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Illustrated Catalogue of the
Antiquities and Casts of Ancient ...



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From the

Fine Arts Library

Fogg Art Museum
Harvard University




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THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO



ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE

OF THE

ANTIQUITIES AND CASTS OF
ANCIENT SCULPTURE

IN THE.

ELBRIDGE G. HALL AND OTHER
COLLECTIONS

PART 1.

ORIENTAL AND EARLY GREEK ART



BY

ALFRED EMERSON, Ph. D.



MCMVI



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FOGG ART MUShU,':
HARVARD UMlVt-f^SITV




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EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES.

I. GETTY, NO]
,E8 L, HUTCH]

Room 15.



THB GIFT OF HBITRT H. GBTTT, NORHAH W. HARRIS AND
CHARLB8 L. HUTCHINSON.



The objects in this room are real antiquities, not repro
ductions. They have been collected as illustrative of the
more usual applications of art in ancient Egypt, aside from
architecture. A detailed catalogue is in course of preparation.
Meanwhile the memorandum below will direct the visitor to
some of the more important objects:

Cases 1, 2, 3, (middle of room). Decorated Cofiins and Mummy
Cases. The cofi&n in case B antedates the period of decorated
mummy cases and is undoubtedly of the time of Abraham,
that is, about 2000 B. C. The mummy case in case 2, is
part of the famous discovery of the final burial place of
the Pharaohs at Deir el Bahari, in 1881-6. The other, in
case I, containing the mummied body of a woman, which has
never been unrolled, is of the late classic period.

Case 4. Canopic Jars. Funeral vases, of alabaster, used to contain
the vital organs of the deceased.

Case 5. Funeral Masks and Breast Plates, of papier mach^ and
beads; and other objects found in tombs.

Case 6. Ushebtiu (or respondents), figures of terra-cotta, porcelain,
stone, wood, etc., placed in graves with the idea that they
would act as substitutes for the deceased when called upon
for manual labor. The wooden figure in the middle of the
case. No. 74, is of about the time of Moses.

Case 7. Stelas or gravestones, inscribed and decorated.

Case 8. Bronze Objects. Figures of gods, sacred animals, implements,
ornamvints, etc.

I



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2 EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES

Case 9. Figures of Deities, mostly of pottery glazed in colors, and
vessels of various forms.

Case 10. Rings, Amulets and Jewels, of pottery or faience glazed in
colors, and of precious metals.

Case 11. Beads, of glass, precious stones and pottery or faience
glazed in colors. This is one of the largest and most com-
prehensive collections in the United States.

Case 12. Vessels of Alabaster and Glass.

Case 13, (Middle of room). Scarabasi or seals in the form of the sacred
beetle.

This collection of royal seals, about 650 in number, is one
of the rarest and most complete series in America. It is sur-
passed by that in the Cairo Museum, in Egypt. It is almost
a complete series from the time of Mena, the earliest known
earthly potentate, down to the Christian era, when ancient
Egypt passed out of history. The scarabs are made of a
great variety of stones and gems, and bear the cartouche or
signet of the monarch whotn they represent.

Case 14, (middle of room). Various Objects of wood, stone, hematite
(meteoric iron ore), flint, etc. The model of a boat, found in
a tomb, is a rare specimen.

Case 54. Small objects, mainly ancient Egyptian, in bronze, terra-
cotta, faience, etc. — figures of gods, ushebtiu, and animals ;
also lamps, tools, vessels, beads in breastplate and necklace
arrangements, etc. Presented by Joseph Rosenbauntf 1902.

Upon the tops of the cases are pottery vases of various
forms. In a frame on the north wall is an ancient papyrus
manuscript, presented by Robert H. Fleming.



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THE ELBRIDGE G. HALL COLLECTION.

The Elbridge G. Hall Collection of Casts in Plaster from
representative original sculptures was purchased for the Art
Institute with funds provided by Mrs. Addie M. Hall Ellis.
It bears by her direction the name of Elbridge G. Hall, a
citizen of Chicago from 1849 ^^ his death in 1877. In ac-
cordance with the wishes of the donor the collection includes
only full size models of the original works in sculpture. These
and the Institute's other collections of reproductions in
plaster and staff occupy Rooms i — 5, 8, 10 — 14, and part of
Blackstone Hall, in an order substantially chronological, ex-
cept as the representative nations naturally remain undi-
vided.

The sculpture of the ancient Orient has been assigned to
a single sequence. This covers Egypt, Chaldea and Baby
Ionia, the empire of the Hittites, Persia, and Syria. That
is to say, the casts in the ancient Oriental section are from
originals produced in Egypt and by the non-Greek popu-
lations of Asia Minor. Some late specimens betray the
influence of the Greek and of the Roman civilizations, and
art creations, on the eastern races, after they became sub-
ject to the sway of Greek kings and Roman emperors.

The sculptures, and the cognate pieces, of the ancient
Occident, that is to say of pagan Greece and Rome, have
been assigned to a second sequence. Every student of an-
cient sculpture knows how impracticable it is to draw a
hard and fast line between productions of the Greek and of
the Roman chisel. Roman magistrates and wealthy Roman
citizens often collected Greek masterpieces, and ordered or

3



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THE ELBRIDGB G. HALL COLLECTION

purchased copies of the old masters at contemporary Greek
studios. The marble employed is sometimes our only
guide as to whether a statue or a bust was carved in Athens,
Asia Minor, or Italy. Yet this criterion fails. For the
sculptured adornments of Roman buildings are sometimes
of Greek marble. We also have thoroughly Roman sub-
jects with Greek signatures, and thoroughly Greek subjects
signed with the Roman names of Greek freedmen. The
subject is, in fact, all that makes a work of sculpture Greek
or Roman. The compiler of the present catalogue has
studiously avoided the misleading use of the adjective Ro-
man to describe the output of Greek studios during the cen-
turies of Roman dominion, whether on Greek or Italian soil.
He has even more scrupulously refrained from calling clas-
sical sculptures of unpronounced national type, and copies
of old Greek works made in Republican or Imperial times,
by the misnomer of Graeco-Roman. The discriminating
reader may very well consider the grouping of Greek and
Roman productions in one sequence as too great a tribute
accorded, already, to the relative unity of the classical na-
tions, and of their sculpture.

Every studious visitor of the famous Old World galleries
which own and continue to collect specimens of ancient
sculpture is made aware, very soon, of the fact that most of
their treasures are not often the original handiwork of the
great sculptors of Antiquity. They are copies, in a large
proportion, of those Greek masterpieces of the fifth, fourth,
third, and second centuries which commanded the admira-
tion of later ages. The late Greek copyist has often been
doubtfully faithful to his original. More commonly, how-
ever, his faithfulness is, like that of a good modem copyist.



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THE BLBRIDGB G, HALL COLLECTION 5

reasonably absolute. We gather this from the practical
identity, in size and in the character of their execution, of
many extant copies of the lost compositions in question.
Masterpieces of bronze and of marble were most commonly
copied in marble as the cheaper material of the two. Their
usual accuracy finds its only explanation in the wide circula-
tion, which prevailed in the ancient studio world as it does
in the modem, of full size plaster casts from the more famous
original works. It appears that wealthy patrons command-
ed the reproduction of well known statues for their country-
houses often enough for the studios to keep models in stock.
As the original statues which excited the admiration of
Antiquity have perished with very few exceptions, our posi-
tion as students of ancient art in its thousand-year cycle of
definite and progressive evolution is not unlike the position
of a person unable to cross the Atlantic, who is nevertheless
able to gain a very clear conception of the performance of
Old World painters by the aid of engravings, photographs,
and stray originals. The museum which excluded antique
copies of lost Greek masterpieces from its ken because they
are not autogl)^hs might be able to assemble exquisite speci-
mens of original Greek work in bronze and marble; but it
would put its visitors out of touch with the large sweep of
ancient art as the recorded and recognized creations of the
great Greek masters represent that art.

The first selection of the casts on exhibition here was based
on tentative lists prepared by our foremost American historian
of ancient sculpture, the late Mrs. Lucy A.Mitchell. Its rela-
tive adequacy, twenty years after purchase, is a witness to
her large information and good judgment. Conditions of
space, and the scant pecuniary resources of an imendowed



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THE ELBRIDGE G, HALL COLLECTION

public institution, account for the omission of many import-
ant sculptures of more recent discovery, or to which the atten-
tion of the learned has but recently been directed enough to
provoke their reproduction in plaster casts.

Spirited efforts have been made to supplement the ac-
knowledged lacunae of the ElbridgeG. Hall Collection within
the limits of the available exhibition space and resources. The
sections of French Gothic, Renaissance, and Modem Sculp-
ture, and of American sculpture have received the richest
accessions. It is legitimate to quote here the r^nark of a
foreign critic that only two of the modern sculptors represent-
ed here are yet represented by casts in Dresden. The sections
of ancient Oriental, Classical, and Italian sculpture have also
been materially strengthened since the year of the World's
Fair. The Oriental has had a large accession of plaster casts
which were originally brought to Chicago by the Field Colum-
bian Museum. The Classical section has been enriched by
Mr. Higinbotham's handsome gift of bronze facsimiles of an-
cient sculptures and objects of decorative art found at Pompeii
and Herculaneum. Both the Classical and the Italian sec-
tions have been increased, more recently still, by incorporations
of fine terracotta facsimiles made at theManifattura di Signa
near Florence. The equestrian statue of Bartolommeo Col-
leoni, from his bronze statue at Venice, is another fine addi-
tion to our ItaHan sculptures, and dominates the other non-
architectural sculptures in Blackstone Hall. The French
Government's despatch of French Gothic and of classical
French sculptures to Chicago at the time of the Chicago
World's Fair (1893) opened a fine opportunity for the direc-
torate of the Institute to contrive their retention in America
upon the very generous terms that were proposed by France.



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THE ELBRIDGE G. HALL COLLECTION 7

The major part of the other modem sculptures, of which the
Art Institute exhibits reproductions, is composed of original
models presented by contemporary American artists, and
in their behalf by their admirers.

The Elbridge G. Hall Collection, and the Institute, are
weaker, altho not entirely lacking, in exhibits to illustrate
what old and modem sculptors have accomplished in Eng-
land, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and
the Far East. Four or five times the area of the Art Insti-
tute's present sculpture galleries, and three times the present
volume of exhibits will be required to do fuller justice than
both can do now to the panoramic aspect of ancient and mod-
em architecture and sculpture, and to the rapid advances of
educational and applied science at the present time. The
component elements , the resources, and the opportunities
of our metropolitan population are so varied, and so splendid,
as not to preclude an American primacy for Chicago in this
matter as in others.



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ANCIENT ORIENTAL SCULPTURES.

Rooms 1 and 2 — Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Syria, Asia
Minor, and Early Greece.

The art of Asia Minor, including the rock sculpture of the
Hittites, was influenced by that of Assyria and Babylonia.
The latter nations, in common with Persia, owed their art to
the Chaldeans, at the head of the Persian Gulf. Farther back
this great art movemenit cannot now be traced.

But few remains of Chaldean art proper have come down to
us, and its development in Babylonia was restricted by the
scarcity of suitable material for sculpture. But its growth
in Assyria and Persia, under more favorable conditions, was
luxuriant. Assyria took the lead in its propagation, carrying
it westward through Syria and Asia Minor. Egypt was an
independent worker in the same field, and the influence of
Greece, still archaic, was felt there. But the drift of all the
living art west of India in those days was towards Greece it-
self, where, from the heterogeneous material thus acquired,
was evolved a new and rational sculpture in which it is now
difficult to find a trace of the original ingredients. Such traces
were plain enough, however, before Greek sculpture reached
its highest development.

The most imposing phenomenon about the art of Egypt is
the fidelity to style and forms which enabled many national
art forms to outlast thirty dynasties and nearly forty centuries,
seemingly without let or break. But the old doctrine of the
immutability of Egyptian art has failed to withstand the
evidence of enlarged discoveries and of narrower critique.
Nationjg character and power, statecraft, architecture, sculp-

9



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D THE ELBRIDGB G. HALL COLLECTION

ture, and painting had their ups and downs in Egypt as they
must have them everywhere. The portraiture of the III, IV,
and V dynasties, when Egyptian royalty reigned at Memphis,
is keenly naturalistic. The sculpture and portraiture of the
XVIII and XIX dynasties, when Thebes was the seat of roy-
alty, are courtly and elegant.

A period of foreign invasion and of aHen rule is known to
have interrupted the even flow of Egyptian civilization and
government for several generations. Yet the New Empire
planted firm feet on the shoulders of the Old. A revised
Eg)rptian chronology places the pyramid builder kings of the
rV dynasty, Cheops, Chephren, and Mykerinos, in the third
millennium B.C., and the reign of the great Egyptian con-
queror Ramses II Sesostris between 1293 and 1226 B. C.
Kambyses, King of Persia, brought the native government
of Egypt to a close under a XXVI dynasty of Saitic princes
in 525 B. C. The perfected art of Hellas was only just escap-
ing from the trammels of awkward conventions and of ex-
cessive formal simpHcity. Had the Achaimenid kings of
Persia who succeded Kambyses, and the Ptolemies who after-
wards succeeded Alexander the Great as kings of Eg)^t, and
their successors the Roman Caesars all resided in some Egyp-
tian capital as the Ptolemies did, these foreign princes would
have worn the color of new native dynasties to the unsophis-
ticated eyes of their Egyptian subjects.

A very slightly Grecianized Egyptian art and art industry
produced a vast volume of monumental work, and of neatly
executed articles of Egyptian bric-a-brac, under Egypt's
Greek kings of the Hneage of Ptolemy Soter, 306 to 30 B. C.
This activity continued imder the Roman Caesars. The tradi-
tions of Eg)rpt's native blood, language, religion, and art did



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ANCIENT ORIENTAL SCULPTURES ii

not die, but were only transformed, when the country accep-
ted the new gospel of Christianity. The literary genius of
Charles Kingsley and of Anatole France has made the vicissi-
tudes and the moral struggles of Egypt's native and cosmopol-
itan people at this period familiar to English and French read-
ers in Hypatia and Thais. And the excavation of early Cop-
tic churches and cemeteries has furnished abundant proof, in
thousands of well preserved Coptic tapestries and embroideries
of astonishing worth, that the artistic faculty was as un-
quenched in Eg)rptian hearts and heads, by centuries of alien
overlordship, as it remains under the same conditions today.



Table of £g3rptiaii Djmasties.

Professor Jas. T. Breasted of the University of Chicago
has kindly allowed this summary to be prepared in the
main from a forthcoming work of his own on Egyptian
history and chronology. He places the introduction of
the Sothis or Sirius Calendar in 4241 B. C.



Dynasty


Capital


DateB. C.


I
II


This




3400


III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII


Memphis

>>

Elephantine
Memphis


Old Kingdom


2980
2900
2750
2625
2475


IX
X


Herakleiopolis




2445


XI


Thebes




2160


XII


»


The Middle


2000


XIII
XIV


Xois


Kingdom


1788



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THE ELBRIDGE G. HALL COLLECTION



Dynasty


Capital


Date B. C.


XV'
XVI
XVII


Invasion of the Shep
Thebes


herd Kings about 1700
(Steindorff)


XVIII


»


The New


1580


XIX
XX




Kingdom


1350
1200


XXI


Tanis


Period


1090


XXII


Boubastis


of


Q4S


XXIII
XXIV


Tanis .
Sais


Foreign
Domination


755
718


XXV Ethiopian Invasion
XXVI Sais 1




712
663


XXVII
XXVIII


Persian Satraps
Uncertain


Late


525


XXIX Mendes
XXX Sebennytos

Persian Government


Egyptian
Period


400
382
343




Greek Monarclis




332




Roman Empire
The Saracen Conquest


30
A. D. 640



1. Three Panels from the Tomb of Hesi, at Sakkara.

The originals, in the Viceregal Museum of Cairo, are of wood.
On each one is carved in low relief a figure of Hesi, with a
hieroglyphic inscription. These figures differ in details. The
inscriptions also vary. Older, perhaps, than the IV Dynasty.

2. The Sheikh-el-Beled (Chief of the Village).

From a figure of locust wood in the Museum of Cairo, found
in a tomb at Sakkara, Egypt, by Arabs, who gave it the above
title in consequence of its resemblance to their chief magis-
trate. The most ancient well-preserved wooden portrait
statue known. Egyptian, latter part of IV Dynasty, .Mem-
phi te Period.



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ANCIENT ORIENTAL SCULPTURES 13

The feet are restored. The rest of the figure is m its original
condition. The arms are carved separate and attached. The
upper part of the body and the legs are bare. An apron hangs
from the hips. In the hand is a long rod of office. The
round head with its short hair, and the good-natured face are
very lifelike. The eyes were put in. They consist of pieces
of opaque white quartz with irises formed of rock crystal, and
are framed with thin plates of bronze, the edges of which
form the eyelashes.

3. Reliefs from the Tomb of Ti.

From the painted limestone carvings found in the mastaba
of Ti, in the necropolis of Sakkira, Egypt, where they re-
main. This tomb dates, hke neighboring ones, from the
period of the V Dynasty. Its occupant Ti held the posi-
tions of royal architect and manager of the pyramids of
Kings Nefererkere, 2733 B.C., and Ra-en-woser.

The building is now almost entirely sunk in sand. It was
discovered and excavated by Mariette Bey in the early
fifties, and restored by the Viceregal Department of Antiqui-
ties. The mural reliefs are among the finest examples of
the art of the Early Egyptian Kingdom. They occupy the
sides of a large, pillared, quandrangular court, which was
the scene of offerings to the deceased and of the sacrifices
made by survivors in the deceased's behalf, and adjacent
chambers. A contiguous walled recess, the serdab, con-
tained statues of him; they remained ready at any time to
receive and be animated by his immortal double, to which
the Egyptians gave the name of ka. A flight of steps de-
scended from an opening in the center of the court, and gave
access, by a low subterranean passage, to the mortuary



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4 THE B LB RIDGE G. HALL COLLECTIOJV

chamber of the tomb's occupant. "Ti's figure appears fre-
quently on the walls of his chapel, now surrounded by his
friends, now superintending various nural scenes. We see
him being entertained by music and dancing. Again, he
is shooting aquatic birds in the marshes, or hunting hippo-
potami from a papyrus -boat. Fish sport in the water, and
birds fly about among the papyrus. On one side of the
tomb chamber Ti appears inspecting the harvest operations
on his estate: the corn is reaped, and borne to the granary
by asses; oxen and asses tread out the piled ears; the
threshed grain is piled in a great heap with pitchforks, then
sifted and winnowed; finally it is placed in a sack by a
woman." From Lucy A. Mitchell, History of Ancient
Sculpture, page 30. Elsewhere Ti and his wife inspect an-
tilopes, gazelles, goats, stags, cattle, which the peasantry
of his estates bring for sacrifice. These varied reliefs occupy
whole walls of the tomb chamber. Five superimposed
rows of oxen surmount one of poultry, on which the tame
fowls are geese, pigeons, and cranes. Scribes keep tally of
the shares of crops that are due from villagers. Carpenters
and other artisans labor on Ti*s constructions. His rustics
plow, till, and sow. Rams tread in his planted seed.
His neatherds and cattle are seen to ford a river. Thirty-