Egyptian sculpture

“ Such a society never allowed the mechanical reproduction of orthodox types to be forced upon its artists, until, indeed, its final decadence deprived it of all power to invent new forms. We have seen how great was the variety of plan and decoration in Egyptian religious architecture, from the marked simplicity of the temple near the sphinx, to the sumptuous majesty of the Theban buildings and the elegance of those of Sais. The style and taste of Egyptian sculpture underwent a change at each renascence of art. ”

“ But we see no ideal grandeur among any of the remains of Egyptian sculpture. However symmetrical or colossal, there is no expression, no trace of emotion, no intellectual force. Every thing is calm, impassive, imperturbable. It was not until sculpture came into the hands of the Greeks that any remarkable excellence was reached. But the progress of development was slow. The earliest carvings were rude wooden images of the gods, and more than a thousand years elapsed before the great masters were produced which marked the age of Pericles. ”

“ The sculptor has for the most part neglected subjects which appeal to the hearts of the people of his day, and based his work on classic models and precepts.
In saying this we do not in any wise belittle the great works of the past. It is impossible to look on the mighty works of the ancient Egyptian workers in stone without feeling the sense of awe which the people of those days must have experienced—and were intended to experience—when gazing upon them. Mystery is the keynote of Egyptian sculpture, mystery deep and unfathomable. ”

“ The canon of proportions held Egyptian sculpture firmly fixed upon the lonely pinnacle so painfully attained, and even though it checked farther progress in a lamentable manner, yet, on the other hand it had this merit, that by its aid Egyptian plastic art preserved untouched through every epoch its remarkable purity of style and great technical skill. ”

“ Some among them succeed with ease in matters which embarrass their neighbours. It is a question of circumstances, of natural qualifications, and of surroundings. Among the Egyptians the progress of sculpture was accelerated by that national belief in a posthumous life for the body which we have described in connection with their funerary architecture. By the existence of this constant and singular belief we may explain both the early maturity of Egyptian sculpture and the great originality of their most ancient style. ”

“ Yet we must regard the artistic talents of the Egyptian sculptors from the first with great respect when we consider the oldest specimens of Egyptian sculpture, which far excel the later in freedom of method and in realistic fidelity to nature, and which nevertheless are in no way inferior to them in all that concerns delicacy of execution. ”

“ The evidence as to the high development of Egyptian sculpture in the earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. What exquisite genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in their lesser statues is known to those who have seen those most precious specimens in the Boulak Museum at Cairo, which were wrought before the conventional type was adopted in obedience to religious considerations. ”

“ But the sun-dried bricks, of which both temples and palaces were composed, lacked the durability of stone and have long since dissolved into shapeless mounds.
EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE The surviving examples of Egyptian sculpture consist of bas-reliefs and figures in the round, carved from limestone and granite or cast in bronze. Many of the statues appear to our eyes very stiff and ungraceful. The sculptor never learned how to pose his figures easily or how to arrange them in an artistic group. In spite of these defects some Egyptian statues are wonderfully lifelike. ”

“ But it is in cases where the entire lion is represented without deformation that Egyptian sculpture attains its greatest perfection. (Fig. 31.)
A great majority of the Egyptian works of sculpture were cut with marvellous patience in the hardest materials, in variously colored granite, diorite, syenite, and basalt. Limestone and alabaster were rarely employed for colossal or life-size statues, but were used more frequently for works of smaller dimensions ”

“ In the composition of modern paintings three objects are required: one main action, one point of view, and one instant of time, and the proportions and harmony of the parts are regulated by perspective, but in Egyptian sculpture these essentials were disregarded; every thing was sacrificed to the principal figure; its colossal dimensions pointed it out as a center to which all the rest was a mere accessory, and, if any other was made equally conspicuous, or of equal size, it was still in a subordinate station, and only intended to illustrate the scene connected with the hero of the piece. ”

“ In very dark halls the force of colour is carried as far as it will go, because it would not otherwise have been visible by the flickering light of lamps and torches. On outer wall- surfaces and on pylon-fronts, it was as vivid as in the darkest depths of excavated catacombs; and this because, no matter how extreme it might be, the sun would subdue its splendour. But in half-lighted places, such as the porticoes of temples and the ante-chambers of tombs, colour is so dealt with as to be soft and discreet. In a word, painting was in Egypt the mere humble servant of architecture and sculpture. ”

“ Thus in the temples at Karnac the columns seem to me too large and too much crowded for the best effect. Ordinary trees may be planted in a dense grove, but great, broad-spreading oaks or elms require space around them; and if these columns were a little more spaced—to use a printer's word—the architectural effect would be still grander. So in the Egyptian sculpture, everything is colossal. In the granite lions and sphinxes there is always an aspect of power in repose which is very impressive, and strikes one with awe. ”

“ The history of sculpture is in fact identified with that of idols. It was from Phoenicia that Solomon obtained the workmen for the decoration of his Temple. But the Egyptians were probably the first who made considerable advances in the execution of statues. They are rude, simple, uniform, without beauty or grace, but colossal and grand. Nearly two thousand years before Christ, the walls of Thebes were ornamented with sculptured figures, even as the gates of Babylon were of sculptured bronze. The dimensions of Egyptian colossal figures surpass those of any other nation. ”

“ Some of the statues shone with the matchless polish they had received from a Theban artisan before Athens was founded, and are, apparently, as fresh and perfect as when looked upon by the vassals of Sesostris. Notwithstanding their stiff, rough-hewn limbs, there were some figures of great beauty, and they gave me a much higher idea of Egyptian sculpture. In an adjoining hall, containing colossal busts of the gods, is a vase forty-one feet in circumference, of one solid block of red porphyry.
The “Transfiguration” is truly called the first picture in the world. ”

“ In the different epochs of Egyptian sculpture, the Egyptian artists were bound by certain fixed canons or rules of proportion to guide them in their labors, and which they were obliged to adhere to rigidly. ”

“ The sculpture of ancient Egypt is an instance of great unity in conception, and the suppression of variety to a point at which life scarcely exists. The lines of the Egyptian figures are simple and long, the surfaces smooth and unvaried, no action is allowed to give variety to the pose, the placing of one foot a little in front of the other being alone permitted in the standing figures; the arms, when not hanging straight down the sides, are flexed stiffly at the elbow at right angles ”

“ What has been hitherto said of Egyptian sculpture, describes the ancient native sculpture of that people. After the Ptolemies, successors of Alexander the Great, were kings of Egypt, their sculpture was enlivened by Grecian animation, and refined by the standard of Grecian beauty in proportions, attitude, character, and dress. Osiris, Isis, and Orus, their three great divinities, put on the Macedonian costume; and new divinities appeared amongst them in Grecian forms, whose characteristics were compounded from materials of Egyptian, Eastern, and Grecian theology and philosophy. ”

“ The architecture of Egypt was practised in a manner to show almost no historical development—with the sculpture this is the case in still greater degree. The most ancient carved remains, which with reasonable security may be assigned to the fifth dynasty, show the formal system, retained during the subsequent twenty centuries, as already perfected. Even at that early date the network of lines, which the Egyptian sculptors (more as mechanics than as artists) followed down to the time of the Ptolemies, was already calculated and introduced as a canon. ”

“ All these works, even the columnar statues, seem to have been connected with religious rites or symbols. This, together with imperfect science, accounts for the striking similarity discoverable in a class, the individuals of which are thus varied, at least in purpose and magnitude. Another peculiarity is, that in Egyptian sculpture, whenever the dimensions are much beyond nature, the head is always larger than even colossal proportions would require. It would be unreasonable to ascribe to ignorance a practice thus universal ”

“ The circumstance of thus confounding moral greatness with physical magnitude, were alone sufficient to mark the infancy of invention, and the barbarism of taste. It is nevertheless only justice to mention, that occasionally, in the historical relievos, we observe rudiments of higher art, with less of convention, and more of freedom of imagination, than in any other Egyptian sculptures.
The praises bestowed upon the hieroglyphics of Egypt by Winkleman and others, must be restricted to the mere workmanship; and even then, are exaggerated or misplaced. ”

“ The ordinary Egyptian stone-cutter knew of only two positions, well established by custom; he renounced fundamentally the countless different appearances of life, and, with this, all representation of action and of individuality. Primitive Greek sculpture, on the contrary, arose from a sound naturalism, which directed the eye of the artist to real and peculiar appearances from the outset, often neglecting the proportions of the whole in the desire characteristically to express important details. ”

“ Sculpture under the Ancient Empire.
The most ancient monument of sculpture to which we can assign, if not a date, at least a chronological place in the list of Egyptian kings, is a rock-cut monument in the peninsula of Sinai. This is in the Wadi-maghara, and represents Snefrou, the last monarch of the third dynasty, destroying a crouching barbarian with his mace. In spite of its historic importance, we refrain from producing this bas-relief because its dilapidated state takes away its interest from an artistic point of view. ”

“ Besides figures of the gods, the sculpture of Egypt is rich in the images of kings, queens, and prominent subjects; and in such portraits the observation of the living model, of the peculiarities of character which lead to the differences of exterior appearance, would seem to be a natural consequence. But as the individual disappeared in the mass of the Egyptian people, so the appreciation of individuality was almost wholly lacking in the Egyptian artist. ”

“ Egyptian art worked upon purely mechanical principles, according to a typical network of lines. Sculpture was drawn into the province of architecture, and slavishly subordinated to it; carved figures became little else than architectural members through uniformity, symmetrical regularity, and multiplicity of repetition. Piers masked by the form of Osiris were thus substituted for columns, and long rows of sphinxes or colossal statues were set, like the obelisks, to decorate the avenues leading to the temples. ”

“ Egyptian painting is principally found on the walls of temples and tombs, upon columns and cornices, and on small articles found in burial places. There is no doubt that it was used as a decoration; but it was also intended to be useful, and was so employed as to tell the history of the country;—its wars, with their conquests and triumphs, and the lives of the kings, and many other stories, are just as distinctly told by pictures as by the hieroglyphics or Egyptian writings. We can scarcely say that Egyptian painting is beautiful ”

“ In all countries, however, great works are 183rare. The sepulchral statues were far from being all equal in value to those of the Sheik-el-Beled, of Ra-Hotep from Meidoum, or of the scribe in the Louvre. This intelligent and scientific interpretation of nature was not reached at a bound; Egyptian sculpture had its archaic period as well as that of Greece.
Moreover, even when the art had come to maturity, there was, as in other countries a crowd of mediocre artists whose work was to be obtained at a cost smaller than that of the eminent men whom they surrounded. ”

“ To determine the part played by each of these factors is not always easy; there are too many opportunities for error. We believe, however, that certain of the most peculiar and persistent characteristics of Egyptian sculpture are due 303to the hardness of their material and the imperfection of the tools employed.
We know the connection between the funerary statues of the Egyptians and their second life; while those statues endured, the existence of the double was safe guarded. The more solid the statue, the better its chance ”