on Egyptian art. It is at this period that the misplacement of. the
ear becomes habitual with statues. The
elegant youthful R ames ses of the Turin
Museum, and the excellent colossus
from the so-called Memnonium at Thebes,
(Belzoni’s), now in the British Museum,
are nevertheless well sculptured;
reminding us of the better school of design;
but the colossus at Metrahenny
(Memphis);78 and principally the gigantic
statues of Ibsambul,79 [17] begin to he
heavy and incorrect, remarkable only for
their monstrous size; The gradual decline
is marked by the position of the ear: right
on the earlier statues, it is »too high at Metrahenny,
and resembles horns at Ibsambul.
Fig. 17.
R a m e s s e s II.
External grandeur, however, cannot make up for the decline of
artistic feeling and want of careful finish. If we examine the monument
of R am es se s, we get involuntarily the impression that the artists
of this period were always hurried on by royal command, without
ever having suflicient time fully to complete their task. A sketchy
roughness is always visible in the later works of R am es se s , blended
with a conventional mannerism. Art has degenerated into manufacture.
The reliefs of R ames se s Hid (XXth dynasty), and the following
Ramessides, together with the monuments of S h e sh o nk , and his
(XXHd) dynasty, are still less significant. They look dry and dull in
spite of a more minute and laborious, but spiritless and petty execution.
During the Shemitic (or Assyrian) XXÜd,8* and succeeding
foreign dynasties, down to that called 2.’Ethiopian in Manetho’s and
other lists, [about b . c. 972 to 695] but evidently not negro, inasmuch
as the reliefs of T ir h a k a are i£ Caucasian” and somewhat Shemitic,81
the infusion of foreign blood and contact with foreign art were still
more detrimental to the Egyptian style. Babylonian representations
re B o n om i, Transactions o f R. Soc. of Literature, London, 1845: — L e p s iu s , ' Denkmäler,
Abth. III., bl., 142, e. b.
w Cf. L e p s iu s , Op. cit., Abth. III., bl. 190. The best popular design of these four pro-
digious statues is in B a b t l e t t ’s Nile Boat, 1849; the one most resembling Napoleon I. is
that of R o s e i l ih i , M. R., pi. VI., fig. 22j redtloed in the above wood-cut. Compare
that in Ch am p o l l io n ’s folio Monuments de V.Egyple de la Nubie.
80 Bi e c h , Trans. R. Soc. Lit., III. part I. 1848, pp. 164—70; L a y a ed , Nineveh and its Remains,
1848; Discoveries in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853; for ample corroborations
confirmed by M a e ie t t e , Op. cit., pp. 89-96.
81 Types of Mankind, figs. 69, 70; 71.
became fashionable on articles of toilet or furniture,—for instance on
combs and spoons,— but indigenous art remained lifeless; the Babylonian
innovations barren and without lasting results. It is worth}
of notice, that about the time of the Bubastite (probably Babylonian)
XXHd dynasty; a revolution occurred likewise in hieroglyphical
writing, a great number of ideographs having assigned to them a
phonetic valued Mariette’s fresh discovery of the never-before identified
cartouche of B occhoris, is also noteworthy in connection with
this period of Egyptian annals.83
With the Saitiv kings, (XXVIth. dynasty, began 675 B. c.), a *
national reaction sets in, again accompanied by a new development
of sculpture, under B sam e tik I. and his successors. During this
period of “ renaissance,” every effort was made to restore the institutions
and ideas of the long-buried IVth dynasty of Cheops. The
forms remain the old ones, hut tne details become more charming
though less grand than in the monuments of the XVTIth dynasty.
The artists rectify the position of the ear, although' extending it too
much in the upper part; they abandon the conventional frame of the
eye; they study nature in preference to the traditional canon; the
forms of the human body become less rigid, the muscles are better
rounded and more correctly drawn, and a naturalistic tendency
supersedes the conventionalism of the preceding epoch of decay.
Colossal statues are still sculptured, but not of such monstrous proportions
as under R ames ses ; at the same time that the number of
small, charming, sculptures, full of vigour and (Egyptian) grace,
increases considerably. They are easily recognized by their finish
and sharp precision of workmanship; the aim of the artist being
neatness and elegance; as distant from the somewhat conventional
grandeur of the XVTIth and XV Tilth, as from the refined delicacy
of the Xllth, or the honest truthfulness of the Hid and IVth dynasties.
The following inedited head, now in the Louvre, is a most
excellent specimen of the style of the Sa'ites. It is of a greenish
basalt, and was found broken off from the rest of a full-length figure,
by M. Mariette, amid some ruins of the Serapeum at Memphis, in
the midst of fragments belonging to the XXVIth dynasty. He gave
a plaster-cast of it (now in my cabinet) to Mr. Gliddon, from which
the annexed wood-cut [18] has been drawn. Ho doubt as to its being
a portrait; because the Egyptian sculptor aimed always to reproduce
individuality without idealizing, and possessed both eye and hand to
82 Birch, Cryst. Pal. Catalogue, p. 243.
It is to be hoped that the munificence of France in fostering archæological discoveries
ere long, place us in full possession of these new data.