A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 7

FIG. 29.--Herdsman. From a tomb at Sakkarah, 5th dynasty. (Boulak.)]

The art of Egypt resembled that of Greece in being a complete and catholic art, seeing everything and taking an interest in everything.

It was sensitive to military glory, and at the same time it did not scorn to portray the peaceful life of the fields. It set itself with all sincerity to interpret the monarchical sentiment in its most enthusiastic and exaggerated form, but while it placed kings and princes above and almost apart from humanity, it did not forget the "humble and meek," on the contrary, it frankly depicted them in their professional att.i.tudes, with all those ineffaceable characteristics, both of face and figure which the practice of some special trade so certainly imparts. Looked at from this point of view Egyptian art was popular, it might even be called democratic, but that such a phrase would sound curious when used in connection with the most absolute monarchy which the world has ever seen.

This absolute power, however, does not seem, speaking generally, to have been put in force in a hard or oppressive manner either by the king himself or by his agents. M. Maspero and others who, like him, live in intimate communion with the ancient Egyptians, declare that they were by no means unhappy. They tell us that the confidences whispered to them in the pictured tomb-houses of Sakkarah and Memphis complain of no misery, from the time of Mena to that of Psemethek, except during a few violent reigns and a few moments of national crisis. The country suffered only on those comparatively rare occasions when the sceptre pa.s.sed into the hands of an incapable master or into those of some insatiable warrior who thought only of satisfying his own ambition, and sacrificed to the day the resources of the future. Egypt, with her river, her teeming soil and her splendid climate, found life easy as long as she enjoyed an easy and capable administration. She then gave to her princes almost without an effort all they could desire or demand.

It was one of the fundamental principles of Egyptian morality that those who were powerful should treat the poor and feeble with kindness and consideration. Their sepulchral inscriptions tell us that their kings and princes of the blood, their feudal lords and functionaries of every grade, made it a point of honour to observe this rule. They were not content with strict justice, they practised a bountiful charity which reminds us of that which is the chief beauty of the Christian's morality. The "Book of the Dead"--that pa.s.sport for Egyptians into the other world which is found upon every mummy--gives us the most simple, and at the same time the most complete description of this virtue. "I have given bread to the hungry, I have given water to the thirsty, I have clothed the naked ... I have not calumniated the slave in the ears of his master." The lengthy panegyrics of which some epitaphs consist, are, in reality no more than amplifications of this theme. "As for me, I have been the staff of the old man, the nurse of the infant, the help of the distressed, a warm shelter for all who were cold in the Thebad, the bread and sustenance of the down-trodden, of whom there is no lack in Middle Egypt, and their protector against the barbarians."[64] The prince Entef relates that he has "arrested the arm of the violent, used brute force to those who used brute force, showed hauteur to the haughty, and lowered the shoulders of those who raised them up," that he himself on the other hand, "was a man in a thousand, wise, learned, and of a sound and truthful judgment, knowing the fool from the wise man, paying attention to the skilful and turning his back upon the ignorant, ...

the father of the miserable and the mother of the motherless, the terror of the cruel, the protector of the disinherited, the defender of those whose goods were coveted by men stronger than themselves, the husband of the widow, the asylum of the orphan."[65]

[64] Louvre, c. i. Cf. MASPERO, _un Gouverneur de Thebes au temps de la douzieme dynastie_.

[65] Quoted by MASPERO, _Conference sur l'Histoire des ames dans l'egypte ancienne, d'apres les Monuments du Musee du Louvre_ (_a.s.sociation scientifique de France, Bulletin hebdomadaire_, No. 594; _23 Mars, 1879_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 30.--From the tomb of Menofre, at Sakkarah.

(Champollion, pl. 408.)]

Amoni, hereditary prince of the nome of Meh, talks in the same fas.h.i.+on. "I have caused sorrow to no youth under age, I have despoiled no widow, nor have I repelled any labourer, I have imprisoned no shepherd, I have never taken for the labour gangs the serfs of him who had but five, there have been no paupers, nor has any man or woman starved in my time; for, although there have been years of scarcity, I have caused all the tillable land in Meh to be tilled, from the northern frontier to that of the south, and have made such arrangements and such provision for the people that there has been no famine among them; I have given to the widow and to the married woman alike, and I have never made any distinction between the great and the small in my gifts."[66]

[66] Translated by MASPERO (_la Grande Inscription de Beni-Ha.s.san_ in the _Recueil de Travaux relatifs a la Philologie et a l'Archeologie egyptienne et a.s.syrienne_ (t. i. pp.

173-174)).

Doubtless these laudatory self-descriptions may be exaggerated in some respects; hyperbole has ever been a favourite figure with the composers of epitaphs, and those of Egypt formed no exception to the rule. As M. Maspero remarks in connection with this question, "The man as he is, often differs very greatly from the man as he thinks he is."

But we may safely say that the Egyptian realized some portion of the ideal which he set before himself. If only to obtain admiration and esteem, he would practice, to a certain extent, the virtues of which he boasted. Many signs combine to tell us that the Egyptians of all cla.s.ses possessed a large fund of tenderness and good-will. The master was often both clement and charitable; the peasant, the servant, and the slave, were patient and cheerful, and that in spite of the fatigue of labours which could never enrich them. In a country so favoured by nature, men had so few wants that they had no experience of all that is implied by that doleful word poverty, with us. The pure skies and brilliant suns.h.i.+ne, the deep draughts of Nile water, and the moments of repose under the shadows of the sycamores, the freshness of the evening bath, the starry night with its reinvigorating breezes, were all enjoyments which the poorest could share.

We need feel no surprise therefore at the vivacity with which one of the most learned of the historians of Egypt, Brugsch-Bey, protests against the common misconception of the Egyptians "as a race grave, serious, morose, exclusive, religious, thinking much of the next world, and little of this; living, in a word, like the Trappists of former days. Are we to believe," he cries, "that this majestic river and the fertile soil through which it flows, this azure sky with its unclouded sun, produced a nation of living mummies, a race of solemn philosophers who looked upon life in this world as a burden to be shuffled off as quickly as possible? Travel over Egypt; examine the scenes painted and sculptured upon the walls of sepulchral chambers; read the inscriptions carved upon stone or traced in ink upon the rolls of papyrus, and you will find yourself compelled to modify the false notions you have imbibed as to the Egyptian philosophers.

Nothing could be more cheerful, more amusing or more frank, than the social life of this pleasure-loving people. Far from wis.h.i.+ng to die, they prayed to the G.o.ds for a long life and a happy old age; they prayed that, 'if possible, they might live to the perfect age of one hundred and ten.' They were addicted to all kinds of pleasures. They drank, they sang, they danced, they were fond of excursions into the country, where the sports of hunting and fis.h.i.+ng were specially reserved for the upper cla.s.s. As a natural effect of this desire for enjoyment, gay conversation and pleasantry which was sometimes rather free, jokes and what we should call chaff, were much in vogue: even their tombs were not sacred from their desire for a jest."[67]

[67] BRUGSCH-BEY, _Histoire d'egypte_, pp. 14, 15.

The worst government, the sternest oppression, could never extinguish this natural gaiety; it was too intimately connected with the climate and the natural conditions of the country, conditions which had never changed since the days of Menes. Never were the Egyptians more roughly treated than under Mehemet Ali and the late viceroy; their condition was compared, with justice, to that of the negroes in Carolina and Virginia, who, before the American civil war, laboured under the whips of their drivers, and enjoyed no more of the fruits of their own labour than what was barely sufficient to keep life in their bodies.

Torn from their homes and kept by force in the public works, the fellahs died in thousands; those who remained in the fields had to pay the taxes one or two years in advance; they were never out of debt, nominally, to the public treasury, and the rattan of the collector extorted from them such savings as they might make during years of plenty, up to the last coin. But still laughter did not cease in Egypt! Look, for instance, at the children in the streets of Cairo who let out mounts to sight-seeing Europeans. Let the tourist trot or gallop as he will, when he stops he finds his donkey-boy by his side, full of spirits and good humour; and yet perhaps while running behind his "fare" he has been making his midday meal upon a few grains of maize tied up in a corner of his s.h.i.+rt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 31.--Water Tournament, from a tomb at Khoum-el-Ahmar. (From Prisse.)]

In 1862 I returned from Asia Minor in company with M. Edmond Guillaume, the architect, and M. Jules Delbet, the doctor, of our expedition to Ancyra. We took the longest way home, by Syria and Egypt. At Cairo, Mariette, after having shown us the museum at Boulak, wished to introduce us to his own "Serapeum." He took us for a night to his house in the desert, and showed us the galleries of the tomb of Apis by torchlight. We pa.s.sed the next afternoon in inspecting those excavations in the necropolis of Sakkarah which have led to the recovery of so many wonders of Egyptian art. The works were carried on by the labour of four hundred children and youths, summoned by the _corvee_ for fifteen days at a time from some district, I forget which, of Middle Egypt. At sunset these young labourers quitted their work and seated themselves in groups, according to their native villages, upon the still warm sand. Each drew from a little sack, containing his provision for two or three weeks, a dry cake; those whose parents were comfortably off had also, perhaps, a leek or a raw onion. But even for such _gourmands_ as those, the repast was not a long one. Supper over, they chattered for a time, and then went to rest; the bigger and stronger among them took possession of some abandoned caves, the others stretched themselves upon the bare earth; but, before going to sleep they sang; they formed themselves into two choirs who alternated and answered one another, and this they kept up to an advanced hour of the night.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 32.--Mariette's House.]

I shall never forget the charm of that night in the desert, nor the weird aspect of the moonlight upon the sea of sand. Were it not that no star was reflected upon its surface, and that no ray scintillated as it does even on the calmest sea, we might have thought ourselves in mid ocean. Sleep came to me reluctantly. While I listened to the alternate rise and fall of the chorus outside, I reflected upon how little those children required; upon the slender wants of their fathers and mothers, who, like them, sink into their nightly sleep with a song upon their lips. I compared this easy happiness with the restless and complicated existence which we should find, at the end of a few days, in the ambitious cities of the West, and I regretted that our year of travel, our twelve months of unrestrained life in the desert or the forest, had come to an end.

-- 5.--_The Egyptian Religion and its Influence upon the Plastic Arts._

We have still to notice the profoundly religious character of Egyptian art. "The first thing that excites our surprise, when we examine the reproductions of Egyptian monuments which have been published in our day, is the extraordinary number of scenes of sacrifice and wors.h.i.+p which have come down to us. In the collection of plates which we owe to contemporary archaeologists, we can hardly find one which does not contain the figure of some deity, receiving with impa.s.sive countenance the prayers or offerings of a prostrate king or priest. One would say that a country with so many sacred pictures and sculptures, must have been inhabited by G.o.ds, and by just enough men for the service of their temples.[68] The Egyptians were a devout people. Either by natural tendency or by force of education, they saw G.o.d pervading the whole of their universe; they lived in Him and for Him. Their imaginations were full of His greatness, their words of His praise, and their literature was in great part inspired by grat.i.tude for the benefits which He showered upon them. Most of their ma.n.u.scripts which have come down to us treat of religious matters, and even in those which are ostensibly concerned only with profane subjects, mythological names and allusions occur on every page, almost at every line."[69]

[68] The saying of one of the characters of Petronius might be applied to Egypt: "This country is so thickly peopled with divinities that it is easier to find a G.o.d than a man." The place held by religious observances in the daily life of Egypt is clearly indicated by HERODOTUS (ii. 37): "The Egyptians," he says, "are very religious; they surpa.s.s all other nations in the adoration with which they regard their deities."

[69] MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne_, pp. 26, 27.

An examination into the primitive religious beliefs of the Egyptians is full of difficulty. In discovering new papyri, in determining the signification of signs which have been puzzling egyptologists, the inquirer will undoubtedly do good work, and will establish facts which are sure not to lack interest and even importance; but even when doc.u.ments abound and when every separate word they contain is understood, even then it is very difficult to penetrate to the root of their meaning. A glimpse will be caught of it, I admit, by one of those efforts of inductive divination which distinguish modern research; but even then it will remain to explain the primitive and only half-understood notions of five or six thousand years ago in the philosophical vocabularies of to-day. It is here that the most difficult and irksome part of the task begins. We who represent the old age, or, perhaps, the prime, of humanity, think of these matters and speak of them as abstractions, while the Egyptians, who were children compared to us, thought of them under concrete forms. Their very ideals were material, more or less vague and refined perhaps, but still material. Their only conception of a deity was of a figure larger, more vigorous and more beautiful than mortals; the powers and attributes with which it was endowed were all physical. If we attempt to express their conceptions in abstract terms, we falsify their meaning. We cannot avoid altering it to a certain extent, for exact equivalents are not to be found, and, in spite of all precautions, we give to the confused and childish ideas of ancient religion, a precision which is entirely modern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 33.--Amenhotep or Amenophis III. presented by Phre to Amen-Ra; Thebes. (Champollion, pl. 344.)]

If, under these reserves, we study the Egyptian theology in its most learned and refined form--namely, that which it attained during the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties--we shall dimly perceive that it implies a belief in the unity of the First Cause of all life. But this belief is obscured behind the numerous G.o.ds who are, in fact, emanations from its substance and manifestations of its indefatigable activity. It is in the person of these G.o.ds that the divine essence takes form. Each of them has his own name, his own figure, and his own special share in the management of the universe; each of them presides over the production of some particular order of phenomena and insures their regularity. These G.o.ds are related to each other as fathers, mothers, and sons. They thus form a vast hierarchy of beings, superior to man, and each enjoying a dignity corresponding to his rank in the series. There is, so to speak, most of divinity in those who are nearest to the "one G.o.d in heaven or earth who was not begotten."

These deities are divided into groups of three, each group const.i.tuting a family, like those of earth, consisting of father, mother, and son. Thus from triad to triad, the concealed G.o.d develops his sovereign powers to all eternity, or, to use an expression dear to the religious schools of ancient Egypt, "he creates his own members, which are themselves G.o.ds."[70]

[70] This formula frequently occurs in the texts. To cite but one occasion, we find upon a Theban invocation to Amen, translated by P. PIERRET (_Recueil de Travaux relatifs a la Philologie et a l'Archeologie egyptienne et a.s.syrienne_, t. i.

p. 70), at the third line of the inscription: "Sculptor, thou modelest thine own members; thou begettest them, not having thyself been begotten."

How should the science of comparative religion cla.s.s this form of faith? Should it be called polytheism or pantheism? The answer is, perhaps, not of great importance, and this is hardly the place for its discussion. It is certain that, practically, the Egyptians were polytheists. The Egyptian priests, indeed, had, by dint of long reflection, arrived at the comprehension, or at least at the contemplation, of that First Cause which had started the river of life--that inexhaustible stream of which the Nile with its fertilising waves was the concrete image--in its long journey across time and s.p.a.ce. But the devotion of the people themselves never succeeded in mounting above the minor divinities, above those intermediaries in whom the divine principle and attributes became personified and put on the tangibility of body necessary to make them intelligible to childish understandings. So, too, was it with artists, and for still more powerful reasons; as by forms only could they express the ideas which they had conceived. Even in those religions which are most clearly and openly monotheistic and spiritual, such as Christianity, art has done something of the same kind. Aided in secret by one of the most powerful instincts of the human soul, it has succeeded, in spite of all resistance and protestation, in giving plastic expression to those parts of our belief which seem least fitted for such treatment; and it has caused those methods of expression to be so accepted by us that we see nothing unnatural in the representation under the features of an old man, of the first Person of the Trinity,--of that Jehovah who, in the Old Testament, proscribed all graven images with such impartial rigour; who, in the Evangel, described Himself as "the Truth and the Life."

In Egypt, both sculptors and painters could multiply their images to infinity without coming into collision with dogma, without provoking the regrets or censures of its most severe interpreters. Doctrine did not condemn these personifications, even when it had been refined and elaborated by the speculative theologians of Thebes and Heliopolis.

In the interior of the temples, there was a small cla.s.s of mystics who took pleasure in contemplating "the 'One' who exists by his own essential power, the only being who substantially exists." Even then men tried, as they have often done since, to define the undefinable, to grasp the incomprehensible, to perceive the supreme "I AM" through the s.h.i.+fting and transparent veil of natural phenomena. But those refined metaphysics never touched and influenced the crowd, and never will. The deity, in order to be perceived by them and to touch their feelings, must have his unity broken; he must, if the expression be admissible, be cut up into morsels for them.

By a process of "abstraction" which is as old as religion itself, the human intelligence is led to consider separately each of the qualities of existence, each of the forces which it perceives to be at work either within man himself or in the exterior world. At first it thinks those forces and qualities are distributed impartially to all creation. It confounds existence with life. Hence the reign of _fetis.h.i.+sm_, when man believes, as young children do, that thought, pa.s.sion, and volition like his own, are to be found in everything he meets. His own image seems to him reflected as in a mirror with a thousand converging facets, and he is unable to distinguish the real condition of things outside it.

Certain celestial and terrestrial bodies make a particularly strong impression upon his mind by their size, their beauty, by their evil or beneficial effects upon himself. They fill him with more than the average grat.i.tude, admiration, or terror. Driven by the illusion which possesses him, he places the origin of those qualities which seem to him the highest and most important, in the bodies which have made so deep an impression upon his senses; to them he attributes the friendly or hostile influences which alternately excite his desire and his fear. According to circ.u.mstances a fetish might be a mountain, a rock or a river, a plant or an animal. It might be those heavenly bodies which exercised much more influence over the life of primitive man than they do over us; it might be the moon and stars, which tempered the darkness of the night and diminished its terrors; it might be the cloud, from whose bosom came rain and thunder; above all, it might be the sun which returned every morning to light and warm the world.

Differences of climate and race had their modifying effect, but everywhere one common characteristic is to be found. It was always to some material and visible object that the human intellect referred those forces and qualities which it drew from its own consciousness; forces which, when thus united with something tangible, const.i.tuted the first types of those divine beings whom mankind have so long adored, to whom they have turned for ages in their hope and fear.

As the years pa.s.sed away, man advanced beyond his primitive conceptions. He did not entirely renounce them--we may indeed see reminiscences of them all around us--but he superimposed others upon them which were more complex. His powers of observation, still imperfect though they were, began to insinuate into his mind a disbelief in the activity of inanimate matter, and those objects which were nearest to him, which he could touch with his hand, were the first victims of his disenchantment. Thus began a long course of intellectual development, the result of which we know, although the various stages of its progress are difficult to follow at this distance of time. It appears certain, however, that star wors.h.i.+p formed the transition between _fetis.h.i.+sm_ and _polytheism_. Men no longer attributed vital forces and pre-eminent qualities generally to bodies with which they themselves were in immediate contact, to stones and trees; but they found no difficulty in continuing to a.s.sign them to those great luminaries whose distance and beauty placed them, so to speak outside the material world. As they gradually deprived inanimate matter of the properties with which they had once gifted it, they sought for new objects to which they might attach those properties.

These they found in the stars which shone in the firmament century after century, and knew neither old age nor death; and especially in the most brilliant, the most beneficent, and the most necessary of them all, in that sun whose coming they awaited every morning with an impatience which must once have been mixed with a certain amount of anxiety.

The attributes which awakened intelligence had taken away from the inanimate objects of the world could not be left floating in s.p.a.ce.

They became gradually and imperceptibly grouped in men's minds around the great luminary of day, and a bond of union was found for the different members of the group by endowing the sun with a personality modelled upon that of man. This operation was favoured by the const.i.tution of contemporary language, by its idioms made up entirely of those images and metaphors which, by their frank audacity, surprise and charm us in the works of the early poets. It commenced with the first awakening of thought, when man endowed all visible nature with the bounding life which he felt in his own veins. No effort of intelligence was required for its commencement or for its prosecution.

The sun became a young hero advancing, full of pride and vigour, upon the path prepared for him by Aurora; a hero who pursued his daily path in spite of all obstacle or hindrance, who, when evening came, went to his rest amid all the glories of an eastern sunset, and amid the confidence of all that after his hours of sleep he would take up his eternal task with renewed vigour. He was an invincible warrior. He was sometimes an angry master, whose glance killed and devoured. He was above all the untiring benefactor of mankind, the nurse and father of all life. Whether as Indra or as Amen-Ra, it was the same cry that went up to him from Egypt and Hindostan; the prayers which we find in the Vedas and in the papyri, breathe the same sentiments and were addressed to the same G.o.d.[71]

[71] See the fine hymns quoted and translated by M. Maspero in his _Histoire ancienne_, pp. 30-37.

This solar G.o.d and the divinities who resemble him, form the transition from the simple fetish to complete deities, to those G.o.ds who played such an important part in the Egyptian religion, and attained to their highest and most complete development in the h.e.l.lenic mythology. In some respects, the luminous globe of the sun with its compulsory course, belonged to the same category as the material objects which received the first wors.h.i.+p of humanity. But its brilliance, its tranquil and majestic movement, and the distance which conceals its real substance from the eye of man, allowed his imagination to endow it with the purest and n.o.blest characteristics which the finest examples of humanity could show; while the phenomena which depend upon its action are so numerous that there was no hesitation in a.s.signing to it qualities and energies of the most various kinds.

This type when once established was used for the creation of other deities, which were all, so to speak, cast in the same mould. As the intellect became more capable of abstraction and a.n.a.lysis, the personality and moral individuality of these G.o.ds gradually threw off its astral or physical characteristics, although it never lost all trace of their existence. It resulted that, both in Egypt and in Greece, there were deities who were mere ent.i.ties, the simple embodiment of some power, some quality, or some virtue. It requires all the subtle _finesse_ of modern criticism to seek out and distinguish the obscure roots which attach these divinities to the naturalistic beliefs of earlier ages. Sometimes absolute certainty is not to be attained, but we may safely say that a race is polytheistic when we find these abstract deities among their G.o.ds, such deities as the Ptah, Amen, and Osiris of the Egyptians, and the Apollo and Athene of the Greeks.[72]

[72] Several of the bronzes which we reproduce may belong to the Ptolemaic epoch; but they are repet.i.tions of types and attributes which had been fixed for many centuries by tradition.

It is in this capacity chiefly that we reproduce them, as examples of those forms which seemed to the Egyptian imagination to offer the most satisfactory emblems of their G.o.ds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 34.--Amen or Ammon, from a bronze in the Louvre.

Height 2204 inches.]

We may, then, define polytheism as the part.i.tion of the highest attributes of life between a limited number of agents. The imagination of man could not give these agents life without at the same time endowing them with essential natural characteristics and with the human form, but, nevertheless, it wished to regard them as stronger, more beautiful and less ephemeral than man. The system had said its last word and was complete, when it had succeeded in embodying in some divine personality each of those forces whose combined energy produces movement in the world or guarantees its duration.

When religious evolution follows its normal course, the work of reflection goes on, and in course of time makes new discoveries. It refers, by efforts of conjecture, all phenomena to a certain number of causes, which it calls G.o.ds. It next perceives that these causes, or G.o.ds, are of unequal importance, and so it const.i.tutes them into a hierarchy. Still later it begins to comprehend that many of these causes are but different names for one thing, that they form but one force, the application of a single law. Thus by reduction and simplification, by logic and a.n.a.lysis, is it carried on to recognize and proclaim the unity of all cause. And thus monotheism succeeds to polytheism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35.--Ptah, from a bronze in the Louvre. Actual size.]

In Egypt, religious speculation arrived on the threshold of this doctrine. Its depths were dimly perceived, and it was even taught by the select cla.s.s of priests who were the philosophers of those days; but the monotheistic conception never penetrated into the minds of the great ma.s.s of the people.[73] Moreover, by the very method in which Egyptian mythology described it, it was easily adapted to the national polytheism, or even to fetish wors.h.i.+p. The theory of emanations reconciled everything. The different G.o.ds were but the different qualities of the eternal substance, the various manifestations of one creative force. These qualities and energies were revealed by being imported into the world of form. They took finite shape and were made comprehensible to the intellect of man by their mysterious birth and generation. It was necessary, if the existence of the G.o.ds were to be brought home to mankind, that each of them should have a form and a domicile. Imagination therefore did well in commencing to distinguish and define the G.o.ds; artists were piously occupied when they pursued the same course. They gave precision of contour to the forms roughly sketched, and by the established definition which they gave to each divine figure, we might almost say that they created the G.o.ds.

[73] In his work ent.i.tled _Des deux Yeux du Disque solaire_, M.

GReBAUT seems to have very clearly indicated how far we are justified in saying that Egyptian religious speculation at times approached monotheism (_Recueil de Travaux, etc._, t. i. p.