Читать книгу Historic Ornament - James M Ward - Страница 12

Table of Contents

According to their most ancient traditions, the Egyptian race descended from a point high up on the Nile, or the land of Ethiopia, but modern science proves them to belong to a Caucasian race, and not of the Negro type. The name Egypt has been derived from “Het-ka-Ptah,” one of the titles of the city of Memphis, which means “The Temple of the Genius of Ptah,” and has been interpreted by the Greeks as “Aiguptos,” the latter being the old name for the Nile.

On the south of Egypt dwelt the Nubians or Ethiopians; on the west the Libyans, a fair-skinned race, who, being a warlike people, were employed by the Egyptians as mercenary troops; and on the north-east the nomadic Semitic tribes of Edom and Southern Syria. The latter people often wandered west to feed their flocks in the Delta of Lower Egypt, and in course of time formed, with the Phœnician traders, a large proportion of the population of the lower kingdom of Egypt. It was on the north-east frontier, on the Isthmus of Suez, that Egypt had most to fear from her foreign enemies.

Nearly all the art of the various peoples and nations of the world was developed in relation to their religion, and most of it—as elsewhere stated—originated in symbolic signs that represented, under various forms, human or otherwise, the original objects or phenomena which they worshipped. This was the case especially so in Egypt; and this must be our plea to describe here briefly the principal outlines of the Egyptian religion.

Fig. 82.—Isis nursing her Son, Horus. (P. & C.) Height, 19 ins.

The religion of the Egyptians had two developments, one tending towards Monotheism, and the other to Polytheism. They believed in one god, who was the king of all gods; and, on the other hand, they had their mythical gods, who personified whatever was permanent in natural phenomena, such as the sun, moon, sky, stars, earth, light, darkness, floods, the seasons, the year, and the hours. The goddess Nut represented the sky, and was known also under the names of Neith, Isis, Hathor, Sekhet, &c., which were the names of the sky at sunrise or sunset (Fig. 82). The sun had names without number, as Rā, Horus, Ptah, Tmu, Setek, Amen, &c. (Figs. 83, 84). Osiris and Sekru are names of the sun after he has set, or is “dead and buried” (Fig. 85). Osiris is king of the dead, and, in mythological language, he is slain by his brother Set, who personified night, who in his turn is slain by Horus (Fig. 82), who is the heir of Osiris. Horus signifies the “one above,” and Amen-Rā, the great king of all the gods, signifies “the one who hides himself.” The great Amen-Rā was the mightiest god in all the Egyptian pantheon. He was the great god of Thebes.

The gods were represented in human shape, and also m animal form. The animals, or animal combinations, were simply symbolical of the gods on account of certain attributes common to each, or in some cases because they bore the same name.

The Egyptians were intense believers in a future state, hence the great care bestowed on their dead, for they believed that the body should be preserved in order to insure a state of bliss for the soul in the future world. Every human being had its “double,” or ghost “Ka,” as well as its ghost “Ba,” which we often find represented under the form of a human being with a hawk’s head. Sometimes the image of a man was buried with him. This was to represent his “double,” and is, therefore, called a “Ka” statue, or image. The “Ba,” or soul, was supposed to be “luminous.”

Fig. 83.—Amen, or Ammon, bronze. (P. & C.)

Fig. 84.—Ptah, from a bronze Actual Size. (P. & C.)

It is supposed that many of the animals and animal forms buried with and painted on the coffins of the Egyptian dead were, in remote times, the sacred animals or “Totems” belonging to the dead man’s family. “Totem worship” may have been the most ancient form of the Egyptian religion. The Temple of Bubastis (in the Delta) was sacred to the goddess Bast, or Pasht, the cat-headed goddess (Fig. 86). The cat was, therefore, a sacred animal or a “Totem,” in ancient Egypt, like the ibis, hawk, asp, beetle, &c., totems; and so in the district or town of Bubastis the Cat Clan, or worshippers of the cat-headed goddess Pasht, built the rock-cut temple called Speos Artemidos, near Beni-Hasan, and dedicated it to her worship.

Fig. 85.—Osiris. (P. & C.)

Fig. 86.—The Goddess Bast, or Pasht. Actual Size. (P. & C.)

The writing of the Egyptians is classified under three heads: the “Hieroglyphic,” or the form in which it appears on the monuments; the “Hieratic,” or priestly writing, as used on the papyrus documents; and the “Demotic,” a cursive or running kind of writing similar to the Hieratic, and a later development of it. In the year 1798 the famous “Rosetta Stone,” now in the British Museum, was found near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile by a French officer. It passed into the hands of the British in 1802. On this stone is inscribed a decree of the priests of Memphis conferring divine honours on Ptolemy V., King of Egypt, B.C. 195. The inscription is in three forms, the Hieroglyphic, the Demotic, and in Greek characters. From this inscription was first obtained the key to the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, and interpretation of the ancient language of Egypt, and the names of the kings which in the hieroglyphics are enclosed in cartouches or oblong rings. Thus the clue was obtained to the identification of the letters of the Egyptian alphabet, which had hitherto baffled all the attempts of Egyptologists to find out. The credit of the identification is chiefly due to the French savant, Champollion, but a considerable share of the honour must be given to Thomas Young, who was the first to find out the correct value of many of the phonetic signs. The Egyptians, from the earliest period known, were acquainted with and skilled in medicine, in astronomy, in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and fiction. The oldest literary papyrus at present known dates from the Third to the Fifth Dynasties (3966 to 3333 B.C.).

Egyptian art was at its best in the earliest Dynasties. The Fourth Dynasty was the great pyramid-building period, and the statues of this great epoch were more natural and artistic, and altogether were less conventional than those of later times.

It is notable that in the Eighteenth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties, after a long period of art depression, the artists went back for inspiration and better models to the work of the men of the Fourth and Twelfth Dynasties.

The history of Egypt can be traced back from 4,400 years before the Christian era, and is divided into thirty Dynasties, whose succession was the result of failure in any of the original lines of marriage, or marriage with a female of lower rank, or of a revolution. The thirty Dynasties are divided into three groups:—

Dynasties I.-XI.	(B.C. 4400-2466)	The Ancient Empire.
” XII.-XIX.	(B.C. 2466-1200)	The Middle Empire.
” XX.-XXX.	(B.C. 1200-340)	The New Empire.

These dates and arrangements are formulated chiefly on the basis of a work written in Greek, and compiled by Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived in the third century B.C.

The kings of Egypt have been named Pharaohs from the title “Peraa”—"great house." The seat or centre of the government shifted its position according to dynastic reasons, or from policy. During the ancient empire it was first at Memphis, and then moved to Abydos and other places in the south as the empire extended. When Egypt was in the height of its glory the centre of government was chiefly at Thebes, but moving often according to revolution or foreign oppression. Rameses and his near successors held their court at the northern city of San, or Tanis. The time of the New Empire was chiefly a period of foreign rule and slow decadence, the seat of the empire shifted to nearly all the former places or capitals and to Bubastis or Sais with each political change.

Fig. 87.—The Great Pyramid of Kheops, and Small Pyramids; from Perring. (P. & C.)

Menes was the first historical king of Egypt, and was supposed to have founded Memphis, where the worship of the god Ptah, “Creator of gods and men,” was first instituted, as well as that of Apis or Hapi, the sacred bull—the Serapis of the Greeks. For the next six hundred years we know scarcely anything of Egyptian history except the names of the kings, until we come to the great period of the Fourth Dynasty (B.C. 3766-3566). Seneferu was the founder of this Dynasty. He conquered the peninsula of Sinai, and worked the valuable mines of copper and turquoise found in that country. His son and successor, Khufu, better known as Kheops (B.C. 3733-3700), was the builder of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh (Fig. 87), which he erected for his tomb. The king Kha-f-Rā (Kephren) (B.C. 3666-3600), built the Second Pyramid, and his son, Men-kau-Rā (Mykerinos) was the builder of the Third Pyramid. Men-kau-Rā was a wise and humane sovereign, and it is recorded to his honour, as an exceptional qualification, that “he did not oppress his people.” In this he was different to most of the Pharaohs. His mummified remains are now in the British Museum. The Sphinx, or man-headed lion, carved out of the solid rock, is near the Great Pyramid, and is supposed to be the work of a much earlier period (Fig. 91).

Fig. 88.—Section through the Great Pyramid of Kheops. (P. & C.)

The Fifth Dynasty (B.C. 3566-3300) is not an important one as far as art is concerned.

The Sixth (B.C. 3300-3100) was noted for the erection of its pyramid tombs and for the religious texts that were inscribed on their interior walls.

Fig. 89.—The Stepped Pyramid. (P. & C.) Supposed to be the most ancient building in Egypt.

Fig. 90.—The Southern Pyramid of Dashour. (P. & C.)

Fig. 91.—The Great Sphinx. (P. & C.)

Fig. 92.—Colossi of Amenophis III. Statues of Memnon at Thebes. (P. & C.)

Fig. 93.—Amenophis III. Presenting an Offering to Amen. (P. & C.)

From the Seventh to the Eleventh Dynasty (B.C. 3100-2466) is a period whose history is almost lost. It meant to the Egyptians a period of more than six hundred years of tribal jealousies and fighting, at the end of which Egypt was consolidated from north to south, and a powerful Dynasty succeeded these internal struggles. The Twelfth Dynasty was a brilliant one for the arts, and for great works of engineering skill. The names of the Pharaohs of this dynasty, Amenemhāt and Usertsen, are among the most renowned in Egyptian history. Great temples were restored or newly built at Thebes, Heliopolis, Tanis, and Abydos. The great artificial lake, Mauur (Moeris of the Greeks), or “great water,” was constructed to receive the surplus waters of the Nile, and to control its floods. The Arabs call this lake “El-Fayyum,” from another of its Egyptian names “Phiom,” the sea. It was completed in the reign of Amenemhāt III. (B.C. 2300-2266). The same king built the celebrated Labyrinth, the “Erpa-re-hent,” or “Temple at the entrance of the Lake,” in which the king himself was interred. His successor was the last king of the Twelfth Dynasty. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dynasties are dark periods in which the invasion of the Elamites and the Nomad tribes from Syria and Western Asia took place. The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties are the “Hyksos” dynasties. The Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were the chief of the above Nomad Asiatic tribes, and consequently usurpers of the native rule. A revolt took place in the reign of one of these kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty, and under Amāsis I., the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the Shepherd Kings were finally driven out of Egypt.

About the end of the Hyksos rule the patriarch Joseph was sold into Egypt. King Nubti (B.C. 1750) is supposed to have been the Pharaoh of that time, and the Hyksos king, Apepa II., is supposed to have been the king that raised Joseph to power. The explorer, M. Jacques de Morgan, expresses the opinion that the Shepherd Kings were the tomb-robbers, who, either from cupidity, or a wish to annihilate the last traces of a conquered race, pillaged every pyramid of its dead, and the treasures there concealed, for not a single pyramid has been found unviolated that was built before the Hyksos Dynasty. Thothmes III. (B.C. 1600) was a powerful and warlike king who compelled Assyria to pay him tribute. In the Eighteenth Dynasty, Egypt was more powerful than at any other period of her history. The great Temples of Thebes, Karnak, and Luxor were built during this dynasty.

A later monarch of this dynasty, Amenophis III., erected on the west of the Nile at Thebes two colossal statues of himself, that the Greeks have named the statues of Memnon, the fabled king of Egypt that was supposed to have been slain in the Trojan wars (Fig. 92).

Another king of this dynasty, Amenophis IV., made himself exceedingly notorious by trying to introduce a new religion, and for this he had his memory execrated, and was deeply cursed as a heretic by priests and people of the succeeding generations. It appears he had imbibed from his mother, Ti, who was an Assyrian princess, certain religious opinions which he determined to force on his own people. In order to do this he removed his capital from Thebes, where the national worship of the great god Amen was celebrated, to Khu-en-aten, the modern Tell-el-Amarna, which name he took for himself, and which means the “splendour of the sun-disk”; there he set up the sun-disk god, Aten (the radiant sun). The new religion, however, was obnoxious to the conservative Egyptians, and soon died out (Fig. 94).

The Nineteenth Dynasty (B.C. 1400-1200) was founded by Rameses I. He was a successful king, but his son Seti (Fig. 95) was a greater one, and had the reputation of being a great builder. It was he who built the great “Hall of Columns,” at Karnak, which joins the pylon of Amenophis III. (Fig. 96).

Fig. 94.—The Adoration of the Solar-disk by Amenophis IV. (P.)

He also built the temple at Kûrnah, and remains of his work is seen at Abydos, Memphis, and Heliopolis. He was succeeded by his famous son Rameses II., the Sesostris of the Greeks, the supposed oppressor of the Israelites. He was a very powerful monarch, and, from all accounts, in order to glorify himself in the eyes of posterity, did not scruple to erase the names of former kings from off their cartouches on their monuments and inscribe his own in their place. That he has accomplished the end he had in view by so doing there is not the slightest doubt, for no monarch of Egypt is better known than he. But apart from this he was certainly a mighty chieftain, who “enriched the land with memorials of his name.”

Fig. 95.—Seti with Attributes of Osiris between Amen and Chuoam. (P. & C.)]

The greatest of his many battles (he was always fighting) was fought with the Khita (Hittites), under the walls of Kadesh, in the valley of the Orontes. His forces were almost defeated when by his personal valour he turned the tide of the battle and entirely routed the Khita (Fig. 97).

Fig. 96.—Entrance to the Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Amen at Karnak. (M.)

The most famous building of his time is the rock-hewn temple, the “Great Temple,” that he built and dedicated to Amen, Ptah, and Harmachis, which faces the Nile at Ipsamboul, in Nubia.

Fig. 97.—The Rout of the Khita; Egyptians to the left, the Khita to the right. (M.)

On the façade of this temple are sculptured in situ four seated colossal figures of Rameses, two on each side of the doorway. From the soles of the feet to the top of the pschent on the head measures sixty-five feet; they are the largest statues in Egypt, and the workmanship is careful in finish. Over the entrance is carved in relief on the rock a colossal figure of the god Rā, and on either side of it are single figures in low-relief of Rameses in the act of adoration (Fig. 98).

Fig. 98.—Façade of the Great Rock-cut Temple at Ipsamboul.

Fig. 99.—Principal Hall in the Great Temple. (H.; P. & C.)

Menephthah (B.C. 1300-1266) was the successor of Rameses II. and his successor was Seti II. The latter was the last king of the Middle Empire. With the commencement of the Twentieth Dynasty the New Empire dates (about B.C. 1200-358). Towards the Twenty-second Dynasty (B.C. 966-776) Egypt began to pass into a state of dissolution. In the Twenty-fourth Dynasty (B.C. 733-700) she was at the mercy of Assyria on the north and Ethiopia on the south. In 672 B.C. the Assyrian King Esarhaddon invaded Egypt and occupied the whole of the Delta, afterwards capturing Memphis and Thebes, which he pillaged. The Assyrian king died suddenly, and Taharka, a native usurper, succeeded in driving out the Assyrians, but soon after Egypt was again conquered by Ashurbanipal, a powerful Assyrian King (B.C. 666). The Assyrians, however, after a short time of occupation withdrew from Egypt, owing to their troubles at home with the Medes, who were laying siege to Nineveh, and Egypt again revived. Under Amāsis the country enjoyed peace for about forty years (B.C. 572-528). The Egyptians possessed a fleet at this time with which they advanced to the Phœnician coast and took the city of Sidon, and also annexed the island of Cyprus to Egyptian rule.

Fig. 100.—Portrait of Rameses II. (Louvre; P. & C.)

Egypt submitted to the Persian army under Cambyses in B.C. 527, and was for more than one hundred years afterwards a mere vassal of Persia. The Twenty-seventh Dynasty (B.C. 527-424) was composed solely of Persian kings. A successful revolt broke out in the last Persian king’s reign, Darius II., when Egypt was free once more. Amenrut was the only king of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty, and after the Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth Dynasties were ended, the latter, by the conquest of Egypt once more by the Persians under Artaxerxes III. (B.C. 340), we find the country under Persian rule for the space of eight years. About this time the Persian monarch was defeated by Alexander the Great, which brought Egypt under the Greek rule. At the death of Alexander Egypt was governed by the Macedonian kings, the Ptolemies, from 330 to 30 B.C. After the Roman wars and the death of Cleopatra, Egypt found itself a Roman province.

Fig. 101.—The Egyptian “Gorge.”

In A.D. 638 the Arabs under Omar conquered the country, and it was ruled by them till 1517, when it passed into the hands of the Turks.

Fig. 102.—General Appearance of an Egyptian Temple.

The Pyramids of Egypt have doubtless derived their shape from the prehistoric grave mounds. Although elaborately and ingeniously contrived for the concealment of the remains of the kings, and are stupendous monuments of building skill, they are not examples of architecture in the true sense of the word. Perhaps the earliest examples of Egyptian architecture, properly speaking, are seen in the ancient shrines, with sloping walls and flat roof, and having the peculiar cavetto cornice moulding called the Egyptian “Gorge” (Figs. 101 and 109). Horizontally is the great feature of Egyptian architecture, which is typically expressed by the illustration Fig. 102, an ideal generalisation of an Egyptian temple.

Fig. 103.—Square Building.

Fig. 104.—Oblong Building.

As hardly any, or no, rain falls in most parts of Egypt, a sloping roof was not a necessity. The external walls in the case of a square building are in the form of a trapezium, making the whole edifice of the shape of a truncated pyramid, and pyramid-like in either the square or rectangular-planned buildings (Figs. 103 and 104), except when the end walls are vertical (Fig. 104), then it tends toward the ridge-form.

Fig. 105.—Model of an Egyptian House. (P. & C.)

Fig. 106.—Plan of the Temple of Luxor. (P. & C.)

In regard to the scarcity of voids and narrow sloping doorways, the similarity in Egyptian buildings of every kind is very striking (Fig. 105). This absence of voids gives a dark and gloomy character to the buildings, when compared with the architecture of other countries. The horizontal element and solidity of construction impart a look of powerful strength and of deep repose to the Egyptian temple. Even the tall and slender obelisks placed in front of the mighty pylons have little, if any, effect in removing the horizontal appearance of the whole building. We give the ground plan, perspective view, and front elevation of the great Temple of Luxor, as a typical illustration of an Egyptian temple from restorations by Chipiez (Figs. 106, 107, and 108). Its construction is described by Champollion as the “Architecture of giants.”

This double-temple was the work of two kings. From the second pylon to the further end of the Temple is the portion built first, by the King Amenophis III. The other portion, from first to the second pylon, is the part built by Rameses II. The sanctuary is placed in the centre of a hall, surrounded by small chambers. It has two doors, one at either end, and on the axis of the building it has a vestibule in front and a hall beyond, supported by twelve columns. Another hall in front of the Naos (or interior apartment) is supported by thirty-two lofty columns. In front of this again is a large square open court. This court is connected to the larger front peristylar court by a grand and lofty gallery, similar to a hypostyle hall. It is 176 ft. long, enclosed and covered, and richly decorated like the hypostyle hall at Karnak (Fig. 96). Four colossal seated statues are in front of the first pylon, and two obelisks, one on each side of the door-way. Four large flagstaffs and a double row of sphinxes in front of the temple complete the accessories to this great edifice. The whole building and obelisks were covered over with bas-reliefs and inscriptions.

Fig. 107.—Bird’s-eye View of Luxor, as restored by Chipiez. (P. & C.)

Fig. 108.—Principal Façade of the Temple of Luxor, restored by Chipiez. (P. & C.)

Fig. 109.—Column of Thothmes III.; from the Ambulatory of Thothmes at Karnak. (P. & C.)

Fig. 110.—Column of the Hypostyle Hall of the Ramesseum; from Horeau. (P. & C.)

The typical Egyptian columns or supports are of two distinct and well-marked kinds, the lotus-headed and the campaniform or bell-shaped. The former is so called from its resemblance to a closed lotus-bud (Fig. 109), and the latter from its resemblance to a bell with the mouth uppermost (Fig. 110). An earlier and simpler form of column or support is the quadrangular pier (Fig. 111), and the next development is the tapering quadrangular pier (Fig. 112), both undecorated. Next we have the pier with a capital which, in profile, is a simple cavetto or “gorge,” and square abacus (Fig. 113).

Fig. 111.—Quadrangular Pier (P. & C.)

Fig. 112.—Tapering Quadrangular Pier. (P. & C.)

Between the abacus and the entablature or beam is a square thickness of stone; this is the great defect in the Egyptian orders, and distinguishes the latter from the Greek orders. This space between the abacus and the architrave is bad, both from a scientific and artistic point of view. It robs the capital of its legitimate appearance as a supporting member. This pier, with capital and the Hathoric pier (Fig. 114), with the head of the goddess Hathor, are both decorated.

Fig. 113.—Pier with Capital. (P. & C.)

Fig. 114.—Hathoric Pier. (P. & C.)

We next come to the octagonal (Fig. 115), and the sixteen-sided pillars (Fig. 116), which are almost Greek in their classic simplicity; the latter is fluted. All forms of Egyptian columns have either square slabs or circular discs as bases, on which the column rests. The two latter mentioned pillars are exceptional, and therefore not typical Egyptian, in having the abacus directly under the architrave; the sixteen-sided pillar is especially Doric-like in this respect, and also in its fluted shaft (Fig. 116).

Fig. 115.—Octagonal Pillar, Beni-Hassan. (P. & C.)

Fig. 116.—Sixteen-sided Pillar; Fluted. (P. & C.)

Fig. 117.—Osiride Pillar from Medinet-Abou. (P. & C.)

Fig. 118.—Column from Bas-Relief. (P. & C.)

The supports known as “Osiride” pillars are chiefly of the date of the Nineteenth Dynasty. They have a kind of analogy to the caryatid Grecian pillars, but are unlike them in respect that they do not support the entablature, as they are only placed in front of the quadrangular supporting pier for purposes of decoration, and are usually meant as representations of the kings who erected the temples they decorate, with a head-dress ornament consisting of the attributes of Osiris (Fig. 117).

Another variety of column has a fanciful combination of floral forms for its capital (Fig. 118). This and others of fanciful design are from the bas-reliefs and wall-paintings, and remind us of similar creations of the artist’s pencil, as seen in the Pompeian wall decorations.

The upper parts of the capital are developments from the calyx of the lotus, with the sepals curled outwards, and look very much like the first notions of the Greek Ionic capital, as indeed we shall find the Ionic volute to be a development of the lotus calyx more than anything else. An example of the faggot-shaped column, with its base, lotus-capital, and entablature, is given at Fig. 109. The ornamental parts of this column were painted in bright yellow and blue, and, as a rule, the sculptured ornament of the Egyptian columns, architrave, and cornices were relieved by the painter in bright colours.

Fig. 119.—Palm-Capital from Sesebi. (P. & C.)

The illustration at Fig. 119 is that of the palm-shaped capital from Sesebi. This type of capital is a frank imitation of a bunch of palm-leaves tied by the circular bands around the top of a column. A later development of the palm capital shows the bell shape with a more complicated decoration, and has the Hathor-headed abacus, surmounted by a Naos (Fig. 120).