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Show 106 GENERAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPITY. was in Egypt never emancipated from architecture. 53 It was sculptul' d for a certain and determinate place, always in connection with a temple, palace, or sepulchre, of which it became a subservient orun.mcntal portion, an architectural member as it were, Hkc the pair of ob lisks plac d ever in front of the pl'opyleia, or th columns supporting a pronaos. Tbis poverty of forms, and their constantly r curring monotony, mal c tho inspection of large Egyptian collections as tiresome to tho great bulk of vi itors, as tho review of a Ru sian r gimont is to th civilian; one figure resembles tho other, aud only the closer inv stigation of an experienced cyo des01·ics a difiercnce of style and individuality. Tho ba~;-rolicfs were not, for tho Egyptians, so much independent works of art, as architectural oruament'3, and means for conv ying knowleclgo, answering ofteu tho purpose of a kind of vignettes or illustrations of hieroglypbical inscriptions. They record always some d iincd, historical, religious, or domestic scene, without pretension to any allegorical double-mcaninO', or esoteric symbolism. Beauty remained with their hioroO'rammatic artists less important than distinctno s, the COIT ctnoss of drawing being sacrificed to convontionali~; ms of hieratic style; but, on tho other hand, a general trutllfuln ss of the representation was peculiarly aimed at. Tho unnatural mannerism of the Egyptinn bas-relief manifests itself principally in the too l1igh position of tho ear,64 and in representing tho yo and ch st as ht front view, whilst th h ad and lower part of tho body are drnw~ in p~·ofilo.00 Ncvertholoss, this constant mannerism and many o.cci~SJOna~ .mc?1:roctnessos arc blended with the most minute apprecHttwn oi. mdtvtdual and national character. It is impossibl not at once to recognize tho portraits of tho Icings upon th ir different monuments; and we alight on reliefs wh re some of tho :figur s arc so carol sr:;ly drawn as to present two right or two left hands to the spoct~tor, yet comb~ncd with such characteristic effigies of negroes, of Shmmtos, of A~sJl·mns, of ubi~ns, &c., that th y remain superior to the rcprosont.'ttlOns of human races by tho Greeks and Romans. This goncr.al truthfulness applies to Egyptian al·t from the very first ~awn of lnstory, throughout all tho subsequent periods, down to the tune of t~w Romm~ conquest. But whilst the principal features of art l'CID~111ed s.tatwnary, the eye of the art-student finds many changes m dcta1ls, and those constitute tho history of Bgyptian art. : Cf. WJI.JUNBON, .Architecture of the .Ancient Egyptian8, London, 1853. . MoRTON, Oran . .!Egypt., Pbilttd., 1844, 11p. 26-7; and "inoditod MSS." in 'l'1Jpcs of "lfan-kl~~ · P· 818 =-;PRUNBR, Die Ueberbleibsel der .A ltiigyptisltchen.ilfenscllenrafe,MUnch~n,l846,p.6. For n. ludicrous exn.mple, soe tho" 87 Prisoners at Benihn.san.n," in ltos:ELJ.INJ, M. R. XXVI-VIII; of the remote age of tho XIIth dynasty. GENEHAL REMARKS ON ICONOGRAPHY. 107 Th proportions of the statues in the time of tho Old Em pit' [Hay from the 35th century n. o., down to the 20th,00 ] arc short and h 'twy; the figures look, thcr 'fore, somewhat awkward; but, on Lho wlwlo, they arc conceived with considerable feeling of trutl1, and executed with tho endeavour to obtain anatomical correctness. Th principal form~; of the body, and even its details, tlw sknll, the muAclcs of tho chest and of the knees, aro nearly always correctly sculptur c1 in close but not servile imitation of nature. The shape of tho eye if! not yet dif!figurcd by a conventionrtl frame, nor is the oar put too hiO'h; but tho fingers and toes evidently oftered the greato~;t di fficu ltio~; to the primeval EO'yptian artists. They commonly fail d to form tl10m correctly; the simplicity and ex~L titudo diHplayod in sculpLming the face and body scal'ccly over extended to tho hands and feet, which arc blunt and awkward. The earliest of all the statues now extant in the wo1·lcl, as far aR wo know, is tho effigy of KAM-TJ<JN, or UoMTJDN, a "royal kinHrnan" of tho lld dyna ty, fonnd in his tomb at Auoosccr, mtd now in the Berlin Museum. 'l'ho followinO' wood-cut [7] is a faithfulr dueLion of thiA statnc's head, cbaracL t'i7.od by a good-natur cl oxpt·osHion, without any mannerism or conventional typo about th featu1·es; the eye i~; correctly, and the mouth natumlly drawn ; not yet twisted into tho stor otypcd unmeaning smile of tho lnt r pol'iods. It is interesting to compare the head ofthis statue with the low-relief portrait [8] of the sam prin o {i·om the same tomb, in ord r to per civo the difference botwo n the artisLic conception of a statnc and of a relief in Egypt. The relief portrait is cvi- Fig. 7. GO As previously st~ttcd, in the present impossibility of n.tt~tining, for times ontcrio1' to tho XVIIth dynasty, any precise chronology, we shall make usc heroin of the vn.p;uc term centuries, when treating on events anterior to tho age of Solomon, taken at B. C. 1000. 1'hc numerical system of Chcv. L~wsius furnishes the scrllc prcforrcd by uR, which is dofinocl in Types of ~Mankind, p. (j !J. His ~trrangomcnt of Egyptian dyn~tAtics m~ty be consulted in Briefe aus JI!Jgyptcn, JEtMopien und der Jlalbinsel des Si11ai, Dorlin, 1852, pp. 364-!J; of which the elegant English translation by the Misses II ORNER (Dohn's Library, 1853) contains the later omcnd11tions of this learned Egyptologist. 6T Communicated in lithograph by Chov. Lopsius to Mr. Glidden; together with om subsequent Nos., 8, 9, 10, and other honda that space precludes us from inserting; but for the important usc of nll which, in these iconographic and ethnological studies, we beg to tender to the Chevalier our joint acknowledgments. |