Indigenous Races of the Earth

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104 Gl~NERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPllY. simplc,49 philosophical speculation tamc,t,o whilst critical history seems to have boon unknown to thoro. Induction teaches us that tho art of such a race must be analogous; truthful, but narrow; practical, but of no high pretensions; and indeed we find, upon c1oso observa­tion, tlutt it displays very little variety in its forms; but within its narrow range it is distinguished, however, by tho utmost :fidelity and trnthfnlness. Ideal heroic types are entirely foreign to Egyptian art; we find. scarcely any scenes purely mythological, in the abstract sense of the term (that is, as admired in IIellonic and Etruscan art), among their num rous reliefs or paintings; the representations of godhead and. subot'd.inatc divinities being always brought into connexion with sacrifices and. oblations, which almost seem to have boon the only object of tho nation's religion. The king, his pomp, processions, and. battles, and. the individual life, daily occupations, sports and pastimes of the Egyptians, remain tho favourite subjects of the n.rtists who, for more than two thousand years of routine, constantly returned to that source, without ever exhausting it, always marking their composition with tho stamp of truth, and preserving tho groat­est regard for individuality. Accordingly, the statues, whenever tlt y represent men, and. not gods, are portraits intended to give tho real, and not tho embellished and idealized features of tho men represented. But, whilst we moot with the greatest variety in respect to the faces, the posture of the statues remains altogether stereotyped during all tho times of Egyptian history. Statuary had, in tho valley of the Nile, very few forms of expres­sion ; about six or seven, which wore repeated over and over again, all of them of tho most rigid symmetry, without any movement. N 0 passion ever enlivened the earnest features, no emotion of the soul disturbed tho docent composure and archaic dignity imparted by the Egyptian sculptor. "No warrior was sculptured in tho various atti­tud~ s .of attack and defen~e; no Wl'estler, no disco bolus, no pugilist exhibited tho grace, the v1gour, the muscular action of a man; nor 40 As a sample, sec DE Rouolil's French rendering of a hieratic payprus which presents sundry curious analogies with the story of Joseph.- Revue Arclieolooi"ue 1852. vol · pp. 885-97. ~ ' ' ' IX., GO 1.'~ judge, ~hat is, by the "Book of the Dead," (LBPSIUB, 'I'odtenbucl' der .!Egypur nach de~ Ilteroglyplmclle~ Popyru& in Turin, Leipzig, 4to, 1842) orns Dnuoson (Sai~an-Sintill, tive L1ber Met~mpsycl&otl& velerum .!Egyptiorum, Berlin, 4to, 1851, p. 42) restores Champollion's name fo.r It,. the "Funereal Ritual,"-whcroin, amid the recondite puerilities of n celestial lodge, ~tlh ~ts ordeals, quaint pass-words, and ministering demons, it is evident that an ~~ypttnn's.tilea of n ." F~tu:e State" in Heaven never soared above aspirations foT n rope­litton of lns torrostrtnl hfc m Egypt itself! Be it noted here that M. de Roug6 has found ~ho Cllltpt~r "On life aft.cr death" on n. monument of the X lith dynnsty; thereby csto.blish­mg the oxtstcnco of large portions of this Ritual in nntc-Abi·nhll.mic days. G E N E R A L R E :M AR K S 0 N I C 0 N 0 G RAP ll Y. 105 were tho beauties, the feeling, and the elegance of female forms dis­played in stone : all was made to conform to tho same inva1·iablo model, which confined tho human figure to a few conventional posLut'es." 51 Of groups they knew only two, both of them most characteristic. Sometimes it is the husband with tho wife, seated on tho same chair on terms of perB ct equality, holding one another's hand., or putting thoil' aems round. one another's waist, in sign of matrimonial Lappi­ness, evidently founded upon monog,tmy and. perfect social cqualiLy between tho scxos.62 Sometimes again it is the husbaucl, in bis character of tho head of tho family, quietly sitting on a chair, accom­panied. by tho standing figures of his wife and. childt· n, sculpLurcd. as accessories, and considerably smaller in size than tho huf:lband and father. As to tho single statues, they are either standing erect, the arms hanging down to tho thighs in a straight line (though occasionally tho right hand holding a sceptre, whip, or oth r tool, is rail:lccl to the chest), tho loft foot always stopping forward; 01· Lhc figur is seated., with tho hands resting on the knees, or held across tho breast. Another attitude is that of a person kneeling on the ground, and holding tho shrine of some deity before him. Tho representation of a man squatting on tho ground and resting his arms upon his knees, which arc dl·awn up to his chin, is tho most clumsy of tho Egyptian forms, if the most natural posture to tho race, boiug perpetuated to tbis day by tho Fellaheen when resting themselves; whilst tho statues in a crouching position arc tho most graceful for their natural na;ivete. If we add to these few vat·iotics of positions tho stone coffins, imita­ting tho mummy lying on its back, and swadd.l d in its clothes, we bavc exhausted all tho forms of Egyptian statuary. Specimens of these six attitudes, all of thoro equally rigid and symmetrical, being found among the earliest monuments of tho empire from the IVth to tho XIIIth dynasty, it cannot be doubted that Egyptjan statuary added. no new form to their primitive sculptural typos during the long lapse of nearly thil'ty centuries, which wrought certainly some variety into tho details, but not upon tho forms. In fact, tho statue 61 Sir J. GARDNER Wn.KtNSON, Popular account of the ancimt Egyptians, II. 272. There nrc some pal'uo.l exceptions to tho rigor of this rule, such ns the "Wrcstlora at Denihnssu.n," the "M:usicinns at Tcl-cl-amarnu.," "Rn.mcsses pln.ying chess nt Mcdccnct-Tinboo," tho same monn.roh "spearing tho Scythian chief" nt Aboosimbol, u.n occasional group in grand battlo-tablenux, various scones of negro captives, &o. ; but they appear to be accidental, or perhaps instinctive, cff'orts of individual artists to escape from the conventional trammels prescribed by theocratic art. In the folio plates of Roacllini, Chnmpollion, Caillenud, Prisse, and Lcpsius-cspccially the last two authorities-such instances may be found. 6i Idem, II. 224.