History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12)Maspero, G. (Gaston)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12)
Maspero, G. (Gaston)
Civilization, Ancient; Egypt -- History -- To 640 A.D.; History, Ancient; Middle East -- History
Although the tombs in which they worked differ from the generality
of Egyptian burying-places, their originality does not arise from any
effort, either conscious or otherwise, to break through the ordinary
routine of the art of the time; it is rather the result of the
extraordinary appearance of the sovereign whose features they were
called on to portray, and the novelty of several of the subjects which
they had to treat. That artist among them who first gave concrete form
to the ideas circulated by the priests of Atonu, and drew the model
cartoons, evidently possessed a master-hand, and was endowed with
undeniable originality and power. No other Egyptian draughtsman ever
expressed a child's grace as he did, and the portraits which he sketched
of the daughters of Khuniatonu playing undressed at their mother's side,
are examples of a reserved and delicate grace. But these models, when
once composed and finished even to the smallest details, were entrusted
for execution to workmen of mediocre powers, who were recruited not only
from Thebes, but from the neighbouring cities of Hermopolis and Siut.
These estimable people, with a praiseworthy patience, traced bit by bit
the cartoons confided to them, omitting or adding individuals or groups
according to the extent of the wall-space they had to cover, or to the
number of relatives and servants whom the proprietor of the tomb desired
should share in his future happiness. The style of these draughtsmen
betrays the influence of the second-rate schools in which they had
learned their craft, and the clumsiness of their work would often repel
us, were it not that the interest of the episodes portrayed redeems it
in the eyes of the Egyptologist.
Khuniatonu left no son to succeed him; two of his sons-in-law
successively occupied the throne--Saakeri, who had married his eldest
daughter Maritatonu, and Tutankhamon, the husband of Ankhnasaton. The
first had been associated in the sovereignty by his father-in-law;* he
showed himself a zealous partisan of the "Disk," and he continued to
reside in the new capital during the few years of his sole reign.** The
second son-in-law was a son of Amenothes III., probably by a concubine.
He returned to the religion of Amon, and his wife, abjuring the creed
of her father, changed her name from Ankhnasaton to that of Ankhnasamon.
Her husband abandoned Khuitatonu*** at the end of two or three years,
and after his departure the town fell into decadence as quickly as it
had arisen. The streets were unfrequented, the palaces and temples stood
empty, the tombs remained unfinished and unoccupied, and its patron god
returned to his former state, and was relegated to the third or fourth
rank in the Egyptian Pantheon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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