The study of these three little monuments brings out very happily one
of the qualities of Egyptian art: the skill with which the least of
artists, in reproducing in a sometimes realistic manner the portrait
of individuals, understood how to seize the physiognomy and bearing
characteristic of their craft or of their social rank. Compare the
submissive and sheepish face of the crouching scribe with the bold
carriage and imperious head of the Pharaoh: the contrast is striking.
With the scribe, all the muscles are relaxed; the whole body is bent,
as with a man accustomed to obey and resigned to endure everything from
his superiors. With the Pharaoh, the modelling is firm, the figure
upright, the mien haughty; we feel that here is a person accustomed
from childhood to walk upright in the midst of bowed backs. It is
unfortunate that the legend has disappeared with the lower part of
the second statuette; comparing it with several other monuments in
the Louvre, it reminds me of several priests of the Saïte Period. The
hardness in the eye and the corners of the lips is the same, the same
furrow surrounds the nostril and the mouth, the outer walls of the nose
are compressed in a similar fashion; in spite of the loss of the name
and titles, I am tempted to think that the individual who bears on
his face in so high a degree the peculiarities of the Egyptian priest
belonged to the sacerdotal caste.
XXIII
A FIND OF SAÏTE JEWELS AT SAQQARAH[89]
As soon as I returned to my old post, I resumed the excavations of
the pyramids at the point where I had left them in 1886. I had then
made a systematic search of the entrance into the funerary vaults:
it was now necessary to seek out the exterior chapels, the caves,
the secondary pyramids or the mastabas, which, shut in by a walled
enclosure, completed the burial-place. At the end of November, 1899, I
placed workmen round Ounas, and as I found it impossible to direct the
operations myself with the requisite care, I entrusted the surveillance
of them to M. Alexandre Barsanti, the curator-restorer of the Museum,
with detailed instructions. The campaign then begun was only ended in
the last days of May, 1900, and the account of it will be published
elsewhere. I now wish to draw the attention of amateurs and scholars to
the discovery of a mass of Saïte jewels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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