Part 5

Does he represent the great lord in whose tomb he was found? Other statues that entered the Louvre with his bear the name of Skhemka and pass for the faithful portrait of that personage.[25] If, as their careful composition leads us to believe, that claim is justified, the Crouching Scribe was only one of the numerous relatives or servants named in the inscriptions of the chapel. The people of the Ancient Empire had the custom of shutting up in the _Serdâb_,[26] by the side of the statue of the dead person, those of other individuals belonging to his family or his household. They are mourners, both men and women crouching down, one hand hanging or cast on the ground about to pick up the dust in sign of mourning, the other held in front of the face and plunged into the hair;[27] women who crush the grain on the stone; servants who thrust their arm into an amphora, probably to coat it with pitch before pouring in the beer or wine. Ours is a scribe: his legs bent under him and placed flat on the ground in one of those positions familiar to Orientals, but almost impossible for Europeans, the bust upright and well-balanced on the hips, the head raised; reed in hand, and the sheet of papyrus spread over his knees, he still waits, at an interval of 6,000 years, for his master to resume the interrupted dictation. The paintings in the contemporary tombs tell us a hundred times rather than once what he is preparing to write. In order to sustain himself in the other world, the great Egyptian lord received on appointed days the offerings due to him from the domains attached to his tomb: one was to bring bread, one meat, others wine, cakes, fruit. It was quite a big piece of bookkeeping, identical with that usual in his lifetime. The scribes of flesh and blood entered the real revenues as they came in; the scribe of stone rendered the same service to the master of stone whom he attended for ever.

We cannot say that our scribe was handsome in his lifetime, but the truth and vigour of his portrait compensates largely for what he lacks in beauty. The face is almost square, and the strongly accentuated features indicate a man in his prime; the large mouth with thin lips is slightly raised at the corners and almost disappears in the prominent muscles that frame it; the cheeks are rather hard and bony; the ears are thick and heavy, and stand out awkwardly from the head; and the low brow is crowned with coarse, short hair. The eye is well opened, and owes its special vivacity to an artifice of the ancient sculptor. The stone in which it is set has been cut away and the hollow filled with black and white enamel; a bronze mounting marks the edges of the eyelids, while a little silver nail[28] fastened under the crystal at the bottom of the eyeball receives the light, and reflecting it, simulates the pupil of a real eye. It is difficult to imagine the striking effect that this combination may produce in certain circumstances. When Mariette cleared out the tomb of Râhotpou at Meîdoum, the first ray of light which entered the tomb, that had been closed for 6,000 years, fell on the forehead of two statues leaning against the wall of the _Serdâb_, and made the eyes sparkle so brilliantly that the fellahs threw down their tools and fled in terror. Recovered from their fear, they wanted to destroy the statues, persuaded that they contained an evil genius, and were only prevented from doing so at the point of the pistol. More than one statue of the Ancient Empire, intact at the moment of its discovery, was mutilated for the same reason that nearly proved fatal to those of Meîdoum. In the bad light in which the Crouching Scribe is placed, the eyeball does not shine with a sufficiently strong sparkle, but it really does seem to have life in it and to follow the visitor with its look.

The rest of the body is equally full of expression. The flesh hangs a little, as is fitting with a man of a certain age whose occupations prevent exercise. The arms and back are good in detail; the lean bony hands have fingers of a greater length than is usual; the rendering of the knee is minute and exact in a way rarely found elsewhere in Egyptian art. The whole body is, so to speak, governed by the animation of the physiognomy, and under the influence of the same feeling of expectation that dominates it: the muscles of the arm, bust, and shoulder are only partly at rest, ready at the first signal to resume the task that has been begun. No work better refutes the reproach of stiffness usually made in regard to Egyptian art. Let us add that it is unique in Europe, and that we must go to Boulaq for pieces fine enough to sustain comparison without disadvantage. But it is not enough to possess a masterpiece, it is still more important to preserve it. In its present position the Crouching Scribe runs more risks than formerly in Egypt. The thousands of years spent buried beneath the sand in a hypogeum on the tableland of Saqqarah thoroughly dried up the limestone of which it is made. Transported to our damp climate, and submitted to its sudden changes of temperature, it is only too much exposed to deterioration. It should not have been installed without protection and naked, so to say, in the centre of a room, between two large doors always open, round about which there are perpetual draughts. The curators at Turin have placed the fine limestone statue of Amenôphis I possessed by the Museum in a tightly closed glass cage, and to that protection is due the fact that the Pharaoh has preserved its epidermis and colour intact; the expense is not so great that the Louvre would be impoverished by authorizing a similar proceeding. The demotic inscriptions of the Serapeum are carefully placed under glass, and the precaution is praiseworthy, although it makes the study of them impossible; it is then high time to take similar precautions with the Scribe. The damp has already acted on it a little; the red coating has been loosened and has fallen away in some places. If the mechanical work of destruction is allowed to proceed it will soon be in the same condition as the three statues of Sapouî and his wife, and the Louvre will have lost one of the finest pieces of sculpture Egypt has given us.

In comparing it with the statues of Skhemka that we have already described,[29] we are led to ask why the statue of a subordinate person should be so superior to that of his master. The Egyptians knew nothing of what we term art and the artist’s profession: their sculptors were persons who cut stone with more or less skill, but whose work, always subordinated to the plan of a building, or to theological considerations, did not possess the absolute value belonging to the least important statue of classical antiquity or of modern times. The effigy of an individual was placed in his tomb, not because it was beautiful, but because it represented him and served as a support to his _double_. The question of skill or artistic feeling was a subordinate one, and we find twenty statues of the same person, some of which are of finished workmanship and others coarse sketches: whether a masterpiece or not, the stone body equally served its purpose. Skhemka fell into the hands of a merely conscientious workman, his scribe into those of a highly skilled craftsman. I imagine that they cared little enough if the sculptor brought more or less talent to his task: so long as the resemblance was there, they asked for nothing more.

VI

THE NEW SCRIBE OF THE GIZEH MUSEUM[30]

The excavations undertaken by M. de Morgan in the northern part of the necropolis of Saqqarah have recently brought to light a mastaba in fine white stone, near the tomb of Sabou, a little to the east of Mariette’s old house. No architectural façade or chapels accessible to the living were found, only a narrow corridor that plunges into the masonry from north to south with 5° deviation to the east. The walls had been prepared and made smooth to receive the usual decoration, but when the mason had completed his task, the sculptor, it would seem, had no time to begin his. None of the sketches with the chisel or brush customarily found in the unfinished tombs of all periods are to be seen. Two large stelæ, or, if it is preferred, two niches in the form of doors, had been prepared in the right-hand wall, and a statue stood in front of each in the same spot where the Egyptian workmen had placed them on the day of the funeral. The first represents a man seated squarely on a stool, wearing the loin-cloth, and on his head a wig with rows of small curls one above the other.

The bust and legs are bare; the fore-arms and hands rest on the knees, the right hand closed with the thumb sticking out, the left flat with the tips of the fingers reaching beyond the hem of the loin-cloth. So far as may be judged from a photograph, the general style is somewhat weak; but the detail of the knee, the structure of the leg and foot, are carefully rendered, the chest and back stand out by the excellent modelling, the head, weighted as it is by the coiffure, is attached to the shoulder with an easy and not ungraceful vivacity. The face is not in good relief, and has a sheepish expression, but the mouth is smiling, and the eyes of quartz and crystal have an extraordinarily gentle expression. Taken altogether it is a very good piece of Egyptian portraiture, and would be a valuable addition to any museum.[31]

The new scribe was crouching in front of the second stele.[32] He measures in height almost the same as his colleague in the Louvre, and sufficiently resembles him to permit both being described in almost similar terms. The legs are bent under and are flat on the ground, the bust upright and well balanced on the hips, the head raised, the hand armed with the reed, and in its place on the open papyrus sheet; they are both waiting at an interval of 6,000 years for the master to resume the interrupted dictation.[33] The professional gesture and attitude are reproduced with a truth that leaves nothing to be desired: it is not only a scribe whom we have before us, it is the scribe as the Egyptians knew him from the beginning of their history. The skill with which the sculptors have brought out and co-ordinated the general features belonging to each class of society is largely responsible for the impression of monotony produced by their works on modern spectators. That impression is lessened and nearly effaced, if we look a little more closely and see how carefully the sculptors have noted and reproduced the details of form and bearing that make up the physiognomy proper to each of the individuals who live in the same social surroundings or practise the same profession. Our two scribes do not cross their legs in identical fashion; he of the Louvre puts the right leg in front, he of Gizeh the left. There is no fixed choice, and children at first tuck their legs under without thought of preference for one or the other; soon they acquire a habit which makes them keep to the position once adopted, and in the East to-day you find people who put either the left or right leg in front, and just a few who put either one or the other indifferently. The Louvre scribe flattens out the hand that holds the reed, the man of Gizeh sinks down, and his back is slightly bent. This shows the habit of the individual, and is not a question of age, for a glance at the two statues shows that the Gizeh scribe is younger than his colleague of the Louvre: he is not out of the thirties, while the other is certainly over forty.

Indeed, the age of the two men is an important point of which we must not lose sight, if we desire to judge soberly the real value of the two works. I have heard archæologists, when comparing them, regret that the scribe of Gizeh does not show the same abundance of carefully studied anatomical detail as the scribe of the Louvre; that therein lies the real inferiority of the first, whether it was that the sculptor was less conversant with the anatomy of the human body than with that of the face, or that time had pressed, and he had contented himself with giving his subject the conventional body that for the most part sufficed in funerary statues. The care, as I have pointed out, with which the small details of the attitude are expressed shows that the reproach is undeserved, and that the artist has worked to give a portrait complete from top to toe, and not only to reproduce a head on a conventional body. The roundness of the form preserves the appearance of the original, and shows, realistically, the age the subject was at the time of his death, or at least at the period of life at which his relatives desired to have a portrait of him. In the best facsimile something of the delicacy of the monument itself must be lost, and in spite of the great care taken in engraving it, its original aspect is not entirely preserved. I think, however, that in looking closely at it there can still be seen in many places the artistic, supple workmanship by which the chisel expressed the delicacy and vigour of the model. The most vigorous fellah of our day, when young and in good health, has apparently slender muscles that do not stand out: like those of the porters of Boulaq, one of whom without aid moved a stone statue of nearly the same height as himself, and yet had hands and calves like those of a woman, that looked of slight strength and incapable of continuous effort. The knotty and twisted excrescences to be seen on the arms, back, or chest of our athletes were rarely found in Egyptians of ancient race, at least in youth. The ancient sculptor rightly noted that physiological trait of his people. He had a young man before him: so he evolved from the limestone a young Egyptian body in which the play of the muscles is hidden beneath the skin, and is only betrayed by a number of touches manipulated with knowledge and discretion. If, like his colleague who sculptured the Louvre scribe, he had had to portray a person of ripe age, he would not have exerted himself to bring out the flabbiness of the flesh and the heaviness of its folds, to execute all the pleasant work of the chisel which so well reproduces the depredations of age in a rich sedentary man of fifty. In short, he worked differently because he had a different subject.

There is no sort of inscription on either statue to inform us of the name and characteristics of its original, who must have been a person of some importance: a large tomb invariably meant a considerable fortune, or a high post in the administrative hierarchy which compensated for mediocrity of fortune. It might also be that Pharaoh, desiring to reward services rendered him by some one in his _entourage_, granted him a statue, a stele, an entire tomb built by the royal architects at the expense of the Treasury.[34] It is certain that our anonymous scribe held high rank in his lifetime, but to what Dynasty did he belong? He so closely resembles the scribe of the Louvre that he was evidently his contemporary: he must then have lived at the end of the Vth Dynasty, and we reach a similar result if we compare him with the other statues preserved at Gizeh. It is of the style of the statues of Ti and of Rânofir, especially of the last two. One of them, which formerly was No. 975 in the Boulaq Museum, is full of dignified feeling.[35] Rânofir is standing, his two arms pressed against his body, one leg in advance, in the attitude of a prince who is looking at his vassals march past him. Whoever has seen him cannot fail to observe how much he resembles our new scribe. Firstly, the head-dress is the same; they both have the head framed, so to speak, in a bell-mouthed wig. The hairs or fibres of which it is made were gummed, as is the case to-day with the hair of certain African tribes. The hair is carefully smoothed on the forehead and the top of the head, and being parted on the cranium, hangs down and forms a kind of dark case round the face which accentuates the ruddy tint of the flesh. The modelling of the torso, the muscling of the arms, are treated in the same way in both statues, and the dignified expression which characterizes the physiognomy of Rânofir relieves the somewhat commonplace features of the new scribe. Those are all facts that are not to be noted in other portraits of our personages. The seated statue that I first described possesses the general aspect of the individual, and undoubtedly represents him; but the technique and feeling differ, since it is necessarily that of a different sculptor. It is the same with Rânofir. The statue of him numbered 1049 in the Boulaq Museum lacks the high dignity we admire in No. 975. It is so heavy, so expressionless, that it almost seems to be another Egyptian. The difference in the workmanship proves that two artists were commissioned to execute statues of the same man. The identity of workmanship, on the other hand, compels us to recognize the same hand in the statue No. 975 of Rânofir and in that of our new scribe: the two works proceeded almost at the same time from one studio.

It would be interesting to find out if, among the statues in the museums, there are others that may be related to these and have a common origin. I do not so far know any, but I ought to add to what I have said the indication of a special sign by which they can be distinguished. The Egyptians were accustomed to paint their statues and bas-reliefs, and the colours in which they clothed them were more varied, and more subject to change, than is generally recognized. We are used to see only a red-brown tone for the flesh, and they certainly employed it very often; they did not, however, employ that tone only, and men’s faces are occasionally coloured in a very different way. The colouring of statue No. 975 and of the new scribe differs from the usual manner. That of statue No. 975 has grown paler since Rânofir left his tomb and became exposed to the light, but that of the Gizeh scribe is still fresh, and resembles as faithfully as possible the yellow complexion bordering on red of the modern fellah. The greater number of archæologists who occupy themselves with Egyptian art neglect facts of this kind. During my stay in Egypt I have endeavoured to bring them out, and it is in co-ordinating them systematically that I have been able to verify the existence, either at Memphis itself or in the ancient village of Saqqarah, of two principal studios of sculptors and painters to which customers of the later periods of the Vth Dynasty entrusted the task of decorating the tombs and carving the funerary statues.

Each had its special style, its traditions, its models, from which it did not willingly depart. Commissions were divided between them in unequal proportions, according to whether it was a question of isolated statues or of bas-reliefs. I do not remember observing sensible differences of style in the pictures that cover the walls of the same mastaba: for that kind of work application was made to one or the other studio, and it alone undertook the commission. For the statues, on the contrary, recourse was had to both at the same time: the task, thus divided, was more quickly accomplished, and there was more chance that it would be finished by the day of the funeral. I do not mean to state that there were then only the two studios of which I speak: I think I have found traces of several others, but they perhaps enjoyed less vogue, or the chances of excavation have not so far been favourable to them.

To sum up, we may say, without the risk of being taxed with exaggeration, that the art of the Ancient Empire counts another masterpiece. It was a gift of happy chance to M. de Morgan in his first serious excavations as earnest of good fortune: it is of good augury for the future, and, as he is not a man to let a chance slip once he holds it, and since he has the material means and the money required for methodical exploration, we may hope for further finds without long delay.

VII

THE KNEELING SCRIBE

VTH DYNASTY

(_Boulaq Museum_)

If he had not been dead for 6,000 years, I should swear that I met him six months ago in a little town of Upper Egypt. It was the same commonplace round face, the same flattened nose, the same full mouth, slightly contracted on the left by a foolish smile, the same banal expressionless physiognomy: the costume alone was different and prevented the illusion from being complete. The loin-cloth is no longer in fashion, and neither is the large wig; except the fellahs when at work, no one now goes about with bare legs and torso. Some follow fairly closely the custom of Cairo, and wear the too small tarbouche, the stiff stambouline, the European starched shirt, but without a cravat, black or crude blue trousers, shoes with cloth gaiters. Others keep to the turban, long gown, wide trousers, and red or yellow morocco leather babouches. But if his clothes have changed since the Vth Dynasty, his deportment has remained perceivably identical. The modern secretary, after delivering his papers to his master, crosses his hands over his chest or his stomach in the fashion of the ancient scribe; he no longer kneels while waiting, but assumes the humblest attitude imaginable, and if his costume did not hide it, we should recognize the suppleness that characterizes the Boulaq statue in the movement of his shoulders and spine. His chief finishes reading the papers, affixes his seal to this one or that, writes a few lines across another, and throws the sheets on the ground: the secretary picks them up, and returns to his office without offence at the cavalier manner in which his work is given back to him. Indeed, is it to be expected that a moudir, a man receiving a large salary, would take the trouble to stretch out his arm to meet the hand of a mere ill-paid employee? In fact, he treats his subordinates as his superiors treat him; his subordinates, in their turn, act in a similar way towards theirs, and so things go on right down the ladder, and no one dreams of objecting.