copy nature with fidelity. It corresponds in style to the superb torso
o f P sam e tik H. found at Sais,
and long in the public library
at Cambridge.81
This second revival of Egypt
was not confined to sculpture.
"We see once more, as in the
time of R ames se s and O sorchon,
(XVIIIth and XXIId dynasties,
t. e. in the 15th and 10th centuries
b . c.) a most striking
parallel between the intellectual
and artistic life of the nation.
The new naturalistic phase of
Egyptian art coincides with an
analogous, most important step
Fig. 18.
S a it ic H e a d .
in civilization, viz : the introduction of the Demotic alphabet, which
for its phonetical character85 or comparatively greater simplicity than
either the hieratic or the hieroglyphical writing, must have favoured
the diffusion of knowledge, by promoting epistolary intercourse
amongst the Egyptians. It will, therefore, scarcely surprise anybody
to learn that more than two thirds of the papyri in the Museums and
collections of Europe, appertain to the period of Psameticus and his
successors, although abundant papyric documents are extant of a
far earlier epoch.86
Egyptian art lost its Saitic freshness, owing to the Persian conquest
(b , c. 525), but the naturalistic style continued down to the reign of
the Macedonian dynasty of Ptolemies. Under them Egyptian civilization
came for the first time into immediate relation and uninterrupted
daily contact with a foreign high-culture, although the radical
difference between the Egyptian and Greek race prevented amalgamation
on a larger scale. The Egyptian was too proud of his
millennial civilization to condescend to learn anything from the
Greek, whom he called a child in versatility, as well as in the his84
Y o r k e a n d L e a k e , Egyptian Monuments of the British Museum, London, 1827 ; p. 17,
PI. XIII. *
85 B u r g s c h , Grammatica Demotica, 1855 ; together with this Savant’s varions publications,
cited by B ir c h , Cryst. Pal. Catalogue, p. 209 .-—also Types of Mankind, Table of the
“ Theory of the order of development in human writings,” pp. 630—1.
86 They are innumerable. Among the oldest and most beautiful is P r is s e ’s folio Hieratic
Papyrus Égyptien, Paris, 1849, — “ sans hésitation le plus ancien manuscrit connu dans le
monde entier containing, with others, the royal oval of SeNeWROU (or Senofre), a king
of old Illd dynasty (D e R o ug e , Inscription du Tombeau d ’Aahmes, chef des NautonierSj Ie.
partie, Paris, 1851, p. 76).
torical age of his nation. “ 0 Solon, Solon! you Greeks are always
children,” says Plato’s priest of Sais, in the celebrated bold
romance on the Atlantic Isles. Still, the Hellenic spirit could not
remain wholly without influence. Alexandria assumed a cosmopolitan
character, in which Greek elements predominated ; and the
Ptolemies, surrounded by Greek poets, artists, and philosophers,
enjoyed the resplendent evening of Greek culture on the foreign soil
of the Nilotic Delta. Indeed, it has been accurately observed that
“Alexandiia was very Greek, a little Jewish, and scarcely Egyptian
at all.” 87 With artistic display, unparalleled in the histoiy of mankind,
they celebrated the festivals of the Olympian gods, whilst with
princely expenditure they secured all the treasures of Greek literature,
as if they entertained a presentiment of the approaching doom
of Hellenism. But whenever they went up the Nile, visiting Memphis,
Thebes, and upper Egypt, they became again Pharaohs—“ ever
living, lords of diadems, watchers of Egypt, chastisers of the foreigners,
golden hawks, greatest of the powerful kings of the upper and lower
country, defenders of truth, beloved of truth, approved of the sun,
beloved of Phtah.” Their costume and titles, their sacrifices and
oblations, the style of their decrees and dedications, are substantially
the same as on the monuments of the ancient Pharaohs. But though
it seems as if the national character and public life of Egypt itself
had not undergone any material change, the Ptolemaic works of art
reveal the slow action of Hellenism. Mariette’s unexpected discovery,
in 1850, of a hemicycle formed of the Greek statues of Pindar, Lycur-
gus, Solon, Euripides, Pythagoras, Plato, JEschylus, Homer, Aristotle,
&c., in excavating the Memphite Serapeum, is a wonderful proof
of the manner in which Hellenic ideas travelled with the Greeks up
the Nile. Still, the elaborate attempts to attain Greek elegance and
refinement, within the old traditional forms, resulted only in degradation
; producing a hybrid style, inferior to any of the former phases
of Egyptian art. The last known monuments creditable to native
statuaries, are thus referred to by the late Letronne88; “ the
second is a bust- in rose-granite, of N ectanebo, preserved in the
British Museum (B ir c h , A r u n d ale and B onomi, Gallery of Antiquities
PI- 45, fig. 166), of very beautiful workmanship ; the third is that
81 A m p è r e , Voyage el Recherches en Égyple el en Nubie ; Revue des Deux Mondes 1846
2d article.
88 La civilisation égyptienne depuis l'établissement des Grecs sous Psammeticus jusqu’ à la '
conquête d ’Alexandre. (Extrait de la Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Fev.'et 1 Avril, 1845,
P- 60.) This refined specimen of art—which singularly corresponds in execution ’to the
head above figured (No. 18) — may be seen on a large scale in the Description de
9yple (Antiq. V. PI. 69, figs. 7, 8) ; and on a smaller in Lenormant’s Musée des Antiquités
égyptiennes, Paris, fol., 1840.