cow, the latter very much twisted. The principal face is divided
into three tiers (Fig. 38). In the first, Pharaoh (on the left),
crowned with the red diadem, clad in the short skirt from which

hangs the fox-tail, his feet bare,

the scourge and club in his hands,
advances, followed by his groom
bearing vase and sandals, and
preceded by four little figures to
whom the standards of the four
quarters of the world have been
confided, towards two rows of
the corpses of his enemies , on
the right; they are laid flat on
the ground, in fives, their wrists
loosely bound with a cord, their
heads neatly arranged between
their legs after the Oriental fashion.
The central compartment is occu-
pied by two leopards, confronting
each other; their necks, which are
extravagantly elongated, curve and
interlace round the central hollow,
and are crowned by grimacing
heads opposed one to the other; their two keepers, in short
skirts, round wigs, and pointed beards, strain on their leashes to
prevent them from biting each other. At the bottom, a sturdy
bull , the symbol of the Pharaohs , demolishes with his horns a
brick fortress, and tramples on a naked barbarian who tries in vain
to escape. The reverse (Fig. 39) has only two compartments, instead
of the three of the principal face. In the centre Baiu, this
time mitred with the high white cap and escorted only by
his groom, strikes down with his club a chief crouching on the
ground before him, and surmounted by a strange group: the
hieroglyph of a papyrus marsh from which the head of a man
emerges, and a falcon j)()ised with one foot on three of the
stems; with the other, which terminates in the arm and hand of
a man, the bird holds a cord jjassed through the nose of the

22




37. — HAS-RKI.IEF AT SINAI.
(Phot. Petrie.)



THINITE ART



head; the meaning of the whole is that the god Horus delivers
six thousand Northern prisoners into the hands of the king. Two
naked figures, running at their utmost speed, represent the rest
of the defeated tribes and their flight. On the other tablets
episodes of war and of the chase are represented, lists of towns
taken by sap, troops of domestic animals, oxen, asses, sheep,
goats, birds, advancing in superposed rows towards a wood
(Fig. 40). Though there are differences in these works due to the
individuals who executed them, they are all marked by a real
sense of composition and design, and
by thorough familiarity with the tool
used, but also by a stiffness and awk-
wardness of which there is no trace
in the stele of King Serpent; they
belong rather to industrial art than
to Art pure and simple. Yet they
are interesting, for in them we may
discern the chief characteristics of
the great sculpture of later ages, the
systematic deformation of the human
figure, the bust and eyes confronting
the spectator while the head and legs
are in profile, the dry and angular
rendering of the shoulder and the
arm, the stiff, almost benumbed bearing
of many of the persons, and at the
same time, their gravity and their
purity of line, the truth and spirit of
some of their movements, the firmness
of the modelling and its learned

simplicity, the systematic practice of keeping the relief low, and
of indicating the planes by light touches. All this is purely
Egyptian, without any foreign admixture.

It would seem then that the art of Egypt, having arisen and
developed in the centuries which preceded Menes, reached its
consummation under his descendants; when the Memphite dynasties
arose, it was already in full possession of its ruling ideas, its
conventions, its formulae, its technique, all the features which
give it originality and character. Perhaps the progress of discovery
will encourage us some day to enquire under what influences
it flourished, and what were the vicissitudes of its childhood
and youth; the scarcity of examples forbids any such enquiry at
present. The study of later periods, however, justifies the belief

23




FIG. 38.— TABLET OF NETER-

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



ART IN EGYPT

that from the first, there was no absolute uniformity throughout the
land; each of the sovereign cities had its schools, where architecture,
sculpture, and painting developed with a vigour proportioned to the
intensity of its political or religious life, and the characteristics of
its art, once determined, persisted with no serious modifications,
to the last years of Egyptian civilisation. The history of these
schools has been barely indicated, and their number is uncertain;
but their existence has been notified at Memphis, Abydos, Thebes,
Hermopolis, Tanis, Sais , several minor towns of the Said or
the Delta, in Nubia and in Ethiopia, and it is probable that
future excavations will reveal others. The supremacy which their
rank as capitals finally secured for Memphis and Thebes, gave
their schools a prestige and importance to which the others
never attained; their works account for over three-quarters of what
has been saved of the artistic patrimony of Egypt, and at present,
the history of Egyptian art is mainly the history of their art.




FIG. 5Q.— TABLET OF NETER-BAIU

(HKVKRSK).
(Museum, Cairo.) (Phot. E. Briigsch.)



24



THINITE ART



BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER I - PART I

Prehistoric a^jes and archaic period in Evrypt: All that is ncctssury to \n- known of these
will be found in J. Capart, Lis ilehiits dv I'Art en /-'gyplc. Hvo. Brussels VH)A, 'M(> p.

Thinite Age. — The existence of a Thinite art was first clearly demonstrated by
G. Steindorff, Eine netie Art Agyptischcr Kunst in Acgypliaca, Fvslschrift fur (jiorg Ebers
8vo. Leipzig 1897, p. 123-14b. But the monuments of this art only began to be welt
known after the excavations of Amelineau, Morgan, Flinders Petrie and Quibell: Amelineau,
Lis Noiivcllcs Fotiilh'S dAbydos, 8vo. Paris 18%, 47 p., 1897, 47 p. 1898, 65 p., and 4 to
1 1899, XXXII-307 p. and XLIII pi., II 1902, XI-326 p. and XXIV pi., II 1904, 742 p. and LI!
pi., and IV 1905, to be read in conjunction with Le Tombtuii d'Osiris, 4to. Paris 1899,
155 p. and 6 pi. — J. de Morgan, Richerches sur Its origiries de lEgyple, II. Ethnographic
prehistoriqtie et tombeau royal de Ncgadah, 8vo. Paris 1897, IX-3% p. — Flinders Petrie,
The Royal Tombs of the first Dynasty (Egypt Exploration Fund, vol. XVIII), 4 to. London
1900, 51 p. and LXVII pi.; The Royal Tombs of the earliest Dynasties (Egypt Exploration
Fund, vol. XX). 4to. London 1901, VIII, 60 p. and LXIII pi.; Abydos (Egypt Exploration
Fund, vol. XXII-XXIV), 4 to. London, I 1902, 60 p. and XXX pi., II 1903, 66 p. and LXVI
pl., Ill 1904, 60 p. and LX pi. — J. E. Quibell, Hierakonpolis (Egyptian Research Account,
vol. IV- V), 4 to. London. I 1900, 12 p. and 43 pl., II 1902, 55 p. and LXXIX pl. For military,
religious and funerary architecture, see in addition to the works already quoted: J. Garstang,
Mahasna and Bet Khallaf (Egyptian Research Account, vol. VII), 4 to. London 1902. 42 p.
and XLIIL pl.; Tombs of the third Egyptian Dynasty. 4 to. London 1904. 70 p. and XXXIII

rl. — G. A. Reisntr and Mace, The Early dynastic Cemeteries of Naga-ed-Deir, 4 to. Leipzig,
1908, 160 p. and 75 pl., II 1910, 88 p. and 60 pl. — Flinders Petrie, The Dei'elopment of
the Tomb in Egypt, in the Journal of the Royal Institute of Great Britain 1898, session
of June 3, and o < the form of the temples, A. Jequier. Les Temples primitifs et la per-
sistance des types archaiqucs dans I'architecture religieuse , in the Bulletin de TInstitut
fran<;ais d Archeologie orientale, 1908, vol. Vi, p. 25-45. For stelae and palettes, see the
articles of J. E. Quibell, Slate Palette from Hierakonpolis, in the Zeitschrift fiir A^yptische
Sprache 1898, vol. XXXVI, p. 81-84. — G. Bc-nedite, La Stele dite du Roi Serpent, in the
Memoires de la Fondation Plot, 1906, vol. XII, p. 1-15, and Une nouvelle Palette en schiste,
in the same Memoires 1904, vol. X, p. 105-122. Very good resumes of all we know of the
art of this period in general are to be found in W. Spiegelberg, Geschichte der Agyptis'hen
Kunst, p. 7-11, and in R. Weill, Les Origines de TEgypte pharaonique, 8vo. Paris 1908,
p. 443-500.




FKi. 4u.— iiiiMiK iAHi.KT.

(The Louvre, Paris.) (Phot. E. Brugsch.)
1^



FIG. 41. — p-IEI.D OF THE PYRAMIDS OK (ilZEH.

CHAPTER II

MEMPHITE ART

It readies its apogee under the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties — Architecture: Houses,
Palaces, Mastabas and Pyramids, funerary Chapels and Temples — Painting and
Sculpture: the decoration of Tombs and Temples considered as a whole. Bas-reliefs
and Statues — The minor Arts.

TOWARDS the beginning of the Third Dynasty there were, in
the district where the Pyramids afterwards rose, craftsmen
capable of executing tombs Hke those of Nakadah, or carving a
seated or a standing figure of a man more or less passably, but
nothing that has survived of their works indicates that their
school would ever have risen above mediocrity, if the revolution
which brought about the transfer of the royal residence had not
suddenly brought it into contact with experienced masters. The
architects, masons, painters and sculptors who had worked for
the Thinite Court accompanied it in its migration towards the
North; Memphite art developed from their teaching or examples
as a natural prolongation of Thinite art. The first buildings we
owe to it are grouped, some in the mining region of Sinai, but
the greater part in the neighbourhood of Medum , Dahshur,
and Zawyct-el-Aryan , round the tombs which the last king of
the Third Dynasty, Neferka-Ra-Huni, and the first king of the
Fourth, Senefcru, had erected for themselves. At this period
of history they were few and far between, but the number in-
creased from the time of Cheops onwards; towards the close of
the Memphite age, under the Sixth Dynasty, they not only
covered all Egypt, but were to be met with beyond the cata-

26



MEMPHITE ART




I-IG. .)2. — SARCOPHAGIS OK K HrH-KNKKH.
(Museum, Cairo.) (Phot. E. Brugsch.)



racts of Assuan, in the northern districts of Nubia over which
the Pharaohs had established their domination. Rude and clumsy
at first , they gradually
improved under the Third
Dynasty, and reached their
highest perfection under
the Fourth; they became
more and more refined,
but lost something of their
characteristic simplicity
and grandeur under the
Fifth Dynasty. Under the
Sixth Dynasty, the deca-
dence had begun; the
little that has come down
to us from the following
dynasties betrays the hand
of the unskilful and unin-
telligent artisan.

The architecture is known to us mainly by the tombs. The
private houses, built of dried bricks, and perpetually modified
or replaced for the convenience of their inhabitants, survive
only in shapeless pieces of wall in the deeper strata of the
existing towns. The palaces, also of brick, though they had certain
stone elements in their doorways and internal colonnades, have
proved hardly more dur-
able. To judge by the
external arrangement of
the sarcophagi of Khu-
fu-enekh (Fig. 42) and My-
cerinus (Fig. 43), they were
rectangular masses with
vertical walls sometimes
encircled by a beaded
torus, and crowned by a
deep cavetto. The fronts
were divided into grooved
panels like those of the
fortresses, and of the tomb
of Nakadah (cf. Fig. 6),
but more elaborate in
profile, and they were decorated towards the top by an orna-
ment of two lotus-leaves with crossed stems; doors were pierced

27




FI(}. 43.— SARCOPHAGUS OF MYCERINUS.
(After Chipiez, Hist, de I'Art vol. i. fig. 289).



ART IN EGYPT




FIG. 44.— FA(;^Ar)E AND DOOR OF A MEM-

PHITE HOUSE, FROM THE STELE OF SETI.

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



between the panels, and above
them openwork bays, or rows
of little slits through which the
light and air entered (Fig. 44).
The whole was whitewashed,
and the architectural details
were enlivened with crude
colours: sphinxes with lions'
bodies and human heads often
watched on either side of the
door, or obelisks, stones rising
from a square base into a
pyramidal point, took their
place, proclaiming the names
and titles of the master. The
fagades of private houses were
probably similar, or at least
those which belonged to per-
sons of distinction, and had
any pretensions to elegance.
The appearance of the streets in certain African towns (Fig. 45), where
the decoration is in mud or clay like the houses, may give an idea
of the rich quarters of Memphis at the time of the Pyramids. As
to the temples of the city, which were enlarged or remodelled from

reign to reign, then pulled down
because of their age, and set
up again on new plans, all that
is left of them consists of frag-
ments, carved or inscribed,
which have been utilised in
buildings of recent date. We
should still be ignorant of their
origin, had it not been for the
fortunate discovery of certain
funerary temples which were
attached to the royal pyramids
of the Fifth Dynasty; once again
the fictitious life beyond the
tomb has j)rovidcd the document
necessary for the rcconstitution
of real Hfc.

The burial grounds of the
Memphite mountains contain
28




FI(i.45. AIHr AN MID AI<( IIITKCTrRE.
A Street in Dieiine.



MEMPHITE ART



FIG. 46. — VERTICAL SHAFT IX THK MAS-
TABAS OF GIZEH (AFTER LEFSILS).



several hypogea, both vaults and chapels, which are entirely
hollowed out in the rock; other sepulchres approximate to the
Thmite type, but the propor-
tion between the elements
demanded by the earlier con-
ception was no longer observed,
and the internal arrangements
were accordingly modified. In-
deed, as the doctrine gained
ground, according to which the
images traced upon the wall
were of equal, or even of
greater importance to the dead
than real objects, the tomb-
chamber was circumscribed, and
the rooms composing the accessi-
ble chapel were increased. At
Memphis accordingly the tomb-
chamber is merely a narrow cell, more or less deep beneath the
ground, accessible until the day of interment by means of a
vertical well (Fig. 46), or an oblique passage (Fig. 47), without
any decoration in the way of figures or inscriptions save such
as were bestowed on the sarco-
phagus. On the other hand, the
chapel , which had become both
a reception-room and a storehouse,
forms a building of some importance,
a mastaba, the visible bulk of which
was in direct ratio to the means
possessed by the master for ensuring
a happy after-life to his double. Thus
it was not open to everyone to rest
under a mastaba. It was a privilege
reserved for those whom birth,
talents, services rendered to the
state , or even some momentary
caprice had raised to the summit
of the hierarchy. As they had been
permitted to approach the master
here below, they desired not to
be separated from him in the other

world, that so they might continue to enjoy his favour. However,
as they were numerous, and space was limited, Pharaoh was

29



t\.



/"



>^



//



FIG. 47.— THE ST.OIMXO PASSAGE

IN THE TOMB OF TI, DRAWX BY

A. MAI DKY.



ART IN EGYPT




FIG. 48.— A CORNER OF THE NECROPOLIS AT

GIZEH, RESTORED BY CHIPIEZ.

(Hist, de I'Art, vol. i. fig. 108.)



obliged to allot it with discretion, if he wished to satisfy his
courtiers. Concessions of ground were made methodically, on a

predetermined plan , and
the mastabas were ranged
in regular lines (Fig. 48),
the larger ones divided
one from another by lanes,
the smaller combined into
isletsof two, three, ormore;
when his hour had come,
Pharaoh had distributed
several hundreds of these,
which formed a city of the
dead around him. Its
appearance was monoto-
nous. These houses, or,
if we prefer to call them
so , these palaces of the
necropolis would have been much like those of living cities, if
their facades, instead of being straight, had not inclined symmetrically
backwards, which gave them a certain vague likeness to an
unfinished pyramid (Fig. 49). Some few of these were of sun-dried
brick; the majority were of freestone, or small dressed stones,
with bare plain facings, the door on the east or the north, and
in some cases, a row of apertures just below the line of the
summit. Some were from thirty to forty feet high, one hundred
and fifty feet in width, and about seventy-five in depth;
but this was not usual, and examples occur no more than about
nine feet high by fifteen wide. Some are crowned by a cavetto
and an entablature; but the majority terminate, without any

transition in the last

course, in an earthen
platform , the soil
mixed with fragments
of limestone , and
dotted with terracotta
jars, buried up to the
neck. To tell the truth,
I see in them the
regularisation and con-
solidation of those







. ;..:^^o-






Fici. jf;.— A MA;



;i/.KH (After Lepsius).



heaps of sand and j)ebblcs which the primitive Egyptians piled over
their graves; the architect had little to do with their actual form;

30



MEMPHITE ART



tradition had imposed it upon him, and he was obhi^cd to repeat
it servilely on the outside.

But there was compensation in the amount of liberty permit-
ted him in the interior. In the beginninir, the Memphite mastaba
had been solid like the
tumulus, whether it was
built up over the vault, or
constructedbeforehand, and
pierced with a tunnel which
was filled up on the eve-
ning or the morrow of inter-
ment; in either case the
architect was careful to
indicate on the eastern front,
by means of a panel simu-
lating a door, the place
where the double was sup-
posed to go out and return
(Fig. 50). This feigned en-
trance was often of natural
size , and it would have
resembled a practicable door
in every way, but for the
fact that the back was
always closed. It was some-
times doubled, at first
only for the king, but later,
when private persons ven-
tured to imitate the king,
for those noble or wealthy
individuals who were con-
cerned that their souls
should not lose any of the
offering; one of the two
was dedicated to the north
and its tribute, the other

to the south, and its productions. The decoration was sober
at first: the name of the master on the tympanum over the
opening, his titles and image on the jambs sufficed as long
as clients were content with a plain door. But very soon, pursu-
ing the imitation of what had at first been the privilege of the
sovereign, they required that the slab should represent not merely
the door of a dwelling, but the entire building, and the model

31




FIG. 50. — STELE IN THE FORM OF A F.-M.SE
DOOK. (Museum, Cairo.) (Phot. E. Brugsch.)



ART IN EGYPT



adopted was what is known as the royal banner, in other words,
the rectangular structure in which the Pharaohs enclosed their
name, Horus. It consisted of two parts; in the lower of these
was the fagade of a house with a closed door, in the upper
one an empty space, a chamber in which the signs which constituted
the name were written (Fig. 51). In imitation of this, the
slab was divided into two registers, one above the other, enclosed
in a flat band which formed a frame common
to both (Fig. 52). The lower compartment
answered to the false door of the earlier period,
often so modified as to be almost unrecog-
nisable. The panels of the rebates were brought
forward, the jambs were flattened, and the
reliefs as a whole were only a few millimetres
above the surface. In the upper compartment,
which corresponds to the tomb- chamber , the
dead man was seated at a round table, laden
with the foods and ornaments he might require
in the other world. These were conveyed to him
invisibly by means of a special apparatus, a
stone table originally fixed between the uprights
of the door, and afterwards placed on the ground,
against the stele. The celebrant heaped on this
all the objects of offering, and the doubles of these,
detached by virtue of his prayers, were projected
upon the round table destined to receive them.
This ritual of the dead was carried out in the
open air (Fig. 53), in the sight of all, and though
in theory this unrestricted publicity did not
affect its efficacy, in practice the result was,
that when the congregation had dispersed, the
offerings were at the mercy of marauders, human and animal; the
person for whom they were intended ran the risk of losing the
best part of them before he had secured his ration. Two de-
vices were accordingly adopted for their protection: an enclosure
of bricks was built, projecting from the east wall, square in the
mastaba of Kaapiru (Fig. 54), irregular in that of Neferhetep
(Fig. 55), at Sakkarah; but the more important measure was
the imbedding of the false door in the masonry in such a manner
as to bring it to the back, sometimes of a niche, sometimes of
an actual room. This was very often unique, and so small that
it looks to us drowned in the general mass. It is a minute cell,
the longer axis of which is j)arallel to the fa(;adc; if the false door

32




FIG. 51.

THENAMK HORUS

OK CHEPHREN.



MEMPHITE ART



be placed at one of the extremities, the ground-plan forms n figure
like a double-headed hammer (Fig. 56) ; if it be hollowed out opposite
the entrance, it suggests a cross the head of whidi is cut out
more or less. Such simple arrangements are found jjrincipally
in the more archaic quarters, such as
Dahshur, Medam, Gizeh and Sakkarah,
side by side with more complex types.
In the latter, the single chapel was
first enlarged, then doubled, and re-
doubled (Fig. 57), until the mastaba
became a series or a labyrinth of rooms
large and small: that of Mereruka,
under the Sixth Dynasty, contained
over thirty compartments (Fig. 58); some
of these were passages concealed in
the thickness of the structure, sometimes
blind, sometimes communicating with
the world by conduits so narrow that
it is difficult to thrust the hand into
them; these were the serdabs, in which
the statues of the deceased and of his
servants were imprisoned, to preserve
them from possible destruction. Several
were used as warehouses or store-rooms,
and for ceremonies, there were rooms
upheld by square piers, or by columns
with lotus-bud capitals; the entrance is
sometimes preceded by a porti co (Fig. 59).
In the course of time, the false door
lost its original character; its hollows
were attenuated, its projections flattened,
and it was finally resolved into an
upright slab, on which the design of a
door was indicated on the surface by
almost impalpable reliefs; in a word, it
became a stele, towards which all the several parts of the tomb
converged , just as if it had remained the actual door which
had formerly led to the vault. Occasionally, however, its ancient
character was revived, at least in appearance. Thus in the tomb
of Mereruka (Fig. 60) , the life-size statue of the master was
introduced into the bay, a flight of three steps was at his feet,
by which he was supposed to come down into the chamber,
to take the offerings left by the celebrants. In the mastaba of

33 D




FK;. ^t.— STKI.K-nooH OF

ISIRI'. (Museum, Cairo.)

(Phot. E. Brugsch.)



ART IN EGYPT



Atoti (Fig. 61), the statue is set against the stone which fills up
the doorway, rather than enframed in the bay. In that of

Neferseshemptah (Fig. 62), the




FIG. 53.— FA<7ADE OF THE MASTABA OF
MENEFER. (After Mariette.)



conception is more complex;
the bust of the dead man rises
above the closed door and its
lintel, to see what is happening
in the chamber, while right and
left two statues of him stand
erect against the fagade, as if
keeping guard over him. Later
again, the head alone appears
over the panel (Fig. 63). The
stele thus loses its independent character to become a mere
element of the decoration (Fig. 64). The table of offering rests
on the ground before it, and sometimes, as among the living,
it was flanked by two miniature obelisks, on which the name
and titles of the master were proclaimed in large letters (Fig. 65).
There is no evidence that this evolution was based on a pre-
conceived idea, nor that it culminated in the creation of a typi-
cal mastaba, all the internal parts of which were deduced one
from another in logical order. In the mastaba of Ti, at Sak-
karah (Fig. 66) there is, indeed, a veritable progression in the
successive apartments, from the entrance portico to the point
where the stele rises towards the south-western angle: first
there is a hall with pillars, where the passage leading up from the

vault reached the level,
then a corridor divided
by a door into two une-
qual lengths, a little room
on the right for the dead