of the little Atonian Dynasty stopped their activity; deprived of the
vast commissions which opened a new field for their enterprise, they
fell back into their provincial routine, and we have not yet enough
documents to tell us what their successors became in the course of the
centuries.
In the delta two fairly different styles may be seen from the
beginning. In the east, at Tanis and in its neighbourhood, there is,
at the beginning of the first Theban Empire, a veritable school, the
productions of which possess such an individual physiognomy that
Mariette did not hesitate to attribute them to the Shepherd Kings:
since the works of Golenischeff it is known that the so-called Hyksôs
sphinxes are of Amenemhaît III, and that they belong to the second half
of the XIIth Dynasty. This Tanite school is perpetuated through the
ages; it was still flourishing under the XXIst and XXIInd Dynasties,
as is proved by the fine group of bearers of offerings in the Cairo
Museum. The predominant features are the energy and harshness of the
modelling, especially of the human face: its masters have copied a
type, and modes of coiffure belonging, as Mariette formerly pointed
out, to the half-savage populations of Lake Menzaleh, the _Egyptians in
the marshes_ of Herodotus. It seems to me that their manner is still
to be noted in the Græco-Roman period in the statues of princes and
priests that we have in the Cairo Museum: the technical skill, however,
is less than in the sphinxes and the bearers of offerings. The centre
and west of the delta, on the other hand, came under the influence
of Memphis, as far as we can judge from the rare existing fragments
belonging to the Ancient Empire. Under the Thebans the dependence is
clear, and all that comes from those regions differs in nothing from
what we have from the Memphian necropolises. Only in the Ethiopian
period, and under the influence of the successors of Bocchoris, is a
Saïte school revealed to us, which, borrowing its general composition
from the Memphian school, comes closer to nature and impresses an
individual stamp on certain elements of the human figure that until
then had been handled in a loose, so to say, an abstract fashion.
The modelling of the face is as full of expression as in the fine
works of the Theban school, but with greater finish and less harsh
effects; the ravages of old age, wrinkles, crows’-feet, flabbiness of
flesh, thinness, are all reproduced with a care unusual in preceding
generations; the skull, indeed, is so minute in detail that it might
almost be called an anatomical study. This impulse towards skilled
realism, begun by instinct in the heart of the school, became
accentuated and accelerated by contact with the Hellenes, who from the
time of Psammetichus I swarmed in the provinces of the delta. Certain
bas-reliefs of Alexandria and Cairo, the date of which is assigned to
the reign of Nectanebo II, which I should like to place in that of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account