as the energetic head of the Ethiopian
Tirhakah (Fig. 457), with his almost
negroid face, the intelligent head of
that crafty old peasant, Psammetichus
I. (Fig. 458), the melancholy head of
Psammetichus III. (Fig. 459). The muti-
lated queen at Cairo, which dates from
the Ethiopian period (Fig. 460) is a little
rough, perhaps because of the materia)
in which it is carved, the pink granite
of the cataract, but it does not lack
decision and nobility. The portrait of
Mentemhet (Fig. 461), who ruled at
Thebes at the end of the Twenty -fifth
Dynasty, is the most vigorous example
known to us of this last Theban school.
The man was common, even brutal in
appearance, and the singular wig with

248




FIG. 480.— ALEXANDER

AIGOS (Museum, Cairo).

(Phot. E. Brugsch.)



THE SAITE AGE



which he thought well to crown himself
on this occasion, was not calculated to
temper the mulish vulgarity of his counten-
ance ; all the more credit is due to the
artist for having built up a work of such
power that it remains superb in spite of
mutilation, on such an unpromising foun-
dation. The statues of Nsiptah (Fig. 462
and 463) son of Mentemhet and his heir
in the administration of the principality
of Amen, are not marked by the same
almost excessive realism ; nervertheless, the
sculptor has faithfully reproduced the
expression of self-sufficiency and aristo-
cratic inanity which differentiates this per-
sonage from his father. I might enumerate
some nine or ten examples which, though
not equal to this , will bear comparison
with it; one among them, the Thoueris at
Cairo, demands speci-





Firi. 48T.— STATL'ETTE

OK A WOMAN

(Museum, Alexandria).

(Phot. Breccia.)



FIG. 482.— THE SAME

IN PROFILE

(Museum, Alexandria).

(Phot. Breccia.)



al mention for its
monstrosity of con-
ception. It repre-
sents neither a hu-
man being nor a normal animal (Fig. 464),
but a hippopotamus with a huge muzzle,
smiling jaws, flabby breasts, and swollen
abdomen, the form in which the Egyptians
incarnated one of the divine protectresses
of maternity. Rising elegantly upon her
hind legs, her two forepaws resting upon
symbolical knots of rope, she is cut out
of a block of green breccia with a
precision which somewhat redeems the
strangeness of her appearance , but all
the skill of the technique fails to mask
her hideousness; one cannot but pity the
master- craftsman whose religion obliged
him to treat a motive so unfavourable
to art seriously.

All the schools of Northern Egypt put
together have not given us one half of
that which has been bequeathed us by
249



ART IN EGYPT




Firf. 483.— THE ALKXAN-
DRIAN HORUS (Museum,
Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)



the Theban School. The Memphite School
has left us a few busts of kings, Saite or
Ptolemaic, (Fig. 465) and certain rare statues,
distinguished by that characteristically soft
and delicate execution which has made it
possible for us to recognise its existence:
these are , a full-length statue of Psammet-
ichus I. (Fig. 467) , a statue of a priest
holding an Osiris before him (Fig. 466), a
statue of a youthful Horus, naked, his finger
to his lip, the plait over his ear, the uraeus
on his forehead (Fig. 468), a statuette of an
Osiris mummy, lying face downwards on his
base, and raising his head in the first spasm
of resurrection. The four monuments of
Psammetichus in green breccia preserved in
the Cairo Museum, which belong to the be-
ginning of the Persian period, are the most
remarkable. I deliberately pass over the table
of offerings, which is merely a good piece of

work by the marble-cutter of some necropolis; the Isis (Fig. 470),

and the Osiris (Fig. 471), at whose feet it originally stood, are mark-
ed, it must be admitted, by a flatness of

inspiration in painful contrast to the supreme

skill of their technique. The modelling is correct,

but soft and nerveless, the eyes empty, the

smiles inane, the faces inanimate ; they are, in

fact, a perfect anticipation of those religious

figures which abound in our modern eccle-
siastical warehouses. The cow which accom-
panied them (Fig. 472) is posed in the same

manner as that of Naville, and also wears the

two huge feathers of Hathor; Psammetichus is

standing in the shadow of her head, in the

attitude of Amenophis II. The Saite sculptor,

like his Theban predecessor, was unable to

disengage the legs of his beast, and has retained

a stone partition between her belly and the

ground; nevertheless, he was determined to

show her complete on either side, so to her

one head, she has two chests in profile, two

bodies and two sets of legs. The contours have

an unpleasant dryness due to the hardness of

250




FIG. 484.
TNI lOI I '1 1 1 IK STATUE

(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Hrugsih.)



THE SAFTE AGE




FIG. 485— MEM-
PHITK STATIKTTE

(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)




the stone, but the modelHng is extraordinarily

fine and the faces both of man and goddess

are marked by a serenity touched with melan-
choly. It is, in fact, an excellent example,

and one we greatly admired before seeing the

group of Der-el-Bahari. The mythological con-
vention is perhaps less embarrassing than in

the latter, but the formula of the workshop

manifests itself more aggressively. Hathor is

a conventionalised heifer which has lost the

natural grace and freedom of the good Egyptian

milch-cow; she has all the elegance and all the

insipidity of the Isis and Osiris. Beyond these

pieces, I know of none which deserve mention,

but there are so many statues of the Saite age

scattered in museums with no indication of their

origin, that we may be sure some of these will

have to be assigned to the Memphite School,

when we are better acquainted with its charac-
teristics at this period. The
other schools of the Delta
are no more familiar to us, and for the same
re^ason; we must be content for the present
to recognise the general features of the period,
without attempting to distinguish local pecu-
liarities.

Saite artists did not forsake either granite
or the softer materials, limestone and sand-
stone; they showed, however, a marked prefer-
ence for hard, close-grained stones such as
basalt, breccia, and serpentine, and excelled
in the art of rendering them supple. Their
fine works may therefore be recognised
generally at a glance by the beauty of the
substance, and the pellucid polish with which
they clothed it; but in addition to these
material indications, there are others more
subtle which result from the manner in which
they interpreted the human form. On the
one hand, they tended to conventionalise
it more and more, and they modelled it
from the drawings of masters, and the pattern-
books of the workshop rather than from
251



FIG. 486.
MEMPHITE STATUE

(Museum, Cairo).
(f^ot. E. Brugsch.)



ART IN EGYPT




FIG. 487.— HEAD AND BUST OF A

WOMAN (Museum, Cairo).

(Phot. E. Brugsch.)



nature; excavators have found,
and are still finding in the ruins,
what may be described as ready-
made statues, some entirely
blocked out in the rough (Fig. 473),
others with the bodies finished,
and a shapeless block of stone
left for the head (Fig. 474), to
await the client whose likeness
it was to receive ; also feet, hands,
arms and heads in different stages
of preparation, which were used
for the instruction of pupils, or
were the products of their ex-
periments. Under the influence of
this method, the science of ana-
tomy languished, contours became
soft, the muscles relaxed and were
incorrectly placed, the planes of
the flesh were merged one into

the other and became perfectly smooth. On the other hand,

great pains were taken to make the head as exact a reproduction

of the original as possible, and in order

to succeed in this, sculptors were no longer

content to render the features of the face

very faithfully in the stone; they gave much

attention to the modelling of the neck and

skull , which had h therto been neglected.

Our museums contain examples of these

disconcerting statues, in which the feebleness

of the body is in such striking contrast to

the truth of the face. The wrinkles of the

forehead are emphasised with scrupulous

insistence, the sunken eyes and the crows'

feet at the corners, the muscles which

encircle the nostrils, the laughing lines of

the mouth, the curve or the flatness of the

nostrils; the c/o«6/e- statues no longer re-
present their master as uniformly young;

if he is mature or old they show the

stigmata of age. The head at Berlin

(Fig. 475) like that in the Louvre (Fig. 476),

is the unflattcrcd portrait of a Memphite

252




inn. 4S.S.— UKAD AND

lUJST OK A WOMAN

(Barracco Collection).

(Phot. Hissing.)



THE SAITE AGE




FTG. 4SQ.— HEAD AXn BT'ST OF A MAN
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)



citizen, whose ug^lincss has been transferred to green schist

or serpentine with the mechanical precision of a photographic

plate. The skull of the shaven

priest at Cairo (Fig. 477) is

as minutely modelled as if the

sculptor had been commis-
sioned to make an anatomical

model for a medical school ;

it shows every bump , every

depression, all the asymmetries,

and a doctor could tell at a

glance if there were congenital

defects in the original.

This recrudescence of realism

is not to be attributed to the

appearance of the Greeks on

the scene ; the Greeks of the

fifth and fourth centuries B. C.

did not carry this almost painful

striving after resemblance so

far. It was the natural develop-
ment, and as it were the con-
sequence of the ancient theory

of the double, and was produced under the influence of the

changes introduced into
costume by the fashion of
the period. After the
Twenty -sixth Dynasty it
would seem that the use
of the wig gradually be-
came less general , and
that it disappeared entirely
under the Persians. The
priests, who kept their
skulls bare for reasons of
professional cleanliness,
lived, it may be said, w!th
uncovered heads, and
those members of the
other upper classes who
were not affiliated in

some way to the priesthood, acquired the habit of wearing

short hair. Once again it was religious dogma which drew art

253




FIG. 4Q0.— SPHINX OF THE ROMAN PERIOU
(Museum, Alexandria). (Phot. Breccia.)



ART IN EGYPT

into a new path, and when artists copied the head so exactly,
it was in the hope of securing for the double all the benefits




"â– '^^eaia^



FIG. 4QI.— CROWNED COLOSSUS IN THE ISLAND OF ARGO.



he had enjoyed on earth. It is not surprising, therefore, that
the example thus set by the Memphite School should have
been followed by all the others. The few Theban statues of
Ptolemies which have survived betray a
like interest in the accidents of the face.
Those of the princes of Asyut, which seem
to be related to the Hermopolitan School,
show traces of the same influence, and
those of the Tanite School which we find
at Cairo (Fig. 479) have not escaped it,
a fact which will surprise no one, seeing
that an analogous tendency makes itself
felt in the earliest of its productions, the
sphinxes of Amenemhat III. Nevertheless,
in the cities colonised by the Macedonians,
at Alexandria, at Memijhis , and even at
Thebes, the sight of Creek statues, and
perhaps contact with the masters who exe-
cuted them, had finally made some im-
pression on the natives, and though they
never entirely abandoned their ancestral
traditions, they hellcniscd them to some
extent. The Theban Colossus of Ameno-
phis, son of Hapu (Fig. 478), is purely
254




FIG. 402.

THE GOD AMON AND AN

KTHIOIMAN CANOACE

(Museum, Cairo).

(Phot. E. Brugsch.)



THE SAlTE AGE




FIG. 4Q3.— ETHIOPIAN' STATrKS OF S(n-LS
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)



Egyptian, and that which represents an Alexander Aii^os (Fig. 480)
has no exotic elements save the arrani^ement of tlie hair and
the cast of the face, hi
the Alexandrian statuette
(Figs. 481, 482), the atti-
tude and costume are, on
the other hand, purely
Egyptian, but the Greek
afflatus has passed over
the body, animating every
part of it, the rounded
bust, the small, firm
breasts, the closely mo-
delled belly, the well-
developed hip, the slen-
der, nervous leg. The
priest Horus (Fig. 483),
less delicate in handling, is much more advanced in evolution;
it looks like a Greek work executed by an Egyptian rather than
a purely Egyptian creation. Here again the body is open to
criticism; the shoulders are not broad enough, the chest is too
narrow, and the artist had a difficulty in rendering both the
fall of the arms and the folds of the chlamys.
The head is not bad; the nose is thin
and straight, the chin square, the jaw ob-
stinate, and the whole has a certain general
resemblance to the portraits of the young
Augustus. These hybrid statues were also
produced at Memphis at this period. One,
which is of basalt (Fig. 484), is not unlike
our Horus in costume and attitude, while
the other (Fig. 485), in limestone, represents
a priest walking and holding a naos in both
hands; the eyes are inserted, and the eye-
brows have been blackened with kohol; the
whole work is uninteresting. There is the
same unskilfulness in the large limestone
figure of our museum (Fig. 486) , and al-
though the heads, male (Fig. 489) and female
(Figs. 487, 488), near it give the impression
of faithful likenesses, the dryness of the
chisel has played the excellent intentions
of the sculptor false.

255




FIG. 404.— STATUE RE-
CARVED AS A C.*:SAR
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)



ART IN EGYPT




FIG. 495.

COLOSSUS OF THE
ROMAN PERIOD
(Museum, Cairo).

(Phot. E. Brugsch.)



Certain ancient types were modified in this
last stage of sculpture; that, for instance, of
the female sphinx, who began to lean her head
to one side and to cross her forepaws (Fig. 490).
No original type was born of this belated
alliance between the Greek and the Egyptian
spirit; the remnant of creative vigour which
the old tradition kept alive, had taken refuge
in Ethiopia. It is not manifested in the crowned
Colossus of the island of Argo (Fig. 491), nor
in the few royal statues which have come down
to us from Argo, Napata, and Meroe; the
Cairo group (Fig. 492) , in which a Queen
Candace stands beside an Amon , has some
pride and spirit , in spite of the imperfection
of the execution, but it has no elements which
are not purely Egyptian. And yet recent exca-
vations have revealed a new conception of the
soul among this people which was relapsing
into barbarism (Fig. 493). Taking as their point
of departure the bird with a human head which
had in all times served to express it , they

substituted a human body for that of the falcon, at first without

altering the proportions; but soon, enlar-
ging the miniature body to normal dimen-
sions, they produced what I have called

the soul-statue in contradistinction to the

double-statue, the figure of a man or woman

over whose shoulders the falcon's skin

hangs like a cloak. It does not seem that

this type ever penetrated into Egypt proper.

Indeed, soon after its appearance, the purely

indigenous schools of sculpture were either

closed, or, all along the valley, merely

produced artisans incapable of a passable

work; when, about the beginning of the

third century, certain towns of the Fayum

or the Delta wished to erect monuments

in honour of the Caesars, Commodus or

Caracalla , they were reduced to borrowing

an antique statue and re-carving the face

(Fig. 494), or, if they demanded an original,

the artist gave them the caricature of a

256




KIG. 4g6. — STATUE OF A
MONKKY (Museum of the
Vatican). (Phot. Petrie.)



THE SAITE AGE



Colossus in the
Alexandria was
statues of a
woman of the tomb of
Kom-es-Shugafa, and the
animal - sculptors were
able for some time yet to
produce figures of monk-
eys (Fig. 496), sphinxes
(Fig. 498), and lions
passant or seated (Figs.
497, 499), which may be
taken for living animals
at a first glance. The
pacific lion of Fig.
and the Kom-Ombo
survived (Fig. 501)



antique style (Fig. 495). The hybrid art of
on a higher level , as we learn from the two
man and




FIG. 407.— IJOX PASSANT
(Museum of the Vatican). (Phot. Petrie.)



500,

statue, of which only the crowned head has
were probably among the last efforts of
Egyptian or Egyptianistic art; none of the monuments I have
met with so far seem to me later than the second half of the
third century after Christ.

The history of the Saite and Grseco-Roman bas-relief is anal-
ogous to that of the statues. It had its glorious moments from
the eighth to the third century before Christ; it then passed
long period of decadence, and closed towards the
the third century of our
Nectanebus on Naucratis,



through a
middle of
rescript of



era. A few stelae, the
and the Horus with the
crocodiles (Fig. 502) in
the Cairo Museum, will
bear comparison with the
best works of the Ah-
messide age, and the frag-
ment of a decree of
Ptolemy Euergetes has a
motive unknown in earlier
periods, that of a Pharaoh
on horseback charging the
enemy, sarissa in hand
(Fig. 503). The bas-reliefs
of buildings anterior to
the Greek conquest are of
a very pure style in the
Delta, at Beh-bet, for instance, where Nectanebus I. restored
the temple of Isis; even certain fragments of a temple of Akoris,

257 s




4g8. — SPHINX OF THE PTOLEMAIC PERIOD
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)



ART IN EGYPT




FIG. 49Q. — SEATED LION
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)



found at Sakkarah, would be almost equal
to those of Seti I. at Abydos, if their deli-
cacy were not marred by a certain insipidity.
Over-roundness of modelling, and softness
of contours are indeed the defects we note
in the decoration, defects which became
more and more marked towards the end.
They make themselves felt even in the ex-
perimental pieces, and the collection of
models which every studio possessed, relics
which are found in quantities in the ruins
of the great towns, from Tanis to Edfu and
Philae. Figures of kings and queens are
the most frequent (Fig. 504) , and this is
natural, for the reigning Pharaoh and the
women of his family had an immemorial
right to be represented on the walls of the
temples, and it was also customary to lend
their features to the gods and goddesses
with whom they consorted; animals and
hybrid forms of godhead, half man, half
beast, also abound, and this again is not
surprising, for sculptors were perpetually called upon to execute
them , both in pictures and inscriptions. One of the masters
would trace on thin slabs of limestone, sometimes squared
on the surface, the better to instruct the tyro in the proper relation

of parts, the portrait of a Pto-
lemy or a Cleopatra (Fig. 505),
in various skilfully graduated
stages, from the moment of
sketching in the silhouette and
the relief (Fig. 506), until that
when they are finished in their
slightest details (Fig. 507).
Several of these examples are
masterpieces, and there are
things in the Cairo Museum,
such as the head of a lioness
and the image of a bull , no
whit inferior in delicacy of
touch to the best in the temple
of Abydos or the tomb of Seti I.
Yet even in these we discern




V\<:. t;00.— THE T.TON OF KOM-OMBO
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)



258



THE SAlTE AGE



the tendencies which, becoming more and more pronounced,
brought about irremediable decHne. It is not good for an ap-
prentice to be kept exclusively at the reproduction of models.
However perfect. He loses touch with reality, he becomes a
machine , and soon he prides himself on being nothing but the
servile copyist of antique forms. Plato, no doubt, reflected the
state of mind of his Egyptian contemporaries when he praised
as admirable the persistence with which they .had produced the
same types without change for thousands of years. If, thanks to
the beauty of its stereotyp-




ed designs, late Saite art
retained a certain elegance,
it soon had nothing of its
primitive originality and crea-
tive vigour left. Its figures
had become mere puppets
without any anatomical basis;
the nose became rounder,
the lips more pouting, the
chin thicker, the cheeks hea-
vier, the mouth was set in
a smile which lifts it at the
corners and draws up the
nostrils towards the eyes.
This contraction of the whole
countenance, slight under the
first Ptolemies, degenerates
under their successors and
the Caesars into a grimace,
which gives the person re-
presented a distressingly silly expression.

Thebes and Philae are almost the sole places where we may
trace the progress of this decadence. The bas-reliefs of the gate
of Nectanebus on the east of the great temple of Amon are dignified
and agreeable, if they have no claim to supreme excellence, and
the same qualities reappear at Luxor in the sanctuary of
Alexander II., at Kamak, on the walls of the granite chamber
constructed by Philip Arrhidaeus in the shrine of the sacred boat
of the time of Thothmes III. They begin to die out in the little
temple of Ptah (Fig. 508), and the decoration of the large door
built by Ptolemy Physcon for the hypostyle hall is frankly
detestable; above all, in the places where sculptors presumed
to fabricate bas-reliefs in the names of Thothmes (Fig. 509) or

259 S 2



FIG. 501.— HEAP OF A STATT'E
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)



ART IN EGYPT




FIG. 502. — STELE OF HORUS

ON THE CROCODILES

(Museum, Cairo).

(Phot. E. Brugsch.)



Rameses (Fig. 511), the handling is so
feeble that the imposture is obvious to
the most ignorant eye. The material
in which they are carved is in part
responsible for their shortcomings.
Whereas the architects of the Saite
period used a close, durable sandstone,
capable of keeping the play of the

f .^ chisel firm, those of the Ptolemaic age

^; \f^' Jl / ) ; were content, no doubt for economical

K**.?^ I f ' rJ reasons, with a soft, coarse-grained

sandstone which did not lend itself to
precise lines or delicate transitions in
relief. Sculptors were accordingly ob-
liged to suppress in the contours and
the modelling of their figures minutiae
for which the stone was unsuitable,
and as, even by avoiding these as
much as possible, they did not alto-
gether escape such accidents as the
splitting or crumbling of the work,
they substituted for relief on a sunk surface (relief en creux),
which had been almost obligatory in former centuries relief on

the normal surface of the
wall, which they applied
even to inscriptions. It thus
became easier for them to
complete their decoration
without endangering their
figures and hieroglyphics
unduly; but, on the other
hand, they secured integrity
at the cost of flexibility;
their works, reduced to the
utmost simplicity of model-
ling for fear of accidents
during execution , look as
if they had lost their skin,
and were presenting hastily
flayed figures to view. At
Philac the decadence, though
slower, was not less sure,
and was brought about by




v\(i. 503.

PTOLEMY KrKI<(;KTKS f'HAROING
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)

260



THE SAITE AGE



the same causes as at Karnak; we follow it step by step, from
the pavilion of the doorway of Nectanebus II. to the shrine of
Euergetes II., the porticoes of Augustus and Tiberius, the doors
of Hadrian and Trajan. In such of the temples as were decor-
ated on a homogeneous plan, without too long a period between
the dates of beginning and completing
the work, Edfu, for instance, there is
no distressing contrast between room
and room, and the unity of the deco-
ration conceals its feebleness to a
certain extent. No very keen study
is needed, however, to perceive that
the sculptor here was a workman, who
mechanically transferred a stereotyped
design to the wall, and was no longer
capable of giving it a personal impress
(Fig. 510); his main preoccupation was
the correct reproduction of costume
and liturgical accessories (Fig. 512).
For the great Theban School, which
had inspired all the provincial schools
of the Said for centuries, was dying,
if indeed it was not already dead at
the moment when Edfu and Denderah
were decorated, and the local work-
shops could only reproduce mechani-
cally the motives the architect ordered,
as in those pictures where the Emperor
Domitian comes to worship the gods
of Thebes; where architecture, a mathe-
matical art, had retained its vitality
for centuries, a few years had sufficed
to cause sculpture to degenerate and