confused; waste land and smiling fields are blended together; hollows
and hillocks lose the vigour of their contours.
China, as we have said, does not enter into our purview; and as for
Egypt, the deeper we penetrate into her history the more are we
convinced that her long career was troubled by moments of crisis
similar to those which have come to other human societies. The
narratives of the Greek historians give us reason to suspect that it
was so, and the monuments which have been discovered insist upon
the same truth, and compel us to accept it. For certain epochs these
are very abundant, beautiful, and varied. Afterwards they become
rare and clumsy, or altogether wanting; and again they reappear in
great numbers and in their full nobility, but with a different general
character. These contrasts and temporary eclipses occur again and
again. How, then, can we doubt that here, as elsewhere, there were
alternations of grandeur and poverty, of periods of conquest and
expansion and epochs of civil war or of defeat by foreign invaders?
May we not believe that through the clouds which obscure the causes
of such changes we may catch glimpses of those periods of
decadence and renascence which, following one upon the other,
exhausted in the end the genius of the race?
Let us take a single example—the most striking of all. "After the sixth
dynasty all documents cease; they are absolutely
73
wanting until the eleventh, the first of the Middle Empire. This is one
of those sudden interruptions in the history of Egypt which may be
compared to the temporary disappearance of those curious rivers
which run partly underground."[88]
Fig. 47.—Statue from the Ancient Empire, in limestone. Boulak.
Drawn by Bourgoin.
When historians, living as long after our nineteenth century as we do
after the epochs of Memphite and Theban supremacy in Egypt, come
to treat the history of the past, they will perhaps
74
look upon the ages which rolled away between the fall of Græco-
Roman civilization and the revival of learning in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries as no longer than that which divided the ancient
from the middle empire of Egypt, or the latter from the dynasties of
Thebes. In the distant future men will know, in a vague fashion, that
between the fall of Rome and the discovery of printing, or that of
America, there were great movements among the nations, and an
apparent recoil of civilization; but memory and imagination will leap
without effort over the gap, over that period which we call the Middle
Ages. The Roman empire will seem to touch our modern civilization,
and many of the differences which strike us so strongly will be
imperceptible. They will perceive that we had a new religion and new
inventions, but they will take more account of the resemblances than
of the differences. Our languages, manners, laws, and forms of
government will seem to them continuations of those of Greece and
Rome. In that which we call antiquity, and in Christian Europe, they
will find similar literary habits and standards of criticism, the same
judicial nomenclature, the same terms for monarchy, empire, and
republic, the same titles for kings and
75
Cæsars. These different civilizations are like star clusters. To us who
are among them they seem distinct enough, but to generations which
are divided from them by a vast space of time they will seem to form
but one nebulous body.
Fig. 48.—Woman kneading dough. Statuette from the Ancient
Empire, in limestone. Drawn by Bourgoin.
Fig. 49.—The Scribe Chaphré. Fifth dynasty. Boulak.
Limestone.
Egypt, then, had her great convulsions like the rest of the world. She
met with disasters, and underwent periods of confusion like those
which overtook the nations of the West between the reigns of Trajan
and Charlemagne. Wars and invasions, the action and reaction of
civilization, had upon her the same influence as upon them, and, in
transforming her sentiments and ideas, caused their plastic
expression to pass through a series of changes in taste and style.
The Theban tomb of the time of Rameses is very different from that of
Memphis and the ancient empire; the new empire constructed no
buildings like the greater pyramids, but its temples were larger and
more magnificent than any of their predecessors. It was the same
with sculpture. A cultivated eye has no need to run to inscriptions to
enable it to distinguish between works of the ancient and of the
middle empire; nor will it confound works created in either of those
periods with those of the Sait epoch. The differences are almost as
well marked as those which enable archæologists to distinguish a
torso of the time of Phidias from one of the school of Praxiteles or
Lysippus. These differences it will be our duty to describe hereafter,
but our readers may perhaps discover them for themselves
76
if they examine the illustrations to this chapter, which are arranged in
chronological order.
Variety is universal in Egypt, local variety as well as that of different
periods. Language had its dialects as well as art. The pronunciation
of Upper and that of Lower Egypt was quite dissimilar, except in the
case of a few letters. In the same way different cities had distinct
schools of sculpture and painting, which were distinguished from one
another by their traditional methods of conception and execution.
Neither under Ousourtesen nor under Rameses, had art the same
character in the cities of the Delta, in Memphis, and in Thebes.
Among the works in sculpture executed for Rameses II., those of
Abydos were more elegant and refined than those of Thebes.
Fig. 50.—The Lady Naï. Wooden statue from the 19th or 20th
dynasty. Louvre.
How, then, are we to explain the error committed by Plato, and by him
transmitted to posterity? The explanation is easy. The Greeks visited
Egypt too late in its history to form a true judgment. In Plato's time the
Egyptians were still trying, by violent but spasmodic efforts, to
reconquer the independence which had been destroyed by the
successor of Cyrus. But the moment was at hand when even these
intermittent struggles
77
were to be abandoned, and they were to finally succumb to
sovereigns of foreign blood. Their still brilliant civilization might
deceive a passing stranger, but the decadence had commenced—a
decadence slow indeed, but none the more remediable.
Some years after the visit of Plato, the two Nectanebos, more
especially the second, devoted themselves with energetic ardour to
the restoration of the ancient buildings of the country and to the
construction of new ones, such as the temple at Philæ. Buildings
signed with their name are to be found all over Egypt; but these
simultaneous undertakings seem to betray a sense of vanishing
power, an uncertainty of the morrow, a feverish activity seeking to
deceive itself and to hide its own weakness. Nothing could be more
precarious than the political conditions under which this activity was
displayed. The independence of the country was maintained by the
dearly bought services of Spartan and Athenian mercenaries. Twice
already had Persia crushed Egyptian revolts, and she was, perhaps,
but watching her opportunity to cast the hordes of Asia upon the
unhappy country for a third time. Ill obeyed as he was, the "Great
King" could always find troops to take part in the spoiling of a country
whose riches had proved so inexhaustible. And if, by any remote
chance, the Persians should fail in their enterprise, another and a
graver danger would menace the Egyptian monarchy from the rapid
growth of the Greek power in the Mediterranean. Since the period of
the Persian wars, the language, the literature, the arts, the mythology
of Greece, had spread with great rapidity; and the moment might be
foreseen when a supremacy founded upon intellectual worth would
be confirmed by military triumph and the creation of a vast Hellenic
empire. The conquest of Egypt was begun by the Ionian soldiers and
merchants who were introduced into the Nile valley by Psemethek; it
was bloodlessly completed by the arms of Alexander. For three
centuries the Egyptians had been accustomed to see the Greeks
freely coming and going among them as merchants, as mercenary
officers, as travellers eager for instruction. The latter posed as
disciples before the priests of Memphis and Heliopolis, and freely
expressed a warmth of admiration which could not fail to flatter the
national vanity. The Greeks would be better masters than their rivals
from Persia. From them the Egyptians would, at least, obtain good
administration and complete
78
freedom in the exercise of their religion in return for their taxes. The
Greeks were clear-sighted enough to understand their own interests;
they were too philosophical and large minded for any fanatical
persecution of, or even hindrance to, the national religion; they were
too much of connoisseurs to fail in respect to a form of civilization
whose prodigious antiquity they divined, and before which the most
eminent among them were ever inclined to bow, like youths before an
old man, or a parvenu before the descendant of a long line of kings.
Thus Egypt gradually fell into the hands of strangers after the
commencement of the fourth century before Christ. Ethiopians,
Assyrians and Persians had by turns overrun the country. Great
numbers of the Phœnicians had established themselves in it, and,
after the fall of Jerusalem and Samaria, many Jews followed their
example. Finally, the Greeks came in by thousands through the
breaches which their predecessors had made, penetrating into all
parts, and making everywhere felt the superiority of a people who
had, by appropriating the useful results obtained in a long succession
of centuries by more ancient races, become wealthier, stronger, and
better instructed than any of their forerunners.
Thus Egypt lost her power of national rejuvenation, her power of
rising again after calamity. She existed on through the centuries by
mere force of habit, but she lived no more. Her population was so
homogeneous, and her institutions were so solid, that the social
conditions of the country could not be changed in a day or even in a
century. The teachings of her religion had been established by so
long a course of development, and the hands of her artists were so
well practised, that the monumental types which had been created in
more fertile periods of her history were reproduced until a late date, in
a machine-like and instinctive fashion. Imagination was dead, and the
best that could be hoped for was the faithful repetition of those forms
which the genius of the race had conceived in its last moments of
original thought.
Under the Sait princes, under the Psemetheks and Nekau, under
Apries and Amasis, Egypt was delivered from her enemies and again
became mistress of Syria and of the Island of Cyprus. She thus
recovered confidence in herself and in her future, and a period
ensued which had an art of its own with distinctive features which we
shall endeavour to trace. In the intervals of precarious repose which
characterized the Persian domination, the
79
Egyptians had leisure neither to invent nor to improve. They copied,
as well as they could, the monuments of the twenty-sixth dynasty. Art
became a mere collection of technical precepts, kept together and
transmitted in the intercourse of the studio, by instruction and
practice; it became a mere matter of routine implying, perhaps, great
technical skill, but displaying no sincere and personal feeling. Nature
was no longer studied or cared for. Artists knew that the human figure
should be divided into so many parts. They knew that in the
representation of this or that god a certain attitude or attribute was
necessary; and they carved the
80
statues required of them after the traditional recipes. Thus Egyptian
art became conventional, and so it remained to the end. So it was in
the time of Diodorus. The sculptors whom that historian saw at work
in Memphis and Thebes, during the reign of Augustus, carved a
statue as a modern mechanic would make the different parts of a
machine; they worked with a rapidity and an easy decision more
characteristic of the precise workman than of the artist.[89] Thought was no longer necessary to them. The due proportions and
measurements had been ascertained and fixed many centuries
before their time.
Fig. 51.—Ouah-ab-ra, 26th dynasty. Louvre. Grey granite, height
37 inches.
But research must still precede discovery. We admit that a day
arrived when convention was supreme in Egyptian art, but it could not
have begun with convention any more than the arts of other nations.
We must here define the terms which we shall have occasion to
employ. Every work of art is an interpretation of nature. Let us take
the example of the human figure. In the works of a single period and
of a single people, it is always full of striking similarity; and yet two
original artists never look at it with the same eyes. One will look at it
in certain aspects and will bring out certain qualities, which another,
although his contemporary and fellow-countryman, will leave in the
obscurity of shadows. One will devote himself to the beauty of form,
another to the accidents of colour or the expression of passion and
thought. The original remains the same, although its interpretations
are so various. And these varieties become still more marked when
we compare the arts of different races or of different periods—the art
of Egypt with that of Assyria or Greece, antique art with that of
modern times.
On the other hand, the great resemblance which the arts of a single
time and country bear to each other, is accounted for by the fact that
their creators look upon the external facts of life through a glass, if we
may put it so, tinted with the colours of the national genius. They
bring to their study of an eternal model the same transient prejudices,
the same preoccupations, the same desires. And yet among those
highly gifted races where art holds or has held a lofty place, groups of
artists are formed, either successively or simultaneously, which we
call schools. Each of these groups professes to make a fresh
reference to nature, to interpret her works more faithfully than its pre
81
decessors, and to draw from them typical forms which shall be more
expressive of the real desires and sentiments of the public for which it
caters. Between the works of these different schools, there are,
however, many similarities, which are to be explained by the identity
of race and belief. There are also diversities which are caused either
by different conditions or by the influence of some master spirit.
Wherever these schools spring up, art lives, moves, and progresses.
But sooner or later comes a time when this ardour comes to an end,
and exhaustion takes its place. The civilization to which it belongs
becomes old and languid, and its creative power ceases like the
imperceptible sinking of a flood. Now, it often happens that just before
this period of lassitude, in the last days of reproductive strength and
healthy maturity, a rich and brilliant school springs up, which
interprets the characteristic sentiments of the civilization to which it
belongs, with the greatest vigour and by admirably selected means. If
such an interpretation be found satisfactory at all points, why
82
should a better be sought for at the risk of choosing a worse? This
question is but a confession of impotence on the part of those who
ask it. From that moment convention will be supreme, and convention
in the sense of an artificial set of rules which will release the artist
from his obligation of continual reference to nature.
Fig. 52.—Sculptor at work upon an arm, Thebes. (Champollion,
pl. 180.)
Such a revolution is not the work of a day. Art requires time thus to
inclose itself in mere mechanical dexterity. As a nation grows old, its
art, like its literature, continually becomes more and more
conventional. Every great period or school leaves to the generations
that come after it types which have made a vivid impression upon
taste and imagination. As time goes on these types become more
numerous and more brilliant, and their prestige increases until it
becomes little less than tyranny. Society can only escape from its
thrall at the expense of some great religious or philosophical
revolution, or by the infusion of new blood from without. And these
changes western civilization had to undergo in the early centuries of
our era, in the establishment of Christianity, the invasion of the
barbarians, and the fall of the Roman Empire.
Thanks to the peculiar circumstances of the country, Egyptian society
was enabled to maintain the originality of its genius and the vitality of
its institutions with unusual success. After each period of internal
commotion or foreign invasion, the Egyptians set themselves to
renew the chain of their national traditions. In spite of the foreign
elements which had been received among them, the great mass of
the people remained the same down to the latest days of antiquity.
Heterogeneous constituents were absorbed by the nation without
leaving any apparent trace. The ideas which the people had formed
for themselves of the ultimate destiny of humanity were developed,
indeed, and in successive ages varied slightly in general colour, but in
none of their variations did they give rise to a new religion, as
Brahmanism gave birth to Buddhism.
As often as a new dynasty of kings succeeded in driving out the
foreign conqueror and in re-establishing the unity of the kingdom, so
often was there a complete restoration. The aim which they had in
view was ever to restore, in all its parts, a régime which was founded
upon national pride. Enjoying a civilization which for ages had been
alone in the world, it was in
83
its full and glorious past that Egyptian society found the ideal to which
it clung in spite of all obstacles and misfortunes. Its gaze was turned
backwards towards those early sovereigns who seemed transfigured
by distance, but whose presence in the memory kept alive the
perpetual worship which had been vowed to them.
Fig. 53.—Sculptor carving a statue, Thebes. (Champollion, pl.
180.)
Every restoration is inspired by a more or less blind and superstitious
reverence for the past. This has often been asserted in connection
with politics and religion, and the assertion is equally true in respect
to art. Each of those dynasties to which Egypt owed its political
restoration, set themselves to repair the temples which had been
destroyed, and to replace upon their pedestals the statues of gods or
ancestors which had been overthrown. When new temples and new
statues were to be erected, the first idea of the artists employed was
to study the ancient monuments and to try to equal them. As long as
Egypt preserved her vitality, the wants of the present and external
influences no doubt had their effect in introducing
84
certain changes, both in the arrangement of her buildings, and in the
modelling, movement, and expression of the statues which adorned
them. Ancient types were not servilely copied, but the temptation to
borrow from them a point of departure, at least, for new attempts at
progression, was too strong to be resisted. It was necessary that all
buildings and statues should be in harmony with the remains which
subsisted from previous ages, and from this it resulted that each new
creative effort began by imitating what had gone before. The 'school'
in process of foundation accepted on trust the architectural
disposition left by its predecessor, as well as its methods of looking at
nature. And this is equivalent to saying that, from its first moment, it
must have been conventional in a certain degree.
This conventionality must have increased at every fresh renascence,
because each new development had its own processes to transmit to
posterity as well as those of its ancestors. After each recoil or pause
in the progress of art, the weight of the past must have seemed
heavier to those who attempted to revive the onward movement. On
the one hand, the more ancient of the traditional elements had
acquired, by their constant and often repeated transmission, a
prestige and authority which placed them above discussion; on the
other, the legacy of admitted principles and processes was
continually increasing, until it became a source of embarrassment to
the artist, and of destruction to his liberty. When at last the decadence
of the race had advanced so far that all initiative power and
independence of thought had disappeared, the time arrived when
convention was everything, like one of those elaborate rituals which
regulate every word, and even gesture of the officiating priest. When
Plato visited Egypt, the schools of sculpture were nothing more than
institutions for teaching pupils, who were remarkable for docility and
for dexterity of hand, to transmit to their successors an assemblage of
precepts and receipts which provided for every contingency and left
no room for the exercise of fancy or discretion.
At that very time Greek art was progressing with a power and rapidity
which has never been rivalled. To the school of Phidias, a school
established in that Athens which yet possessed so many work