As they overcame the technical difficulties of casting, the Saite
masters were emboldened to increase the size of their works until
at last they succeeded in casting figures larger than life in a
single piece. Not one of these metal colossi has come down to
us intact, but we
possess fragments
which enable us to
reconstitute their
appearance , such
as the hand grasp-
ing the hydra, now
in the Cairo Mu-
seum, which Dani-
nos found among
the ruins of Mem-
phis : it is termin-
ated at the wrist
by a rectangular
tenon which held
it to the arm, and
the effigy of the
kneeling king to
which it belonged
must have been
about 6 V2 feet in
height. But this is exceptional. The statue of Petukhanu, the
torso of which was in the Stroganoff collection, was barely life-
size, and the most important pieces we have of the Bubastite
or Saite ages are rarely as much as 3 feet in height. Several
of them are finer than the best contemporary examples in lime-
stone or granite, notably the little sphinx of Apries in the Louvre
(Fig. 534) and the kneeling Tirhakah at Cairo (Fig. 535). The
Karomama in the Louvre (Fig. 537) bought by Champollion of
a dealer who had himself bought it at Luxor, is Theban in hand-
ling. The queen is standing, dressed in a long, closely - fitting-
gown with flowing sleeves, her head crowned with a ceremonial
wig , the forelocks of which overhang her brow ; the eyes are
inserted, and the divisions of the wig, as well as the folds of
276
FIG. 530.ā PAINTING OF A HYPOGEUM IN THE OASIS
OF BAHRlYAH. (Phot. Moritz Bey.)
THE SAlTE AGE
Fin. f;;?t.ā PLASTER mask of
A MiMMY (Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
the dress, were incrusted with gold.
The body is finely modelled under the
stuff, but the head is above praise.
Karomama was certainly no beauty,
with her long, beak -like nose, her
sunken nostrils, her dry mouth and
bony chin. But as she had a lofty
bearing, the artist, unable to make her
attractive, concentrated all his powers
on the pride and energy of the face;
his Karomama is the incarnation of
what he conceived the wife of Pharaoh
and Queen of Egypt should be. The
Takushit of the Athens Museum (Fig.
536) on the other hand is a woman
of the middle class, a worthy lady of
Bubastis, and her statuette, probably
the product of a local workshop is a
contrast in the somewhat flaccid round-
ness of its contours to the nervous
spareness of the Karomama. The good dame has started off
with the left foot, and she walks without haste, her right arm
hanging, her left held against her breast; her drapery moulds
while affecting to conceal her full hips
and abdomen , and her round , heavy
breasts. The face is broad and fat
under the wig of short locks rising
in tiers one above the other, and her
narrow eyes, her short nose, her fleshy
lips and rounded cheeks are those of
a fellah woman without any touch of
race. The bronze with its mixture of
gold and silver, is irradiated by soft
reflections which seem to animate the
forms; the dress is covered as with
an embroidery by religious scenes and
inscriptions incised and filled in with
a silver line.
We can hardly say whether the
activity of the Theban foundries relax-
ed from the beginning of the Saite
period, or whether the lack of Theban
bronzes is due merely to the perversity
277
FIG. 532.ā MASK OF A >rrMMY
IN PAINTED CARTON
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
ART IN EGYPT
of chance. But with the exception of an enormous Osiris found
in the favissa at Karnak, the finest and most important bronzes
of our collections all come from Memphis or the Delta. Bubastis
was the home of the four bronzes bought by the Louvre at the
Posno sale. The first, one Masu, whose name is tattooed on his
breast (Fig. 538) near the heart, advances towards the spectator
with a proud, confident movement; the face, somewhat disfigured
by the loss of the eyes, which were of enamel
encircled with silver , breathes energy and
arrogance. The second is less vigorous in
bearing, but the third (Fig. 539), a Horus who
originally lifted up a jar from which he poured
water over a king kneeling before him, is
harsher and drier, and was perhaps cast in
the same workshop as the kneeling Horus at
Cairo ; the composition of the metal seems to
be identical in each, the handling is similar,
and the manner in which the bird's head is
adjusted to the human bust is marked by the
same exactness. It must, indeed, be allowed
that these divine monsters, in whom the hu-
man and animal natures are allied, inspired
the makers of bronzes more happily than the
statuaries. The Basts and Sekhets discovered
by Barsanti at Sais (Fig. 540) are not only
comparable to the black granite Sekhets of
Amenophis III., but superior to them in dignity
of attitude, and the suggestion of restrained
vitality. Their cat or lion heads rest more
easily on their feminine shoulders, and they
are less in the nature of a defiance to the
laws which rule the division of species. The
lions of Thmuis and Tell -es- Sab are no earlier than the first
Ptolemies. Those of Horbet were cast under Apries (Fig. 541).
They were part of a mechanical contrivance for closing the doors
of a temple, and they had a wooden beam prosaically inserted
in their hind-quarters, but the artist turned the conditions imposed
by their functions to excellent decorative account; he imagined
them lying flat on the ground , in an oblong cage , the lateral
walls of which were pierced to show their bodies, while their
heads and forepaws emerged from the open trap in front. He
simplified the lines, but in the manner of which the Egyptians
were masters, neither suppressing nor weakening any of those
278
FIG. 533.ā COFFIN
OF AKHMIM
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
THE SAlTE AGE
53 j. - i.ri'i i.K mniNZK simiiw of
Al'KlES (The Louvre, Paris).
which give the animal its character; the face is calm and soberly
majestic. The cat is treated no less hapj)ily than the lion, and
it may be said without
exaggeration that among
the thousands, either
whole cats or heads of
cats, brought out in 1878
from the fcwissa of Bubas-
tis , very few were bad,
or even mediocre (Fig.
542); no people ever
showed more skill in seiz-
ing the undulating grace
of the beast, the treach-
erous softness of its atti-
tudes, and the expression
of its mask, now dreamy, now mutinous. The other animals ā
rams, Apis or Mnevis bulls (Fig. 543), crocodiles, cynocephali
the innumerable figurines of Amon (Fig. 544), Osiris, Isis, Horus
Nit, Anubis with a dog's muzzle (Fig.
545), Sekhet with a lion's face (Fig. 546),
Thoth with the head of a monkey or
an ibis, do not bear comparision with
the cats and lions; though many of them
are remarkable for the perfection of
their casting, or the delicacy of their
chasing, the majority are the prosaic
reproductions of non-artistic types de-
vised for the edification of the faithful.
They bear the same relation to the
splendid bronzes at Cairo and in the
Louvre as do the gilded and painted
saints of the St. Sulpice quarter to the
works of the great Christian sculptors
of France and Italy.
And here we are confronted by a
problem the solution of which we can
only divine at present. Among the
innumerable bronzes found in the same
places, where they seem to have been
deposited at the same time, we find
some so different from the rest in style, that were we not certain
of their origin, we should be disposed to attribute them to very
279
l-'iti. 535.ā BRONZK
STATUETTE OF TIKHAKAH
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
ART IN EGYPT
FIG. 536.ā THKT>ADY
TAKUSHIT
(Museum, Athens).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.J
diverse periods and localities. It is in the
cats above all that these divergences are most
strongly marked. Some are vigorous and
realistic after the manner of the best Theban
sculptors; their silhouettes have a certain
harsh abruptness of contour which is not the
result of any lack of skill in the artist, but
the effect of a determination to express the
energy and strength rather than the grace
and ease of the animal's movements. With
others, however, the desire for elegance gets
the mastery, and the contours are softened
to the verge of flaccidity; we recognise the
Memphite technique in its most trivial aspect.
Noting these contrasts, we are inclined to
ask whether the fact that such dissimilar
works were all buried together in the favissa
of the temple of Bast is sufficient evidence
that they were all manufactured at Bubastis.
May not the pilgrims who dedicated them to
the goddess have brought
them from their native towns? Their dissi-
milarity would be comprehensible enough in
this case ; those in which we seem to distinguish
the impress of Theban or Memphite art would
then have made their way hither from Thebes
or Memphis. But even if we accept this
hvpothesis, we shall not have resolved the
difficulties entirely. Carefully examined, these
groups do not present a homogeneous appear-
ance, for whereas some of the examples
really reveal the characteristics of the Saite
age, many others would seem from their
treatment to be earlier by several centuries:
and yet the circumstances of the find and the
nature of the bronze hardly permit us to
doubt that they were all cast within the space
of a few years. An observation I made in the
ruins of a pottery workshop discovered last
winter behind one of the mounds of Eshmunen,
may help to explain this anomaly. The majority
of the moulds for lamps and of the kiln-refuse
it still contained, belonged to the Christian
280
FTO. B37.ā QUEEN
KAKOMAMA
(The Louvre, Paris).
l u,,.^^ . .-
^^^
c
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
' tfiLLECE OF FINE ASIS
LIBRARY
THE SAITE AGE
FIO. 53S.ā BROXZE
STATIKTTK OK MASU
(The Louvre, Paris).
era, as we learn from
the crosses and in-
scriptions, but others
arc decorated with
pai^an figures and
legends, and cannot
be later than the
second or third cen-
tury of our era; the
potter must have
had in the back of
his shop old models
which came from
his distant predeces-
sors , and these,
slightly altered to
suit the require-
ments of the new
religion , were still
sold occcasionally.
rir,. ??0.
BRONZK HUKl'S
(The Louvre, Paris).
It is probable that founders also preserved old-fashioned moulds,
and continued to cast with them from time to time for their
clients. Thus some Theban devotee of Bast might, before starting
for Bubastis, have provided himself
with ex-votoes, cats, or cat -headed
statuettes, or other figures of divinities
which, though of new metal and fresh
from the furnace , were none the less
the work of older generations by virtue
of the moulds used.
The same may be said of the
countless divinities made of different
compositions or of terra-cotta, which
swarm in the tombs and cities of
the Saite period and of the Graeco-
Roman epoch. The last centuries of
paganism were above all centuries of
pious imagery for the use of dead
and living, at least in the Delta and
the northern part of Middle Egypt,
for the Said never fell into these ex-
cesses, and the use of amulets was
not much more general here than in
281
FKi. 540. ā BRONZE SEKHET
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugscfi.)
ART IN EGYPT
FIG. 54I-ā BRONZE LION OF APRIES
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
in the glorious days of the second Theban Empire. It was
inevitable that manufacturers and dealers should spare them-
selves the trouble of in-
venting new types and
sacrificing their old
models, so long as these
could be made to suffice
for the demand and
content their customers.
And , naturally , objects
prepared by the hundred,
and even by the thou-
sand, for daily sale, could
not fail to be mediocre
and lacking in originality.
There are many of which
we can only say that
they faithfully express the hieratic attitude, the gesture, costume,
head-dress, and exterior attributes of the god they represented;
this was all the devout asked, and it was the same with the
Ushabtiu (substitutes). Provided they vaguely suggested the
mummy by their forms, and the name of their master had
been traced on them, together with the opening words of the
consecrated prayer, they served
for the rite, and this was all-
sufficient; at the beginning of
the Roman period many were
sold which are hardly more than
pieces of clay or paste length-
ened out, with a vague indi-
cation of the head and the feet,
things more barbarous than the
most barbarous Polynesian idols.
Here and there, however, we
meet with examples which stand
out from the general level of
ugliness, and are almost finer
than those of the great period.
They come generally from the
wells of Sakkarah, and belong
to the time of the Persian do-
mination, or to the early reigns
of the Macedonian dynasty. The
282
BRONZK CAT (Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
THE SAITE AGE
FIG. 54?.
STATUKTTE OF APIS
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Bnigsch.)
best , those of a certain Admiral Patanesis,
varied in size from 4 to 10 inches. Modelled
in a very pure paste , and fired with extra-
ordinary skill, they were glazed with a non-
lustrous clear, vivid blue, the freshness and
evenness of which are unimaginable; I have
seen nothing to approach them in modern
porcelain. The head is a gentle , melancholy
portrait; the only thing comparable to it in
its own genre is the little blue porcelain head
at Cairo (Fig. 547), perhaps an Apries or
Necho II. Others, though not so beautiful as
these, show a laudable effort to produce
something new; I may instance the little group
of green enamelled frit, which, inspired perhaps
by a motive of the time of Amenophis IV.,
represents queen Amenartas seated on Amon's
lap and passing her arms lovingly round his
neck (Fig. 548); the kohol jar, the body of
which is formed by a head of Apries in a
Greek helmet (Fig. 549), and the votive
statue in green paste of Nufiabres, standing on a high pedestal
and holding the naos of the Osiris-
mummy in front of him with both
hands. Some twenty of the Nits,
Ras, Horuses, Ptahs and Nefer-
Atmus in porcelain preserved in
the Cairo Museum, were executed
by workmen brought up in the
good school. Whereas their neigh-
bours in the glass cases show the
rounded, flaccid forms which pleased
the Ptolemaic sculptors , we note
in them the nervous , and some-
times rather dry handling of an
earlier age. Of course it was not
very easy to mark the play of
muscles in works barely ten or
twelve inches high, sometimes con-
siderably less. Artists accordingly
adopted the plan of enclosing the
limbs in a series of frankly cut
planes with sharp angles, and exag-
283
FIG. 544.
HARPOCRATES, OSTRTS, AND
AMON. BRONZE STATUETTES
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
ART IN EGYPT
gerating the proportions of the anatomical details which they
preserved in the knees, feet, arms and face, but with such an
intelligent sense of effect
that we have to examine
them a second time , if
we have not been already
informed of the device,
before we notice the
exaggeration. If they had
respected the true di-
mensions , certain ele-
ments of the human
body would have been
so attenuated as to be-
come almost invisible,
and the general impres-
sion of truth would have
suffered. Several of these
figurines are treated so
skilfully that instead of
appearing what they are,
miniatures of men or
animals, we feel when we
examine them as if we
were looking at colossal figures from the wrong end of a field-glass.
The Egyptians of the Pharaonic age had used plain earthen-
ware, neither glazed nor coloured,
only for the manufacture of coarse
domestic utensils and amulets,
chiefly articles intended for the poor,
ubshabti, beads, figures of the
gods, more especially Bes; it is
only exceptionally that we find, to-
wards the close of the second Theban
age, heads of Canopic vases in clay
as delicately executed as if they had
been in stone or enamelled ware.
From the accession of the Ptolemies,
and probably under the influence of
Greece, taste developed. We know
what masterpieces were bequeathed
to us by the potters of Alexandria;
several of the statuettes found in
284
FIG. 545.ā BRONZE
STATIKTTK OK ANLBIS
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
>^a. 540.ā BRONZE
SEKHET
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
FIG. 547.ā ROYAT. HKAn IN
BLUE ENAMKI, (Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsdi.J
THE SAlTE AGE
the burial grounds of Meks equal those of Tanagra. The natives
imitated their foreign comrades, and gradually the use of
earthenware , baked or unbaked , but
always painted in bright colours, be-
came general from one end of the
valley to the other. It found favour
more especially in localities where
there were colonies of Hellenes, in the
Delta, at Memphis, in the Fayum , at
Hermopolis, at Akhmim, at Syene, but
it also made its way into places that
had remained purely Egyptian. Its
manifestations are innumerable , from
the decorative plaques in temples and
public buildings to household utensils,
lamps, domestic lares, groups represent-
ing episodes in private life, grotesque
and sometimes obscene figurines, camels
(Fig. 551), elephants (Fig. 550), birds,
and the majority are industrial rather
than artistic creations (Fig. 552). Nev-
ertheless , some of the subjects are
treated with a most amusing dexterity
(Fig. 553), and bronze was even used
in some cases (Fig. 555). A study of Perichon Bey's collection
is particularly instructive for this genre. It all came from the
tells of Eshmunen , the ancient city
of Thoth , and the majority of the
pieces composing it do not go back
further than the second century of
our era. Yet at Cairo there are
heads of dwarfs and idiots of sur-
prising truth (Fig. 554). Sugar-loaf
skulls, narrow retreating foreheads,
eyes overhung with bushy eyebrows,
crooked noses, bony cheeks, hanging
lips, minute chins, enormous ears set
on each side of the head like the
handles of an ill-made pitcher ā no
feature is lacking of all that makes
up well-observed human deformity ;
two or three strokes of the thumb
lengthened and kneaded the paste
285
FIG. 54^.ā AMON
AND QXEEX AMKNARTAS
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. Leg rain.)
FIG. 549. ā VASE IN THE FORM
OF A HEAD IX A HELMET
(The Louvre, Paris).
ART IN EGYPT
FIG. 550.ā TERRA-COTTA ELEPHANT
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
to the desired module; then a pinch here and another there
to bring out the protuberances of the face, a stroke of the
graver for the mouth, two pellets for the eyes, and there it
was, as ugly as nature, but
more amusing. Animals
are treated with no less
spirit , dogs especially,
not the thin greyhound,
the prototype of the so-
called jackal Anubis, but
the pug, with the angry
muzzle , pointed ears,
long waving hair and
curly tail, or the good
fellow of no particular
breed (Fig. 556), who
thinks his constant bark-
ing protects the house,
but whose true function
is to be tormented by
the children in it. Here
and there are feminine heads so graceful that they would not
disgrace the Alexandrian series ; they are purely Greek. The
only persons who have not entirely forsworn their Egyptian
character are the fashionable divinities. Harpocrates chubby as
a Pompeian Cupid, but adorned with a minute pschent, Agatho-
demons with a uraeus body and an Isis head (Fig. 557), Isis cha-
stely draped (Fig. 558), and others destined to serve as wives
to the dead, their tunics rolled
up on their breasts; these replac-
ed the statuettes of blue and
green porcelain towards the
close of the first century after
Christ, and until the definitive
triumph of Christianity they
sufficed for popular devotion.
The same transformation took
place in the other minor arts,
though we are not yet in a po-
sition to note its successive
stages. Furniture retained the
ancient forms in its essentials,
'VU.. =.^\. I l.I
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. K. Bnigscii.) at Icast amoug thc poor and
286
THE SAITE AGE
the lower middle classes; the domination of the foreiiJ^ner had,
in fact , altered nothinir, or almost nothing, in the habits of the
fellahin and the artisan , and even
the introduction of a current coinage
had not affected the conditions of
their domestic life as might have
been expected. They did not want
a single piece of furniture more than
their ancestors had used under the
Pharaohs, and the little they required
they continued to make on the con-
secrated models, beds and arm-chairs
with lion's feet incrusted with ivory,
bone or ebony, stools and benches
with leather seats and many-coloured
cushions, linen -chests, bread -bins,
jewel -caskets, kohol-pots, perfume-
boxes; they admitted innovations
only in certain funerary articles. The
catafalque in which the mummy
journeyed to the tomb , under the
Tanites of the Twenty-first Dynasty,
an enormous rectangular case laid
upon a sleigh, became under the Ptolemies a carved wooden
bed with a canopy. The one in the Edinburgh Museum, which
Rhind got at Sheik -Abd- el - Kurnah , simulates a kiosk with a
FIG. 552.
TERRA-COTTA GROTESQUE
(Museum, Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
FIG. 553-ā GROTESQUE HEAD IN
TERRA-COTTA (Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
287
FIG. 554.ā GROTESQUE HEAD
IN TERRA-COTTA (Museum,
Cairo). (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
ART IN EGYPT
barrel -vault, three sides of which are upheld by little columns
of coloured wood. The fourth, that of the head, has a facade
with three superposed cornices, each decorated with its winged
disc, the whole bordered by a row of rampant ursei; a door
between two columns, guarded by serpents, was supposed to
give access to the interior. The mummy within was, as it were,
in a peripteral temple the sanctuary of which was his coffin.
The catafalque in our Museum (Fig. 559) which I found at
Akhmim in 1885 , is conceived in a spirit
more attuned to its funereal function. Its
lateral columns are replaced by cut out
pieces of painted wood representing the
goddess Maat, the Truth who protected the
doubles at the tribunal of Osiris ; she crouches
on her haunches, her pen on her lap, and
beside her the winged Isis and Nephthys of
the ordinary sarcophagi fill up the space
at the short ends. The vault is of open-
work, and on each of the seven curves
which compose it are painted vultures, spread-
ing out their wings above the mummy;
two statuettes of Isis and Nephthys, posted
at the two extremities, lament as prescribed
by ritual. The work is agreeable to the
eye, and if provincial artisans were capable
of productions so tasteful, we may imagine
what those of Memphis could do; here
again, the cult of the dead prevented art
from falling too low, when it sank into
decadence in civil life. There is reason to
believe that Hellenism made way among the rich, and that the
same class who under the first Caesars substituted their wax portraits
for wooden coffin-masks, furnished their houses in the western
fashion, like modern Egyptians, who buy the furniture for theii
dining, reception, and bed-rooms in Venice, Paris, and London.
None of these Hellenistic pieces of furniture have come down
to us, but in 1901 Daninos found at Memphis fragments of
several carrying-chairs which had belonged to one of the last
Saitc Pharaohs. The wood, which was in bad condition, was
profusely decorated with small bronze plaques, some in very
low relief, others cut out flat in the metal and incised the
designs being Niles (Fig. 560) and Osirises bringing offerings
(Fig. 562), or helmetcd kings (Fig. 561), Thothmes III., Osorkon III.
288
FIG. 555.
GROTESyUK FIGUR-
INE IN HRONZE
(Museum, Cairo).
(Phot. E. Brugsch.)
THE SAlTE AGE
Psammetichus II, Amasis. It is possible that they came from
Thebes, in the trousseau of some princess married at Memphis;
whatever their origin, they are mediocre in design and even
more so in execution.
Goldsmith's work and jewelry alone flourished to the end, and
were transmitted, by a complete cycle of transformations, to the
Byzantines and then to the Arabs, thus escaping to some extent
the destruction of the Pharaonic civilisation. In the beginning,
under the Twenty-second
and Twenty-sixth Dy-
nasties, these productions
differed only by almost
imperceotible shades from
those o^ the Theban age.
The shallow goblets, some
Egyptian, others Cypriot,
but in the Egyptian style,
discovered in the palaces
of theSargonids in Assyria,