth, the corners of which
melt into dimples. The cape and
the pleated robe in which she is
draped reveal a well modelled arm
and define the contours of the body;
we divine beneath the veil healthy
hips, a slender waist, and round,
firm breasts. The details of the dress
and ornaments, which were laid on
with the brush , have worn away,
but the material, a close, crystalline
limestone resembling alabaster, is
of a most agreeable creamy tone. The unknown woman whose
portrait, half the size of life (Fig. 326), was discovered by Mond
177 N
FKi. 342.ā THE SO-CAL-
l.Et) THl (Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E Brugsch.)
1-IG. 343.ā TUTANKHAMEN.
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
ART IN EGYPT
in 1906, has the same attitude and a similar costume, an almost
transparent drapery from which the left hand emerges, holding
a lotus-flower to the breast. The bust
is not fully developed, and the breasts
are so small that they hardly swell
the drapery that veils them. The artist
has seized the characteristics of the
first dawn of womanhood with much
truth and penetration, and the discreet
manner in which he suggests the over-
slender grace of the model under the
dress is masterly. The wig is so in-
geniously arranged that instead of
crushing the face, it forms a frame
round it, and gives it importance.
This face changes in character, and
almost seems to change its century,
according to the angle at which we
study it. Confronting us, it is round
and full, without superabundance or
looseness of flesh, that of a pleasant
little Theban girl, pretty, but vulgar
in structure and expression. In profile,
between the wings of her wig, which fall upon her shoulders
FIG. 344.ā HEAD OF A STATUE