mutilated but admirable statue, in green basalt, found at Sebennytus,
(M il l in , Monuments inédits, I. p. 383), and which decorates the ‘ salle1
du zodiaque’ of the Bibliothèque royale [nationale, publique, or impérial^
— as the case may be]. This torso, for the purity and fineness
of Egyptian style, yields in nothing to the most noble remains of
Egyptian sculpture : and I cannot forget that one of the skilfullest
archéologues of our day, not being able to cast doubt upon the name
of JSTéctaneho, which this statue bears, sustained that this name, had
been added, ‘ après-coup,’ to a statue of the time of Sesostris or of
Menephtha; a gratuitous supposition, rendered altogether useless
through the observations contained in this memoir.”
The only passable relies, of the times of the Lagidse, now extant,
are the rose-granite statues of P h il a d e l ph u s and A r s in o e at the
Vatican ; and they are poor enough.
Indigenous art degenerated, however, still more under the Roman
dominion,88 languishing under the Julian and Flavian emperors,
and becoming quite riide and barbarous soon after Hadrian : — the
last hieroglyphic royal ovals, found in Egypt, belong to the Emperor
Decius.00 Indigenous Egyptian civilization and art, both connected
with and founded upon hieroglyphics, expire about the same time.
Such is the brief history of Egyptian art ; peculiarly remarkable
for the constancy of its general character during a period of more
than thirty-five centuries, no less than for its isolated and exclusively
national development. The influence'of foreign art and culture
upon Egypt was always slight and prejudicial; whilst, with the exception
of Meroë on the upper Rile-—an Egyptian colony maintaining
itself only so long as its original Egyptian blood remained
pure,91—no foreign kingdom or people ever accepted the civilization,
the hieroglyphics and the art of Egypt, notwithstanding that the
Empire on the ISTile was superior in culture to all those neighboring
nations with whom the Pharaohs came ’into contact. Phoenicia,
Assyria, Persia, and perhaps even Greece and Etruria, borrowed
some forms of their art from Egypt; but these loans are, on the
whole, trifling, and insufficient to stamp the art of those nations with
an Egyptian character. In Assyria, as in Greece and Etruria, art
developed itself nationally, and in each region may always" be considered
as indigenous.
89 G a u ’s folio Antiquités de la Nubie, D en o n , and the Great French work, contain abundant
examples of this decline. '
90 Lep s iu s , Vorläufige Nachricht über die Expedition, Berlin, 1849, p. 29.
91 For proofs,— A beken, Rapport, in Bullelin de la Société de Géographie, Paris, Sept.,
1845, pp. 171-2, 174, 179:—Lepsius, Briefe, 1852, pp. 140-9, 204, 217-9, 289, &c. : while
ocular evidence of this Ethiopian degradation of art may be obtained in the Denkmäler,
Abth. VI. bl. 2, 4, 9, 10.
We have selected, for illustrating our sketch of Egyptian art,
statues in preference to reliefs, which are always somewhat repugnant
to the taste of the public, on account of the peculiar conventional
formation of the eye, drawn in front-view on profile heads.
Besides, Types of Mankind already contains copious specimens of
Egyptian royal relief-likenesses, from A a hm e s, the restorer of Egypt,
down to M e n e ph t a h , the probable Pharaoh of the Exodus, including
also the S h e sh o n k s (Shishak), S h a b a k s and T ir h a k a s , so familiar to
the readers of the Bible.- The authority of those portraits (taken
principally from Rosellini) is sufficiently established by the inscriptions
which accompany them on the original sculptures ; their faithfulness
may easily be tested in any of the large collections of Europe, and
principally in Egypt, among the monuments ; for it is a remarkable
fact, that wherever a relief was sunk into the rock, recording the
deeds of some individual Pharaoh, whether on the pylônes of the
temples, along the walls of tombs, and amid palatial decorations, or
chiselled upon some tablet on the remotest borders of the Empire,
his features, painted or sculptured, are always the same, and may be
recognized everywhere throughout Egypt. It has, therefore, often
been asked, by what means Egyptian artists could attain such a uniformity
at a time when no coins were -as yet struck, and the art of
engraving likenesses (not seals, &c.,) was unknown. It was very
plausibly suggested, that an official pattern of the royal physiognomy,
carved in wood, may easily have been circulated all over the valley
of the Mle. The Roman emperors probably neglected the continuance
of such customs, perhaps under belief that their coins might
convey a sufficient idea of their features. The Egyptians, however,
remain unacquainted with the portraits of their Roman rulers, whose
effigies on Egyptian and lower-Rubian monuments are altogether
conventional, without any attempt at portraying individuality and
resemblance to the Roman Autocrats ; whose very name, as we see at
Kalahshe and at Dendera, was often unknown to natives of the Rile.92
As a collateral confirmation of the suggestion about the circulation
of regal portrait-patterns, we refer to some analogous preceedings
under Queen Elizabeth, which we translate from the French of the
Abbés De la Çhau and Le Blond,93 not being able, to lay our hands
upon the original document mentioned by them.
“ The excessive sensitiveness of Queen Elizabeth about beauty,” say the learned French
archaeologists, “ gave birth to a most peculiar order in council, signed by the secretary
92 L e t h o n n e , “ Sur l’absenoe du Mot Autocrator ” — Mémoires et Documents, Paris, 1849,
Pp. 1-8 : C h am po i.m o n - F ig ka o , Fourier et Napoléon, VÉgypte et les cent jours, Paris 1844
pp. 68-5.
93 Pierres gravées du Cabinet Orleans, II. p. 194.