W. M. Flinders Petrie

“ If, then, we seek the source of most of the various elements of the decoration which covers our walls, our floors, our dishes, our book-covers, and even our railway stations, we must begin by studying Egypt.
As our object is the history and evolution of the various elements of decoration, we may classify these elements under four divisions. There is the simplest geometrical ornament of lines and spirals and curves, and 10of surfaces divided by these into squares and circles. There is the natural ornament of copying feathers, flowers, plants, and animals. ”

“ Turning now to the men and animals shown in decoration, in the period of the Empire we constantly see figures of captives introduced to emphasise the power of the king. These first appear in the great change which overcame Egyptian art consequent upon the Asiatic conquests. Before Tahutmes III. the character and style of work continually recalls that of the XIIth dynasty; but within one or two generations a profound difference changed for ever the nature of the art, and this is reflected in the national handwriting, which shows a similar break. ”

“ THE SOURCES OF DECORATION In dealing with the subject of decorative art in Egypt, it is needful to begin by setting some bounds to a study which might be made to embrace almost every example of ancient work known to us in that land. ”

“ The scarab itself is often figured as holding the disc of the sun between its claws: and it is at least possible that the symbolic idea of the scarab as the maker or creator arose from the burial of its ball being an emblem of the setting of the sun, from which new life will arise in due course. It occurs with the wings extended and the disc between the claws as a centre figure in the space of a ceiling pattern (Neferhotep, XVIIIth dynasty) , and on the border of the covering of a shrine under Ramessu X., and 113is occasionally met with later in decoration. ”

“ One of the most perfect and beautiful examples of the winged disc is on the temple of Tahutmes III., but it continued to be used down to the latest times of Egyptian architecture as a lintel decoration.
In the XIXth dynasty an addition to the symbolism appears; the horns of a ram are added to the wings; sometimes without the uraei (Ramessu I., L.D. III. 131) , sometimes with the uraei (Ramessu II., L.D. III. 204) . These rams’ horns can hardly be other than those of the ram-headed god Khnum, “the maker” or “modeller” of men. ”

“ The capital is formed much like the palm-leaf capital; and the stem is clearly bound round, and must therefore be composite. This suggests that it might be a column of palm-sticks bound together, with some tops left projecting for ornament. Such might well be more conventionalised at the beginning of Egyptian sculpture in the IVth dynasty than the other kinds of capitals; and the immigrant race came from the region of the palm, while the lotus and papyrus only were reached by them in Egypt itself. The base is a main difficulty to explain. ”

“ A later stage was to repeat the squares with varieties of colour; and also to introduce details into the squares, and so make them compound patterns, as in the XVIIth dynasty at El Kab, where the sequence of the blue, green, and red lines makes a brilliant effect from these simple elements. Not only a square, but also a hexagon, was worked into the same design. This, from the nature of it, suggests a rush-work screen, and probably it was plaited with rushes in three directions, and hence the production of this particular angle. The previous zigzag patterns all suggest weaving ”

“ This complicates the question undoubtedly; and until we have much more research on the history of design, and an abundance of dated examples, it will be unsafe to dogmatise one way or the other. So far, however, as evidence at present goes, it may be said that—in the Old World at least—there is a presumption that all the ornament of the types of Egyptian designs is lineally descended from those designs. ”

“ On the oldest monuments the basket sign, neb, is chequered in different colours; so are also the baskets of farm produce carried by the servants, as shown in the tombs. The modern Nubian basket-work is well known for the many patterns which it bears like the ancient Egyptian. The chequer pattern is found in every period in Egypt, and is perhaps most common in the latest forms on the sides of thrones in the Ptolemaic age. In the Old Kingdom many varieties were in use. The plain chequers of red or black with white, the squares filled with black and red crosses on a green and yellow chequer ”

“ It is easy to pre-suppose a repeated invention of designs, but we are concerned with what has been, and not with what might have been. Practically it is very difficult, or almost impossible, to point out decoration which is proved to have originated independently, and not to have been copied from the Egyptian stock. The influences of the 6modes of work in weaving and basket-work have had much to do with the uniformity of patterns in different countries ”

“ The palm, though the most important tree of the country, has had but little effect on the architecture. There is not a single example of columns copied from a palm stem; and the only instances of the imitation of the stem are in two or three instances of copies of roofing beams. The branches are not copied on columns until other subjects were well used. In the XIIth dynasty the imitation of a bundle of palm branches was made in the capitals, and it became common in the XVIIIth. ”

“ In Greek architecture many of the details are entirely the product of wooden construction translated into stone. The triglyphs, the imitation of nail heads, of the ends of the poles supporting the roofing, of the crossing of beams at the coffers, are all details which are retained as decoration long after they ceased to have any structural meaning, owing to an entire change of material. Such is 92structural decoration in its best known forms. But the same principles equally apply to Egyptian architecture ”

“ The angles show that the plaiting was in three directions, as we saw in the basket-work pattern at Benihasan (Fig. 3) . But frets in general are very rare until a late period, and they doubtless depend on the adaptation of spirals to textiles. We see no trace of the fret in the Mykenaean art, the spiral there being figured on stone or metal, while the women wore flounced dresses with scale pattern. But in the pre-Persian age fret pattern weaving in borders was the standard design, as we see on the coloured robes of the Parthenon 37statues ”

“ But here, as in the spirals, the scarab type is an earlier stage than the architectural. 74On the architecture it is quite unintelligible, and a mere conventional monstrosity; while on a scarab of green jasper—which from the style and material seems certainly to be before the XVIIIth dynasty, and probably of the XIIth—there is an already conventionalised lotus group, with the four sepals and inner petals already developed into a sort of “tree pattern,” and the lower two sepals have a pendant, partly worn away, but clearly showing a triply-branching line like a small lotus flower. ”

“ On the kings of the XVIIIth-XXth dynasty we often see a wide belt covering the whole stomach, which is decorated with what is commonly called scale pattern. But this occurs in scenes which are not at all warlike, and where no defensive scale armour is likely to be shown—Amenhotep I. is seated as a god receiving adoration after his death ”

“ The well-known Egyptian cornice has been so long taken for granted that it might seem never to have required an origin. Yet in the villages of the Fellahin to-day palm cornices may be seen in course of development. A fence is formed of palm-sticks, placed upright, and stripped of leaves for some way up. The tops are left bushy, and serve to prevent men or animals climbing over the courtyard wall. ”

“ The Egyptian treatment of everything great and small was so strongly decorative that it is hard to exclude an overwhelming variety of considerations. But here it is proposed to limit our view to the historical development of the various motives or elements of decoration. The larger questions of the æsthetic scheme of design, of the meaning of ornament—symbolic 2or religious, of the value and effect of colour, of the relations of parts, we can but glance at occasionally in passing ”

“ The vine is one of the oldest cultivated plants in Egypt, and all the designs copied from it are based on the idea of its climbing and trailing over the houses. It appears mainly in the florid work of the XVIIIth dynasty. The ceiling was often painted of a golden yellow, with 80vine leaves and bunches of grapes hanging from a trellis pattern which covers it. At Tell el Amarna some fragments found were very free and natural, but in the XXth dynasty it became a stiff and formal affair. (Tomb of Aimadua, Ramessu X.) . ”

“ A symbolism closely connected with this is that of the globe and wings. This certainly dates to the beginning of the monumental age, as it is seen above the figure of Khufu seated on an amulet. In that instance it is on too small a scale to show the details; but in the next dynasty it appears above Unas at Elephantine, with the globe flanked by two uraei and two wings. What the symbolism of it was we have no direct information. ”

“ The lion as a noble and royal animal frequently figures in the XVIIIth dynasty. The Egyptians, with their marvellous instinct for taming every animal they could find, actually trained lions or leopards to live as domesticated animals, with the same sort of allowed wildness as modern hunting dogs. ”

“ The very fact that the locality and date of an object of unknown origin can be so closely predicted by its style and feeling in design, is the best proof how continuous is the history and evolution 9of ornament, and how little new invention has to do with it—in short, how difficult it is to man to be really original. ”

“ But when we consider that the wings are those of the vulture spread out, as it appears on the roofs of the passages as a protecting and preserving maternal emblem, and the uraeus is associated with it, we can hardly view it as other than the same idea of the power of life and death, of preservation and destruction. ”

“ We next see spirals used in the same way to fill up at the sides of the inscription on the scarabs of Pepy, without any attempt to connect them into a continuous pattern; and on the scarabs of Ma·abra, probably soon after, the same loose spirals are seen thrown in to fill up. In none of these cases is the ornament anything but the means of supplementing the required inscription; nothing is arranged for the sake 20of it, and it is treated as a mere afterthought. Nor is it until the XIIth dynasty that any continuous spiral design can be dated. ”

“ An allied pattern is the disc surrounded by spots. This is very usual on early Greek pottery, and is found on the Aegean pottery also. This is very rarely seen in pure Egyptian design, and only in the XVIIIth dynasty, when Mykenaean influence was strongest. On Neferhotep’s ceiling two forms are found, put between the horns of the bulls’ heads, like the rosette on the Mykenaean ox head. Elsewhere it is usually seen on the scarves of the negroes as a characteristic decoration, and on the dress of the Amu (C.M. cclviii.) ”

“ Perhaps, however, as we shall see in considering the hieroglyphs, the palm column originates with a bundle of palm-sticks 79bound together. It is strange that the simple element of grouping branches round a post should not have been a very usual early motive. Was the palm really common in early Egypt? It does not enter into the hieroglyphs, and it is seldom shown on monuments till the XVIIIth dynasty; while grapes, figs, and pomegranates all seem to have been commoner than dates. ”

“ That capital punishment was used in Egypt is seen in the Westcar Tales, which probably date from the Old Kingdom, where a condemned malefactor is ordered to be brought forth for a magician to try his power in bringing him to life when slain. The king, as having the power of death, bore the uraeus always on his head-dress ”

“ Sometimes in the XVIIIth dynasty it is clearly a daisy, very seldom has it the pointed petals of the lotus; and it fluctuates between the geometrical and the natural so as to defy details. One cause of this is the evident effect of leather work. The coloured leather funereal tent of Isiemkheb, found at Deir el Bahri, opens our eyes to a great deal. We there see an elaborate design, descending to long inscriptions of small hieroglyphs, all worked by cutting and stitching of leather. After this we can see in many of the Egyptian designs the influence 57of leather work ”

“ Yet we may well turn now to see the beginning of the course of European decoration at Mykenae, and observe its close contact with that of Egypt. The spiral is the main element of prehistoric decoration in Greece; the parallel chains of links occur almost exactly as we have already seen them in the pattern 39of Neferhotep, but omitting the inner details added in the spaces.
65.—Schuck. 290.
The quadruple spiral is splendidly shown in the ceiling of Orchomenos, with a lotus flower in each space; also as a simpler form without any filling in of the squares on the grave stele (Schuck. 146) . ”

“ Such patterns required but little ingenuity, and it is rather in the design of continuous spirals that the Egyptian showed his skill. The problem was how to arrange a number of coils in a symmetrical system uniformly covering the surface of the scarab, and yet to connect them in a true series. This was done in various ways, usually by introducing long loop lines around the edge. One of the simplest type is— In another a cross pattern is formed which is entirely of C coils, like frequent patterns at Mykenae. ”

“ The combination of thet dad uas, and of ankh dad uas, is found in the XIIth dynasty at Benihasan, apparently carved in relief, on the wooden panels of a litter (R.C. xciii.) . The same occur similarly carved on the ebony doors of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri. The group begins to appear as an architectural design early in the XVIIIth dynasty, and continues down to Roman times, especially on bases of scenes and groups, thus forming a continuous border of good wishes. ”