Egyptian Art: Studies

The title is not, at least as yet, exactly accurate. Egyptian sculpture includes, in fact, besides statues and groups in alto-relievo, bas-reliefs often of very large dimensions which adorn the tombs or the walls of temples. Now Bissing has only admitted statues and groups to the honours of publication: the few specimens of the bas-reliefs that he gives are not taken from the ruins themselves, but have been selected from pieces in the museums, stelæ, or fragments of ruined buildings. It is then the monuments of Egyptian statuary that he presents to us rather than those of Egyptian sculpture as a whole.

Having made that statement and thus defined the extent of the field of action, it must be frankly admitted that he has always made a happy selection of pieces to be reproduced. Doubtless we may regret the absence of some famous pieces, such as the Crouching Scribe of the Louvre or the Cow of Deîr el-Baharî. The fault is not his, and perhaps he will succeed in overcoming the obstacles which forced him to deprive us of them. The omissions, at any rate, are not numerous. When the list printed on the covers of the first part is exhausted, amateurs and experts will have at their disposal nearly everything required to follow the evolution of Egyptian statuary from its earliest beginnings to the advent of Christianity. The schools of the Greek and Roman epochs, unjustly contemned by archæologists who have written on these subjects, are not wanting, and for the first time the ordinary reader can decide for himself if all the artists of the decadence equally deserve contempt or oblivion. Bissing has attempted a complete picture, not a sketch restricted to the principal events in art between the IVth Dynasty and the XXXth. No serious attempt of the kind had before been made, and on many points he had to open out the roads he traversed. For the moment he has stopped at the beginning of the Saïte period; thus we have as yet no means of judging if the plan he has imposed on himself is carried out to the end with a rigour and firmness everywhere equal: but a rapid examination of the parts that have appeared will show that it has been executed with fullness and fidelity.

Four plates are devoted to Archaic Egypt: the two first are facsimiles of the bas-reliefs that decorate the stele of the Horus Qa-âou, and the so-called palette of the king we designate Nâr-mer, since we have not deciphered his name. It is in truth very little, but the excavations have rendered such poor accounts of those distant ages that it is almost all that could be given of them; it might, however, have been worth while to add the statuettes of the Pharaoh Khâsakhmouî. Notwithstanding the omission, the objects that appear give a sufficient idea of the degree of skill attained by the sculptors of those days. The stele of Qa-âou does not, of course, equal that of the King-Serpent which is in the Louvre; it is, however, of a fairly good style, and the hawk of Horus is nearer to the real animal than those of the protocol were later. Similarly the scenes engraved on the palette of Nâr-mer testify to an indisputable virtuosity in the manner of attacking the stone. The drawing of the persons is less schematic and their bearing freer than in the compositions of classical art, but it is evident that the craftsman had as yet no very clear idea of the way in which to compose a picture and group its elements. Let us confess, nevertheless, that the bas-reliefs are far superior to the statues yet known. We possess about half a dozen of them scattered over the world. Bissing studied one to the exclusion of the others, the one in the Naples Museum, and it may be thought to be sufficient if only æsthetic impressions are desired, for nothing could be rougher or more awkward. The head and face might perhaps pass, but the rest is ill-proportioned, the neck is too short, the shoulders and chest are massive, the legs lack slenderness under a heavy petticoat, the feet and hands are enormous. The defects cannot be ascribed to the hardness of the material, for the Scribe of the Cairo Museum, which is in limestone, displays them as flagrantly as the good people in granite at Naples, Munich, or Leyden. I must not therefore conclude, however, that they are constant faults with the Thinites: the statuettes of Khâsakhmouî are of a less heavy workmanship and more nearly approach that of later studios. That the ruins have rendered only a few that possess worth does not prove that there may not have been excellent ones: we must have patience and wait till some happy chance belies the mediocrity.