Part 6

Our scribe was one of those to whom the papers were thrown more often than to others. He occupied a somewhat low place in the hierarchy, and no bond attached him to the great families of his period. If he is kneeling, it is that the sculptor has represented him in one of his ordinary attitudes during the hours of work; he has also drawn his portrait with the fidelity and jovial good humour adopted by artists in portraying scenes of everyday life. The man has just brought a roll of papyrus or a tray laden with papers; kneeling in the approved manner, the bust well-balanced on the hips, the hands crossed, the back bowed, the head slightly bent, he waits until his master has finished reading. Does he think? Scribes felt some secret apprehension when appearing before their masters. The rod played a large part in the discipline of the offices. An error in the addition of an account, a word omitted in copying a letter, an instruction misunderstood, an order awkwardly executed, and the blows fell. Few employees escaped flogging. If they did not deserve it, it would be inflicted on principle: “That young fellow requires a beating. He obeys when he is flogged!”[36] The sculptor has admirably transferred to the stone the expression of resigned uncertainty and sheepish gentleness with which the routine of an entire life spent in service had endowed the model. The mouth is smiling, for such is the demand of etiquette, but there is no joy in the smile. The nose and cheeks grimace in unison with the mouth. The two big enamel eyes, surrounded with bronze, have the fixed expression of a man who is vaguely waiting, without looking attentively at anything or concentrating his thought on a definite object. The face lacks intelligence and vivacity. After all, the profession did not exact great alertness of mind. The formulas of administration were simple and of little variety, the arithmetic was not complicated; it was possible to get on easily with memory and industry, and so, without much trouble, to earn sufficient to purchase a good funerary statue.

Our statue was found at Saqqarah[37] in a tomb of somewhat mediocre appearance. Neither the name nor filiation of the man informs us under what king or Dynasty he vegetated; but in comparing him with the statue of Rânofir[38] we are able to assign him his place in the series. First, both our scribe and Rânofir wear a wig of a form somewhat rare at that period; the hair, parted from the centre of the brow, is drawn back in a mass behind the ears and hangs down straight round the neck. Our scribe, instead of the red complexion usually attributed to men’s faces, is painted light yellow, very like those of women. Rânofir shows the same peculiarity, an unusual one under the Ancient Empire. I do not think it could have been mere caprice on the part of the artist. A scribe, forced to live always in his office as women do in their homes, would have a less sunburnt skin than his colleagues who worked in the open air: the yellow colour of the limestone would thus be a sort of professional sign, and would correspond with a lighter complexion in the original. The titles of Rânofir prove that he lived under the last reigns of the Vth Dynasty,[39] and in placing the kneeling scribe at the same period, we are sure of not being much in error. I have preferred to base my opinions on purely archæological grounds, but I think an examination of the style of the two statues would carry the connection still farther: the way in which the neck is attached to the shoulders, and particularly the way in which the hands are treated, is almost identical in the two cases. I do not know if I am mistaken, but I have almost persuaded myself that the statue of Rânofir and that of the kneeling scribe come from the same studio, and are perhaps the fruit of the same chisel. I do not despair of finding other monuments of a similar origin, and of reconstituting in part the work of one of the masters of which the tombs of Memphis have preserved the various productions, but without preserving their names.

The execution is very careful: unfortunately the limestone in which the scribe is cut was too soft, and it is worn away in places. The knees have suffered most, and it is a great pity, for we can see by what is left of them how careful the artist has been with the modelling. The arms are not divided from the bust, the hands are heavy, the feet long, but the play of the muscles of the chest and neck is well noted. In short, it is an estimable work of a conscientious sculptor who thoroughly understood his vocation.

VIII

PEHOURNOWRI

STATUETTE IN PAINTED LIMESTONE FOUND AT MEMPHIS

(_The Louvre_)

Mariette found the statuette by chance when searching the Serapeum. It had formerly been taken from the pit in which it was shut up and thrown amid the rubbish of the great sphinx avenue that leads to the tomb of Apis. The individual was named Pehournowri; he was cousin royal, and fulfilled functions that I do not know how to define. Nothing in the inscription helps us to conjecture with what king he claimed relationship, but its style proves that he lived under the Vth Dynasty. That he was of mature age is indicated by the plenitude of form, by the fine proportions and the benevolent and benign aspect. A short wig, a necklace, a loin-cloth scarcely reaching the knees, completes his costume. His statue is not one in front of which we naturally pause when walking through a museum. I do not think that during the thirty years it has been in the Louvre it has attracted the attention of any one except experts in Egyptology. Not that it lacks merit: the modelling is exact, the execution skillful and delicate, the expression frank and successful, but the pose differs very slightly from that which hundreds of other artists have given to hundreds of other statues. The careless visitor who passes from one seated man to a second, and then to many others, does not think of looking for the details of execution that distinguish them. He thinks that when he has seen one or two he has seen all, and departs with the idea that the chief attribute of Egyptian art is monotony.

Egyptian sculptors did not greatly vary the pose of their sitters. Sometimes they represented them standing and walking, one leg in advance of the other, sometimes standing, but motionless, with the feet together, sometimes sitting on a seat or a stone pedestal, sometimes kneeling, more often crouching, the chin against the knees like the fellahs of to-day, or the legs flat on the ground like the scribe of the Louvre.[40] The details of arrangement and costume may be modified _ad infinitum_, but the attitude is nearly always regulated by the six types I have enumerated. Some modern critics attribute this fact to the inexperience of the sculptors, others to the inflexibility of certain hieratical rules. But having seen not only the few incomplete pieces to be found in Europe, but also the monuments still existing in Egypt, I cannot admit those reasons. Everywhere in the bas-reliefs of the temples and tombs a multiplicity of gestures or attitudes are to be seen which show to what point the artists could, when they pleased, diversify the human figure: the peasant bends over the hoe, the joiner leans over his bench, the scribe stoops over his paper, the dancers, girls and men, twist and balance their bodies, the soldiers brandish their lances or march in time, as naturally as possible. And the sculptors even reproduced positions in their statues very different from those we are accustomed to see at the Louvre: the kneeling woman who is grinding her corn, the baker who is kneading the dough, the slave who coats the amphora with pitch before pouring in the wine, the crouching mourner of Boulaq,[41] are all composed and modelled with a lightness of action and a perfection of expression that leaves no doubt as to the skill of the artist. It is true that hieratical rules existed, and no one will dispute that fact, but they were reserved for matters of religion and for those alone. They exacted, for instance, that Amon must always, in every case, have the attributes, costume, and attitude proper to the god, but they in no wise ordered that all men were to be confined to one of the five attitudes I have just described. The freedom of composition to which the large historical pictures of the temples or the domestic scenes of the tombs testify, does not agree with what we are told concerning the inflexibility of the hieratical rules.

I shall not now touch on the statues of kings or divinities: I shall have an opportunity later of treating them at leisure. Those of private individuals represent for the most part persons of rank, great nobles, people of the court, officers, magistrates, priests, employees of birth or fortune; they come from nearly all the cemeteries, and are portraits of the man for whom the tomb was hollowed out or of people of his house. The master stands in an attitude of command, or sits like Pehournowri, and he could only have one or the other of those attitudes. The tomb is, in fact, his private house, where he rests from the fatigues of life, as he used to do in his terrestrial home. A soldier when at home does not carry his arms, a magistrate does not wear his robe: soldier or magistrate, the insignia of the profession are laid aside when he returns home. Thus the master of the tomb always wears his civil costume, and leaves the marks of his profession at the door.

Then, also, the accessible part of his dwelling has a special destination which regulates the pose of the statues: it is, in fact, his reception-room, where on certain days the family assembled to present the offerings to him, in more prosaic words, to dine with him. Whether his statue was visible in one of the open chambers or invisible in the _Serdâb_,[42] it was his substitute. It is sufficient to look at the neighbouring bas-reliefs to discover what were the official attitudes of the dead man in the tomb. He was present at the preliminaries of the sacrifice, the sowing and the harvest, the rearing of the cattle, fishing, hunting, the execution of crafts, and he saw all the works carried out for the _eternal dwelling_: he was then standing, one foot in advance, head erect, hands hanging down, or armed with the staff of command. Elsewhere, one after the other, the different courses of the meal are served him, cakes, wines, canonical meats, fruits which he needs in the world of the dead: then he is seated in an armchair alone or with his wife. The sculptor employed for his statues the two positions he has in the paintings: standing, he receives the homage of his vassals; seated, he takes part in the meal. And in the same way the statues which embody the members of the family and of the household have likewise the attitude suited to their rank and occupation. The wife is sometimes standing, sometimes sitting on the same seat as her husband, or on a separate one; sometimes, as in life, crouching at his feet. The son wears the costume of childhood, if the statue was carved while he was still a child, or the costume and attitude of his office if he was an adult. The acting scribe crouches, the roll spread on his knees, as if he was writing from dictation or reading from an account-book.[43] The slave grinds the corn, the bakers knead the dough, the cellarers pitch their amphoras, the mourners lament and tear their hair as it was their duty to do in the world above; each individual is occupied according to his condition. The social hierarchy followed the Egyptian after death, and it regulated the pose of the statue after, as it had regulated that of the model before, death. Up to a certain point it is the same to-day, and he who carves the statue of a printer is careful not to attribute to him the action and costume of a miner or a sailor. These statues, shut up in the tomb, formed a sort of tableau in which each person held for ever the pose characteristic of his rank or his profession. The artist was free to vary the detail and regulate the accessories according to his fancy, but he could not change the general disposition without injuring the utility of his work.

At bottom, it is with the statues of Ancient Egypt as with the pictures of saints of the Italian schools. The painters had to treat their subject on lines from which they could not depart without falsifying or disfiguring it. Bring sixty or eighty St. Sebastians together in a room: how many of those who saw them would escape the boredom that infallibly results from constant repetition? When the tenth St. Sebastian was reached only a few professional artists would not have already gone away. I am supposing, too, that only choice pictures had been collected in which the qualities of a master are easily recognized. If, on the contrary, there had been collected at random all the available St. Sebastians without first eliminating the bad pictures, the finest St. Sebastians in the world, lost in the crowd, would be likely to attract no more attention from the public than the Crouching Scribe or the other masterpieces of Egyptian sculpture in the Louvre. The hypothesis appears absurd, because no one will easily admit that any one could have the idea of making such a collection. I agree so far as modern or ancient works, the value of which is known, are concerned; but Egyptian Museums have so far always been classified as depôts of archæological objects, not as art galleries. Each statue is a scribe, a god, a king; it is the scribe Hor of the XIXth Dynasty, or the scribe Skhemka of the Vth, or the king Sovkhotpou, wearing the head-dress of the pschent, and that is all. The trumpery scribes and the scribes that emanate from the hands of a master are confused under the same rubric, and no mark is placed to distinguish the good from the bad. Pehournowri is a scribe, Ramke a second scribe, Rahotpou a third scribe, just as the St. Sebastian of such or such a great Italian master and the St. Sebastians of the Epinal pictures are two St. Sebastians: the public which is not warned, and which has no more interest in one scribe than in another, passes on without looking.

The impression of monotony is produced by the perpetual repetition of the same types and by the method of classification adopted in the museums. If it was decided to do for Egypt what has been done for Greece and Rome, to separate the productions of art and the objects of archæology, people’s opinion would be promptly modified. The impression of monotony would not wholly disappear, because the number of types studied by the Egyptian sculptors was not sufficiently numerous: it would be lessened and would no longer blind the crowd to the real beauty and perfection that reside in Egyptian sculpture.

IX

THE DWARF KHNOUMHOTPOU

(VTH OR VITH DYNASTY)

(_Boulaq Museum_)

The charming person who left us this statue is known, since the Exhibition of 1878, by the name of the Superintendent of the Cooks; his title in the inscription on the pedestal indicates a keeper of the wardrobe. In his lifetime he doubtless enjoyed some notoriety, since he had one of the fine tombs of Saqqarah for himself alone, but we know nothing of his history. His name was Khnoumhotpou, a name later made illustrious by a prince of Minieh under the XIIth Dynasty: his place of burial proves that he was born at the end of the Vth or beginning of the VIth Dynasty.

He was a dwarf, and a very small dwarf. The statue is scarcely a foot in height, and the dimensions of the head show that it was probably half the natural size. It reproduces the characteristics proper to dwarfs without exaggerating them. The head, of a suitable size, is long-shaped and flanked by two large ears. The expression of the face is heavy and stupid, the eyes narrow and raised at the temples, and the mouth wide and ill-formed. The chest is strong and well developed, but the artist has employed his ingenuity in vain in order to dissimulate the hind-quarters by covering them with a vast white petticoat; notwithstanding, we feel that the torso is not in proportion to the arms and legs. The stomach forms a round projection, and the hips recede in order to counterbalance the stomach. The thighs only exist in a rudimentary state, and the whole individual, mounted as he is on little deformed feet, seems about to fall face downwards on the ground. The flesh was painted red, the hair black, but the colour has peeled off or been effaced in places. The two legs were broken formerly at the ankle, then stuck on again when the statue was transported to the Museum. It is very possible that the accident happened during the execution of the statue, for the limestone used by the Egyptians is so fragile that the sculptor did not venture to detach the arms from the body: too hard a blow of the mallet while freeing the legs may have caused the unfortunate fracture that spoils the bottom of the monument.

Khnoumhotpou is, so far, the only dwarf that has come to light who is a nobleman. Similar dwarfs were not lacking in Egypt, but they nearly all belonged to the class of jugglers and buffoons. The Pharaohs and the princes of their court bestowed the same affection on these deformed creatures as did Christian or Mussulman kings in mediæval times; their household would not have been complete without two or three of them of an aspect more or less grotesque. Ti possessed one that figures by her in her tomb: the poor wretch holds in his right hand a kind of large wooden sceptre terminated by a model of a human hand, and leads a greyhound almost as tall as himself in a leash. Elsewhere dwarfs are represented crouching on a stool at the feet of their masters, by the side of the favourite monkey or dog. We know from the pictures of Beni-Hassan that two of them belonged to the prince of Minieh’s suite; one, despite his small size, does not lack elegance, but the other enjoys with the exiguity of his stature the pleasure of being club-footed. The Egyptian heaven did not escape the prevailing mania any more than the court of the Pharaohs, and it included several dwarfs, of whom two at least had an important rôle: Bîsa, who presided over arms and the toilet, and the Phtah, who for a long while has, without reason, been called embryonic Phtah.[44] Perhaps Knoumhotpou joined to his functions of keeper of the wardrobe the office of court buffoon; perhaps he was of noble birth, and preserved by his origin from the disagreeables to which his brethren of low extraction were exposed.

But we have no need to know what he was: merely in leaving us his portrait, he has rendered signal service to science. Let us recall the part played by the statues of the tombs in the theological conceptions of the Egyptians: they were the indispensable support of the _double_, the body without which the soul of the dead person could not exist in the other world. It might be thought that in passing from life in this world to that beyond the tomb, the people to whom beauty had been chary might not have been sorry to assume a new appearance; if we are to be re-born, it is better to be re-born less ugly. The care that poor Khnoumhotpou has taken to reach us deformed shows that the old Egyptians did not hold our views on the subject: they desired to remain always as nature created them at the moment of conception. It was not absence of coquetry on their part, but necessity: their idea of the soul compelled them so to act. From the moment that their personality was indissolubly bound up with the existence of the body, the first condition imposed on them for remaining identical with themselves after death, as before, was to preserve their earthly form intact. In order that the Khnoumhotpou who dwelt in the hypogeum of Saqqarah might not be a different being from the Khnoumhotpou who walked through the streets of Memphis, it was necessary that his disincarnated _double_ should find there the support of a statue of a dwarf. Give him the fine proportions of Ti or Rânofir, the proud bearing and haughty mien of the Cheîkh-el-Beled, even the more common type of the Crouching Scribe, he would not have known what to do. His substance, poured, so to speak, into the exiguous and deformed mould of the dwarf, could never have adapted itself to the new mould into which the artist would have tried to cast it. Khnoumhotpou beautified would no longer have been Khnoumhotpou; his tomb, without the statue of a dwarf, would only have sheltered a double and a support strangers to each other.

It was then the likeness, and the absolute likeness, that the artist had to seek to reproduce, and the seriousness and scrupulousness with which he rendered the deformity of his model is thus explained. The Egyptians were scoffers by nature, and liked to mingle the comic with the serious, not only in literature but in the arts. To take only one example: the painter who, at Thebes, pictured the interment of Nofrihotpou, has drawn, by the side of the large boats laden with mourners and all the apparatus of grief, the contortions of two sailors whose shallop was brutally struck by the oars of the funerary barque. If the sculptor who chiselled Khnoumhotpou had been free to follow his natural inclination, he would probably have exaggerated certain features and given the unfortunate creature a slightly absurd physiognomy. His religious conscience would not permit him to risk anything of the kind: a statue uglier than nature would have been as inconvenient to the soul of the original as a statue more beautiful than nature. A body of stone identical at all points with the body of flesh was what the Egyptian demanded, and that is exactly what the sculptor fashioned for the little Khnoumhotpou. We see here that what we call the question of art is subsidiary: a stone-cutter who understood his business sufficed for all that was required.

It must not, however, be concluded from what precedes that I regard the portrait of Khnoumhotpou as the work of a mere artisan. It has been too often repeated that statuary in Egypt was a mechanical craft; sculptors were taught to fashion arms, legs, heads, and torsos, and to join them, according to the formula, in imitation of two or three models always the same. That opinion, repeated by the Greeks, is fairly difficult to uphold in the presence of the statue of Knoumhotpou; it might be possible to set up patterns for bodies of ordinary formation, but all varieties of deformed bodies could not possibly be foreseen. The unknown master whose work we have at Boulaq proceeded in exactly the same manner as a modern sculptor, the necessities of whose work confronted him with a deformed model: he produced a work of art, not the task of a mechanic.

X

THE FAVISSA OF KARNAK AND THE THEBAN SCHOOL OF SCULPTURE[45]

I

A large pool among the ruins, and at the southern end two batteries of _chadoufs_, one on top of the other, working to exhaust the water continually renewed by the infiltrations. On the banks are blocks and muddy statues, round which half-naked workmen are busily occupied, beams, levers, coils of rope, and the beginnings of a Decauville line; remains of storied walls dominate the workshops, and the modern village of Karnak stands out clearly on the horizon beyond their irregular tops.