A History of Art in Ancient Egypt/Volume 1

by Georges Perrot

 

A HISTORY

OF

ART IN ANCIENT EGYPT.

 

A HISTORY

OF

ART IN ANCIENT EGYPT.

FROM THE FRENCH

OF

GEORGES PERROT,

PROFESSOR IN THE FACULTY OF LETTERS, PARIS; MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE

AND

CHARLES CHIPIEZ.

ILLUSTRATED WITH FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT ENGRAVINGS IN THE TEXT, AND FOURTEEN STEEL AND COLOURED PLATES.

IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOL. I.

TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY

WALTER ARMSTRONG, B.A., Oxon.,

AUTHOR OF "ALFRED STEVENS," ETC.

London: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited.

New York: A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON.

1883.

London:

R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor,

bread street hill.

 

PREFACE.

M. Perrot's name as a classical scholar and archæologist, and M. Chipiez's as a penetrating critic of architecture, stand so high that any work from their pens is sure of a warm welcome from all students of the material remains of antiquity. These volumes are the first instalment of an undertaking which has for its aim the history and critical analysis of that great organic growth which, beginning with the Pharaohs and ending with the Roman Emperors, forms what is called Antique Art. The reception accorded to this instalment in its original form is sufficient proof that the eulogium prefixed to the German translation by an eminent living Egyptologist, Professor Georg Ebers, is well deserved; "The first section," he says, "of this work, is broad and comprehensive in conception, and delicate in execution; it treats Egyptian art in a fashion which has never previously been approached." In clothing it in a language which will, I hope, enable it to reach a still wider public, my one endeavour has been that it should lose as little as possible, either in substance or form.

A certain amount of repetition is inevitable in a work of this kind when issued, as this was, in parts, and in one place.^[1] I have ventured to omit matter which had already been given at some length, but with that exception I have followed M. Perrot's words as closely as the difference of idiom would allow. Another kind of repetition, with which, perhaps, some readers may be inclined to quarrel, forced itself upon the author as the lesser of two evils. He was compelled either to sacrifice detail and precision in attempting to carry on at once the history of all the Egyptian arts and of their connection with the national religion and civilization, or to go back upon his footsteps now and again in tracing each art successively from its birth to its decay. The latter alternative was chosen as the only one consistent with the final aim of his work.

Stated in a few words, that aim is to trace the course of the great plastic evolution which culminated in the age of Pericles and came to an end in that of Marcus Aurelius. That evolution forms a complete organic whole, with a birthday, a deathday, and an unbroken chain of cause and effect uniting the two. To objectors who may say that the art of India, of China, of Japan, should have been included in the scheme, it may be answered: this is the life, not of two, or three, but of one. M. Perrot has been careful, therefore, to discriminate between those characteristics of Egyptian art which may be referred either to the national beliefs and modes of thought, or to undeveloped material conditions, such as the want or superstitious disuse of iron, and those which, being determined by the very nature of the problems which art has to solve, formed a starting point for the arts of all later civilizations. By means of well-chosen examples he shows that the art of the Egyptians went through the same process of development as those of other and later nationalities, and that the real distinguishing characteristic of the sculptures and paintings of the Nile Valley was a continual tendency to simplification and generalization, arising partly from the habit of mind and hand created by the hieroglyphic writing, partly from the stubborn nature of the chief materials employed.

To this characteristic he might, perhaps, have added another, which is sufficiently remarkable in an art which had at least three thousand years of vitality, namely, its freedom from individual expression. The realism of the Egyptians was a broad realism. There is in it no sign of that research into detail which distinguishes most imitative art and is to be found even in that of their immediate successors; and yet, during all those long centuries of alternate renascence and decay, we find no vestige of an attempt to raise art above imitation. No suspicion of its expressive power seems to have dawned on the Egyptian mind, which, so far as the plastic arts were concerned, never produced anything that in the language of modern criticism could be called a creation. In this particular Egypt is more closely allied to those nations of the far east whose art does not come within the scope of M. Perrot's inquiry, than to the great civilizations which formed its own posterity.

Before the late troubles intervened to draw attention of a different kind to the Nile Valley, the finding of a pit full of royal mummies and sepulchral objects in the western mountain at Thebes had occurred to give a fresh stimulus to the interest in Egyptian history, and to encourage those who were doing their best to lead England to take her proper share in the work of exploration. A short account of this discovery, which took place after M. Perrot's book was complete, and of some of the numerous art objects with which it has enriched the Boulak Museum, will be found in an Appendix to the second volume.

My acknowledgments for generous assistance are due to Dr. Birch, Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole, and Miss A. B. Edwards.

W. A.

1. Page 92, Vol. I.

CONTENTS.

			PAGE
INTRODUCTION			i—lxi
TO THE READER			lxiii–lxiv
CHAPTER I. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.
§	1.	Egypt's place in the History of the World	1—2
§	2.	The Valley of the Nile and its Inhabitants	2—16
§	3.	The Great Divisions of Egyptian History	16—21
§	4.	The Constitution of Egyptian Society—Influence of that Constitution upon Monuments of Art	21—44
§	5.	The Egyptian Religion and its Influence upon the Plastic Arts	44—69
§	6.	That Egyptian Art did not escape the Law of Change, and that its History may therefore be written	70—89
§	7.	Of the place held in this work by the Monuments of the Memphite Period, and of the Limits of our Inquiry	89—93
CHAPTER II. PRINCIPLES AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.
§	1.	Method to be Employed by us in our Study of this Architecture	94—96
§	2.	General Principles of Form	96—102
§	3.	General Principles of Construction.—Materials	103—106
§	4.	Dressed Construction	106—113
§	5.	Compact Construction	113—114
§	6.	Construction by Assemblage	114—119
§	7.	Decoration	119—125
CHAPTER III. SEPULCHRAL ARCHITECTURE.
§	1.	The Egyptian Belief as to a Future Life and its Influence upon their Sepulchral Architecture	126—163
§	2.	The Tomb under the Ancient Empire	163—241
The Mastabas of the Necropolis of Memphis			165—189
The Pyramids			189—241
§	3.	The Tomb under the Middle Empire	241—254
§	4.	The Tomb under the New Empire	255—317
CHAPTER IV. THE SACRED ARCHITECTURE OF EGYPT.
§	1.	The Temple under the Ancient Empire	318—333
§	2.	The Temple under the Middle Empire	333—335
§	3.	The Temple under the New Empire	335—433
§	4.	General Characteristics of the Egyptian Temple	434—444

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. COLOURED PLATES.
The Arab Chain, from near Keneh	To face page	102
The Pyramids, from old Cairo	"	102
Karnak, bas-reliefs in the Granite Chambers	"	124
Seti I., bas-relief at Abydos	"	126
General view of Karnak	"	360
Perspective view of the Hypostyle Hall, Karnak	"	368
Thebes, the plain, with the Colossi of Memnon	"	376
FIG.		PAGE
1. During the Inundation of the Nile		3
2. Hoeing		4
3. Ploughing		4
4. Harvest scene		5
5. The Bastinado		6
6. Statue from the Ancient Empire		10
7. The Sheikh-el-Beled		11
8. Hunting in the Marshes		14
9. Shadouf		15
10. The White Crown		16
11. The Red Crown		16
12. The Pschent		16
13. Seti I. in his War-Chariot		23
14. Rameses II. in adoration before Seti		25
15. Homage to Amenophis II		26
16. Construction of a Temple at Thebes		27
17. Columns in the Hypostyle Hall, Karnak		28
18., 19. Scribes registering the yield of the harvest		29
20.Colossi of Amenophis III		30
21. Scribe registering merchandize		31
22. Boatmen		32
23. Cattle Drovers		33

xii List of Illustrations.

FIG. PAGE 24. Bakers 33 25. Women at a loom 34 26. Netting birds 35 27. Sliepherds in the fields 36 28. Winnowing corn 36 29. Herdsmen 37 30. From the tomb of Menofre 39 31. Water Tournament 42 32. Mariette's House 43 33. Amenhotep, or Anienophis HI., presented by Phre to Amen-Ka .... 45 34. Amen (or Amnion) 51 35- Ptah 52 36. Osiris 53 37. The goddess Bast 54 38. Painted bas-relief 58 39. Sekhet 59 40. Isis-Hathor 60 41. A Sphinx 61 42. Touaris , 63 43. Rannu 64 44. Horus 65 45. Thoth 66 46. Sacrifice to Apis 67 47. Statue from the Ancient Empire 73 48. Woman kneading dough 74 49. The Scribe Chaphre 75 50. The Lady Na'i 76 51. Ouah-ab-ra 79 52. Sculptor at work upon an arm 81 53. Sculptor carving a statue 83 54. Artist painting a statue 85 55. Isis nursing Horus 87 56. Chephren 90 57. Ti, with his wife and son 91 58. Square building 97 59. Rectangular and oblong building 97 60. The Libyan chain, above the Necropolis of Thebes 98 61. General appearance of an Egyptian Temple 99 62. Temple of Khons, at Thebes 100 63. Temple of Khons, Thebes 100 64. Temple of Khons, Thebes 100 65. From the second court of Medinet-Abou, Thebes 10 r 66. Ramesseum, Thebes loi 67. The Egyptian Gorge or Cornice 102 68. Capital and Entablature of the Temple of the Deus Rediculus at Rome . 104 69. The Egyptian "bond" 107 70. Double-faced wall loS List of Illustrations. xiii FIG. PAGE 71, 72. Elements of the portico 108 73. Egyptian construction 109 74. Element of an off-set arch iii 75. Arrangement of the courses in an off-set arch iii 76. Off-set semicircular arch iii 77. Voussoir 112 78. Arrangement of voussoirs 112 79. Semicircular vault 112 80. Granaries, from a bas-relief . . " 113 81. Modern pigeon house, Thebes 114 82. Elements of wooden construction 116 83. Wooden building (first system) 117 84. Wooden building (second system) 118 85. Seti I. striking prisoners of war with his mace 124 86. Stele of the eleventh dynasty 131 87. Mummy case from the eighteenth dynasty 137 88. Man and his wife in the style of the fifth dynasty 138 89. Sekhem-ka, his wife Ata, and his son Khnem, in the style of the fifth dynasty 139 90. Stele of Nefer-oun 140 91. Preparation of the victims and arrival of funeral gifts 141 92. Table for offerings 144 93. Another form of the table for offerings 144 94. Labourers heaping up ears of corn 146 95. 96. Sepulchral statuettes 147 97. Vignette from a i?////a/ upon papyrus 149 98. Arrival in Egypt of a company of Asiatic emigrants 152, 153 99. The tomb of Ti ; women, representing the lands of the deceased, carrying the funeral gifts 154 100. Lid of the cot^n of Entef 158 loi, 102. Scarabs 159 103, 104. Funerary amulets 159 105. Pillow 160 106. Actual condition of a Mastaba. The Tomb of Sabou 167 107. Three mastabas at Gizeh 168 108. Restoration of part of the Necropolis of Gizeh 169 109. The Mastabat-el-Faraoun 170 no. Entrance to a Mastaba at Sakkarah 171 111. Lintel of the tomb of Teta 172 112. Plan of the tomb of Ti 174 113. 114. Mastaba at Sakkarah 174 115. AVestern wall in the chamber of the tomb of Ptah-Hotep 175 116. Plan of a Mastaba with four serdabs 178 117. Longitudinal section of the same Mastaba 178 118. Transverse section through the chamber 179 119. Transverse section through the serdabs 179 120. Figures in high relief, from a Mastaba at Gizeh 180 xiv List of Illustrations. FIG. PAGE 121. The upper chamber, well, and mummy-chamber i8i 122. Double Mastaba at Gizeh 182 12 J- Sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh 183 124. Details of the Sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh 184 125. Bas-reHef from Sakkarah 185 126. Head of a Mummy 188 127. Plans of the temples belonging to the Second and Third Pyramids ... 193 128. Plan of the Pyramid of Cheops 198 129. The Great Pyramid and the small pyramids at its foot 199 130. The Three Great Pyramids ; from the south 201 131. The Pyramid of lUahoun, horizontal section in perspective 205 132. Section of the Pyramid of Cheops 206 133. The southern Pyramid of Dashour 207 134. Section of the Stepped Pyramid 207 135. The Stepped Pyramid . 208 136 — 142, Successive states of a pyramid 209 143. Section of the Stepped Pyramid at Sakkarah 213 144. Construction of the Pyramid of Abousir in parallel layers 213 145. Partial section of the Stepped Pyramid 214 146. The Pyramid of IMeidoum 215 147. The Mastabat-el-Faraoun 216 148. Funerary monument represented in the inscriptions 216 149. Plan and elevation of a pyramid at Meroe 219 150. Method of closing a gallery by a stone portcullis 220 151. Portcullis closed 220 152. Transverse section, in perspective, through the Sarcophagus-chamber and the discharging chambers of the Great Pyramid 221 153. Longitudinal section through the lower chambers 222 [54, Pyramidion 230 155. The casing of the pyramids 233 156. Plan of the Pyramids of Gizeh and of that part of the Necropolis which immediately surrounds them 237 157. The Sphinx 238 158. Pyramid with its inclosure, Abousir 239 159. The river transport of the Mummy 243 160. Tomb at Abydos 244 161. Section of the above tomb 244 162. Tomb at Abydos 245 163. Section of the above tomb 245 164. Stele of the eleventh dynasty, Abydos 246 165. Stele of Pinahsi, priest of Ma; Abydos 247 166. Facade of a tomb at Beni-Hassan 250 167. Facade of a tomb at Beni-Hassan, showing some of the adjoining tombs 251 168. Interior of a tomb at Beni-Hassan 252 169. Plan of the above tomb 252 170. Chess players, Beni-Hassan 253 171. General plan of Thebes 257 List op^ Illustrations. xv FI^- PAGE 172. Rameses III. conducting a religious procession, at Medinet-Abou ... 261 173. Rameses III. hunting 26s 174. Rameses II. in battle -. . . 271 X75. Painting in a royal tomb at Gournah 273 176. Amenophis III. presenting an offering to Amen 274 177. Flaying the funerary victim 275 178. Entrance to a royal tomb 277 179. Plan of the tomb of Rameses II 282 180. Horizontal section of the same tomb 282 181. The smaller Sarcophagus-chamber in the tomb of Rameses VI 283 182. Entrance to the tomb of Rameses III 284 183. Hunting scene upon a tomb at Gournah 286 184. The weighing of actions 287 185. Anubis, in a funerary pavilion 288 186. Plan and section of a royal tomb 292 187. 188. Theban tombs from the bas-reliefs 294 189. Theban tomb from a bas-relief 295 190. A tomb of Apis 296 191. The tomb of Petamounoph 297 192. The most simple form of Theban tomb 299 193. Tomb as represented upon a bas-relief 299 194. Stele in the Boulak Museum, showing tombs with gardens about them . . 302 195. The sarcophagus of a royal scribe 303 196. Canopic vase of alabaster 305 197. View of the grand gallery in the Apis Mausoleum 306 198. Sepulchral chamber of an Apis bull 308 199. Section in perspective of " Campbell's tomb " 312 200. Vertical section in perspective of the Sarcophagus-chamber of the above tomb 312 201. A Tomb on El-Assasif 313 202. The Temple of the Sphinx 324 203. Interior of the Temple of the Sphinx 325 204. The Temple of the Sphinx, the Sphinx, and the neighbouring parts of the Necropolis 331 205. Ram, or KriospJiinx 336 206. Gateway and boundary wall of a temple 339 207. Principal facade of the Temple of Luxor 345 208. The Temple of Khons ; horizontal and vertical section showing the general arrangement of the temple 349 209. The Bari^ or sacred boat 352 210. Portable tabernacle of painted wood 354 211. Granite tabernacle 355 212. General plan of the Great Temple at Karnak 358 213. Longitudinal section of the Temple of Luxor 361 214. Plan of the anterior portion of the Great Temple at Karnak 363 215. The Great Temple at Karnak ; inner portion 367 216. Karnak as it is at present 369 xvi List of Illustrations. FIG. PAGE 217. Plan of the Temple of Luxor 371 218. Bird's-eye view of Luxor 373 219. Plan of the Ramesseum 377 220. The Ramesseum. Bird's-eye view of the general arrangement .... 379 221. General plan of the buildings at Medinet-Abou 381 222. Plan of the Temple of Thothmes 382 223. Plan of the Great Temple at Medinet-Abou 383 224. Plan of the Temple at Abydos 387 225. Seti, with the attributes of Osiris, between Amen, to whom he is paying homage, and Chnoum 390 226. Plan of the Temple of Gournah 392 227. Facade of the naos of the Temple of Gournah 393 228. Logitudinal section of the Temple of Gournah, from the portico of the naos to the back wall 393 229. Plan of the Temple of Elephantine 396 230. View in perspective of the Temple of Elphantine' 397 231. Longitudinal section of the Temple of Elephantine 398 232. Temple of Amenophis IIL at Eilithyia 401 233. Temple of Amenophis III. at Eilithyia ; longitudinal section 403 234. The speos at Addeh • 406 235. The speos at Addeh ; longitudinal section 406 236. Plan of speos at Beit-el- Wali 407 237. Longitudinal section of the speos at Beit-el-Wali 407 238. Plan of the hemispeos of Gherf-Hossein 408 239. Gherf-Hossein ; longitudinal section 409 240. Plan of the hemispeos of Derri 409 241. Longitudinal section; Derri 409 242. Facade of the smaller temple at Ipsamboul 411 243. Plan of the smaller temple 413 244. Perspective of the principal Chamber in the smaller temple 413 245. Longitudinal section of the smaller temple 413 246. Plan of the Great Temple 413 247. Perspective of the principal Hall in the Great Temple 414 248. Fa9ade of the Great Temple at Ipsamboul 415 249. Longitudinal section of the Great Temple 417 250. Dayr-el-Bahari 419' 251. Restoration in perspective of Dayr-el-Bahari 423 252. The ruins on the Island of Philae 431 253. The battle against the Khetas, Luxor 436 254. Rameses II. returning in triumph from Syria 437 255. The goddess Anouke suckling Rameses II., Beit-el-Wali 441