Egyptian Art

Jean Capart, Warren R. Dawson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138605039
• eBook ISBN: 9780429869129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1923, this book provides an exploration of Egyptian art. Drawing on environmental factors of the Egyptian region, architecture, history and Egyptian society, Capart also provides an insight into the psyche of the Egyptian artist.

Egyptian Art

Chapter I
The Country: Its Characteristic Aspects

THE natural introduction to lessons on Egyptian Art is a study, however summary, of the physical conditions of the country.

Without exaggerating the influence of this medium upon artistic productions, it is nevertheless necessary to take into account the chief peculiarities of the Nile Valley, and to show in what respects this region essentially differs from almost every other land, (1)

It is not intended to repeat here the pages of a handbook of physical geography, (2) still less to transcribe the introductory paragraphs of a traveller’s guide to Egypt, but rather to attempt to convey as succinct an impression as possible of the divers aspects of the Nile Valley, which, on the whole, has altered very little since ancient times.

Let us glance at a map of Egypt. Across the great desert regions of North-Eastern Africa the Nile forms a giant oasis, exceedingly elongated, which can be divided into two principal parts: the triangular estuary, called the Delta, and the course of the stream, which stretches far away towards the interior of Africa. The Delta is known as Lower Egypt, and the river proper, as far as the First Cataract, Upper Egypt.

Egypt is situated at the point of contact of three worlds: on its northern frontier it adjoins the eastern basin of the Mediterranean; on the eastern frontier of the Delta it touches Asia; and, by the course of the river, it effects a penetration into African regions.

The natural frontiers of the north, the east and the west (Libyan or Sahara desert) have never changed, but that of the south, on the contrary, has reached farther and farther up the course of the Nile just as the power of the kings of Egypt has extended to remoter regions. The First Cataract, in the Assuan district, constitutes, however, in a general way the southern frontier of Egypt proper towards the south. The Pharaohs of the Ancient Empire rarely went beyond it: those of the Middle Empire conquered Lower Nubia; and later, Egyptian domination extended to Upper Nubia and even to the Sudan.

Descriptions of Egypt have often been written, by ancient travellers, Greek and Roman, by the Arabs of the Middle Ages, (3) and by countless writers in modern times. (4)

Let us first recall the brief and striking phrase by which Herodotus described Egypt as “a gift of the Nile.” One might suppose that the Arab general, Amru, who conquered Egypt in A.D. 640 knew Herodotus’ definition, and that he made a commentary upon it in his letter to the Kalif Omar: “O Prince of the Faithful, picture to yourself an arid desert and a magnificent country between two mountain-ranges: such is Egypt. All her products and all her riches from Assuan to Mencha come from the kindly stream which flows majestically amid the country. The time of the rise and of the ebb of its waters is so governed by the courses of the sun and the moon that there is one season of the year when all the elements of the universe come to pay to this King of Rivers the tribute with which Providence has endowed them for his benefit. Then the waters increase, leave their bed and cover the whole face of Egypt in order to deposit there the fertile mud. There is no communication between village and village save by means of boats, which are as numerous as palm-leaves. When at last the time comes when the waters cease to be necessary to the fertility of the soil, the docile river retreats within the banks which destiny has marked out for it, leaving the treasures which are hidden in the bosom of the earth to be gathered in. A people protected by Heaven, and who, like the bee, seem destined to work only for the benefit of others without profit to themselves of the fruit of the sweat of their brows, busily open up the earth’s surface to sow there the seeds which will be fertilised by Him who makes the harvests grow and ripen. The germ develops, the shoot appears, the ear forms by the aid of the dew which takes the place of rain and which maintains the fruitful moisture with which the soil is charged: then sterility once more succeeds the most abundant of harvests. It is thus, O Prince of the Faithful, that Egypt displays the picture, each in turn, of a dusty desert, a watery plain, a black and slimy bog, a verdant meadow, a garden decked with flowers, and a landscape covered with golden harvest.” (5)

A modern scholar, Gaston Maspero, has given in his great work, The Dawn of Civilisation: Egypt and Chaldea, a precise description of the different aspects of the Nile. Few travellers have had occasion to traverse Egypt in all its nooks and corners in so thorough a fashion as Maspero, As Director-General of the Service of Antiquities it was his duty to examine personally the ruins and excavations. Each year he delighted to make a tour of inspection, which gave him the opportunity ever and again of seeing afresh these riverside scenes, thereby adding to and seasoning the impressions which he felt. This is why his testimony, particularly important as it is, enables us to lay aside the mass of other descriptions and to concentrate upon the principal features of his.

First, then, let us see how he characterises the two principal parts of Egypt. After having noted the three chief mouths of the Nile, which empty themselves into the sea and thus divide the Delta into two nearly equal sectors, Maspero expresses himself as follows: “These three great waterways are united by a tracery of artificial rivers and canals and by ditches, some natural, others dug by the hand of man, which silt up, close, open again and shift ceaselessly, ramifying into innumerable branches over the surface of the soil, spreading life and fertility broadcast. This network shrinks and becomes simpler as one proceeds southwards, the black earth and cultivation grow less, the tawny outline of the desert appears, the Libyan and Arabian hills rear themselves and come nearer together and restrict the horizon more and more, and, at the point where they may be said to unite, the Delta ends and Egypt proper begins. It is only a band of vegetable mould stretching from north to south between two regions of drought and desolation, an elongated oasis along the borders of the Nile, made and sustained by the Nile. Two ranges of hills, nearly parallel, hem it in and throughout its length, at an average distance of twelve miles apart.” (6)

And now let us see his description of the stream itself and its banks: “It flows with a strong and even current under the black banks cut straight through the alluvial earth. There are little copses of date-palms, groups of acacias and sycomores, plots of barley or wheat, fields of beans or bersîm, here and there banks of sand which the slightest wind stirs up into clouds, and above all deep silence, scarcely broken by the cries of the birds or by the song of the oarsmen of a passing boat.… The same landscape repeats itself again and again every day. Everywhere the same tree-clumps alternate with the same fields, growing green or parching in the sun, according to the season. The Nile unfolds its wandering course with the same motion amid the islets and its steep banks: village follows village at once smiling and dull beneath its canopy of leaves.” (7)

This general view becomes more detailed as we examine different sites which show us successively the most characteristic aspects of the Egyptian landscape.

Let us first look at the course of the river itself, taking it from the point where it enters Egypt in the Assuan district near the famous Island of Philæ. The placid and still waters formerly made, before the construction of the Assuan barrage, a wonderful border around this little islet which is decked with the temples of the goddess Isis like a sacred barque floating in the midst of the stream. But now this beautiful site is bereft of the greater part of its charm.

Soon, as it proceeds downstream from Philæ, the gathering momentum of the water hurls it headlong in a more and more rapid fall, and the stream makes its leap over several successive ledges; this is what we call the cataract. Were one to clamber up to the top of one of the rocky islets with which the river-bed is strewn, the horizon would be descried stretching away—vast and lowering.

On all sides the eye surveys nothing but islands and granite boulders, amongst which the waters thread their way, and only the scanty palm-trees impart life here and there to a scene which would otherwise be as barren as the desert.

Soon again, however, the river calms down, until, in the region of Elephantine, it has almost entirely regained its placidity. From here right down to the sea its current ebbs peacefully on, spreading out or contracting as it follows the profile of the valley. If in some places its breadth gives it the aspect of an arm of the sea, in others it quickly pulls itself in to the narrowness of a canal. Wherever the Nile is shallow it is parted ever and again by sand-banks which hinder shipping; and they must be rounded by means of the deep channel which flows immediately under one or other of the banks.

If, again, in several places, the river abuts directly on to the mountains, which may in places even assume the form of cliffs, the shores are more often flat and desolate, but dotted here and there by palm-groves.

Every year, from June to October, the inundation drives the river from its bed: that part of the valley which is under water and on which the mud is deposited—the mud with which the water is charged—constitutes what might be called the real Egypt in opposition to the desert.

We will now consider, at different points in the valley, the effect of this distinctive phenomenon.

If in the region of Assuan one moves some little distance from the river to the ruins of St. Simeon’s Convent in the desert gorge, and from thence surveys the landscape, one would at once get there an aspect very typical of Egypt. In the dried-up valley a bed of sand spreads down to the river: on the left bank of the Nile the desert reigns supreme. On the right bank of the stream a narrow strip of ground is for the most part covered by the little town of Assuan. Immediately beyond, the Arabian desert reappears and stretches as far as the eye can reach. Here the valley is reduced to very small limits.

At Thebes, on the contrary, the plain opens out widely. The traveller stationed at Luxor on the right bank would see before him the river broad and calm, whilst on the left bank the foreshore, sloping up gently, is uncovered day by day as the inundation abates. A little beyond this sandy stretch, ill-fitted for cultivation, he would espy a black strip of muddy land, dotted with groups of trees, and beyond that again the desert range rears its mountain head.

If the traveller now stations himself on the lower slopes of these very mountains and at the extreme west of the valley, he will see the great Theban plain unfold before him in all its fullness. At his feet are the first slopes of the hills, riddled with excavations which are ancient tombs, with Arab dwellings dotted about here and there. Bordering on the desert the majestic ruins of the great temple of Ramesses II (known as the Ramesseum) rear themselves, while a little towards the right the two colossal statues of the so-called Memnon appear in sight, the two statues which stood before the funerary temple of Amenophis III. An irrigation canal, as a narrow glittering band, forms the background of the picture as it crosses the plain diagonally on its way to the Nile. Beyond the river a straight black strip marks out the cultivated area on the right bank, and finally the mountains of the Arabian desert rise up to the very horizon, where they are partly lost to view.

Nor is the view very different if one moves one’s position to the apex of the Delta, from such a point as the heights of the great necropolis of Saqqara and Abusir.

The problem before the population of Egypt from the earliest times has ever been to extend to the fullest possible limits the benefits of the inundation, to subdue the desert territory, ever too vast, by preventing the sand from ravaging what the farmers have won and which they owe to their labours in irrigation: and the modern engineer merely continues, in a sense, the traditions of the most ancient inhabitants of the land. One result deserves special mention, and that is that the Egyptians, begrudging the loss of the smallest part of this precious land, have relegated to the desert the buildings consecrated to the cult of the dead.

Having thus considered the river and its valley, we must take a rapid glance at the cultivation and the handiwork of the inhabitants.

In Lower Egypt the plain stretches away to infinity. Rich in harvests most abundant, but wearying to the eye, fields follow on fields, enlivened by groups of palm-trees and now and then by a wood. From tract to tract, village follows on village, consisting usually of a handful of dwellings, linked up by roadways overshadowed by trees, and at a level scarcely higher than that of the neighbouring cultivation. Canals, branching ever more and more, wind throughout, some, fairly broad, lapping lazily amongst the groves of palm-trees, whilst others, narrower, glide like little brooks across the villages.

Various hydraulic devices, besides, make it possible to raise the water from the canals and to spread it over the land. The simplest of these is called the shadouf, and is a kind of balance, with a counterweight which lifts a receptacle full of water to a raised trench into which the labourer who works the machine deftly turns it. The shadouf is an extremely ancient invention, for it figures on the monuments of Pharaonic times. (8)

Let us now consider some typical landscapes in the cultivated districts of Upper Egypt. The picturesque village of Kafr el Haram groups its houses at the foot of the plateau of Gizeh, upon which the great pyramids rear themselves: beyond, as far as the eye can reach, extends the plain, dappled with great pools of water left behind by the retreating inundation. In the distance another village hides itself beneath a group of palms.

When one goes from the station at Bédrechein to the Saqqara necropolis, the region of Mit-Rahiné is first crossed, whose rich crops spread away as far as the eye can reach. At the very foot of the mountain the village of Saqqara, which has given its name to the whole district, abuts on a great marsh where geese and ducks sport.

The outlook changes but little in the different tracts of Middle Egypt. In the Abydos district, for instance, from the Nile right up to the mountains one crosses wonderfully fertile lands, which show as the inundation retreats a heavy mould which dries up and cracks in all directions under the rays of the sun. This dark-coloured soil contrasts sharply with the light tones of the desert sand, and when the ancient Egyptians called their country “the Black Land” they certainly hit upon its most noticeable characteristic.

The cultivated land passes into desert very suddenly, almost without any intermediate change. One cannot, however, help noticing the great trees which thrive vigorously on bare sand, as though they stood as a protest against sterility, although their deep-set roots burrow down to levels reached by infiltrated water.

The desert merges really into the mountain, or rather into the two chains of mountains which divide off the course of the river. The Libyan range follows the left bank, just as the Arabian follows the right. Towards Lower Egypt the desert is flat and monotonous, rolling away in sand-dunes for mile after mile. At the rainy season a sparse vegetation marks out the routes on which the caravans depend for feeding their beasts of burden. Towards Upper Egypt the desert rises often into gentle slopes up to the point where it reaches the mountains, and then it rises quite steeply, often in terraces. The necropolis of Abydos offers a very good instance of this. On all sides, at the lowest level, the soil is ploughed up and tossed about, laying bare beneath this mantle of sand the mouths of the shafts which give access to the funereal chambers below. The horizon is shut out by the mountain, which rears itself several hundred feet above the plain, a great solid mass with little variation in its outline. At Thebes, on the other hand, the contours are more varied, the successive slopes of the hills are more sharply cut; above them a peak towers up, reminding one of a natural pyramid, the “Peak of the West” as the ancients called it. (9) The action of the sand, blown about by the wind, has cut capriciously into the limestone, as fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• CHAPTER I THE COUNTRY: ITS CHARACTERISTIC ASPECTS
• CHAPTER II THE FRAMEWORK OF HISTORY
• CHAPTER III PRIMITIVE UPPER EGYPT
• CHAPTER IV THE FIRST PHARAONIC MONUMENTS
• CHAPTER V ARCHITECTURAL HIEROGLYPHS AND KINDRED SUBJECTS
• CHAPTER VI MATERIALS AND ELEMENTS OF BUILDING
• CHAPTER VII FUNDAMENTAL FORMS IN ARCHITECTURE
• CHAPTER VIII FUNDAMENTAL FORMS IN ARCHITECTURE (continued)
• CHAPTER IX CONCERNING COLUMNS AND THE TRANSPOSITION OF THE FORMS PROPER TO ONE MATERIAL INTO ANOTHER
• CHAPTER X THE CONVENTIONS OF EGYPTIAN DRAWING
• CHAPTER XI THE ARTISTIC IDEAS OF THE EGYPTIANS
• INDEX