Together with the history of mankind begins the history of art. Inscriptions on works of art belong to the most ancient written monuments, and for the history of art there is great happiness that the rulers of those ancient countries of the world in which writing existed, making extensive use of this new, precious for humanity invention, covered all sorts of monuments with various inscriptions in abundance. The oldest of these monuments of the history of mankind and his art are preserved on the banks of the Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris, that is, in Egypt and Mesopotamia. These monuments, erected several thousand years BC. during the whole centuries they were completely oblivious, and although their existence was known, they were stubbornly silent about them until finally, in the XIX century, they didn’t draw general attention to themselves and one by one they became accessible to our understanding.
Where the most ancient monuments are preserved - whether on Chaldean soil, in Mesopotamia or on the banks of the Nile, in Egypt - this is a question still not completely resolved. The fact that the Chaldean art is more ancient is evidenced by the inscription made in the Berlin Museum, made by the Novo-Babylonian king Nabonid, who lived in 550 BC. e., and saying that there was an ancient king of Babylon Naramsin for 3200 years before Nabonid, that is, for 3750 years BC. e. This does not contradict the ethnographic studies of Brugsh and others, who have long attributed to the Egyptians Asian origin, although Erman and Maspero pointed to the mutual contradiction of these studies. Ratzel said (1894): "The cradle of Egyptian culture is Asia." Schweinfurt resolutely takes the side of Gommel (1897), in the footsteps of which young Assyriologists walk and go so far as to consider Egypt an ancient Babylonian colony founded in prehistoric times. But after B.F. Lehmann proved that Naramsin (as Winkler had said before) could not live 3750 years BC. e., again it seems likely assumption that the oldest found, at least until now, monuments belong to the Nile Valley. We can all the more remain with the opinion that in historical times both peoples, Egyptians and Chaldeans, undoubtedly related to each other, stood on the same level of cultural development and were completely independent.
Whether the related features of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian artworks depend mainly on the origin of one art from another or are these traits due to the fact that from the very moment of the emergence of human art in general, these two arts developed simultaneously under the influence of completely identical local conditions - a question that we once again set, maybe later. At present, we confine ourselves to considering these common features as a sign of the same stage of development of these peoples - the stage that immediately follows the Bronze Age, the time when, in all likelihood, not only in the Ancient Kingdom, but also in the country of Ancient Egypt the first stone and bronze articles appeared and when the use of iron was not yet known there.
Opponents of the view that the climatic conditions of the area affect the art of the country cannot but agree that Egypt is an exception in this regard: one must be blind in order not to see the reflection of the nature of this country in works of art. Art and nature are here in the most lively correspondence. As far as the plant and animal kingdoms of the oasis formed by the spreading of the Nile River and the oasis spread in the desert, called Egypt, are peculiar, the intellectual outlook of its inhabitants was just as original. The original, confined in a close framework, the culture of Egypt for many centuries developed under the influence of natural conditions as consistently as no other, and if at present we know the art, customs and customs of the Egyptians better than the life and art of other nations closer to us in time and place, we owe it above all to the works of scholars and the excavations carried out in Egypt by such archaeologists as Champollion and Lepsius, Mariette and Maspero, de Morgan and Flinders Petrie, then to the study of hieroglyphs, thanks to which we have Champollion gradually got acquainted with the history of the Nile Valley on the inscriptions on the monuments, and, finally, the extensive print editions of these monuments. The former works of Champollion, Lepsius, Rossellini, Pris-d'Aven, and in particular the editions of Flanders Petri revealed to Europe the secrets of Egyptian art. Information about Egypt, we are largely obliged also to the properties of its soil, the constancy of its climate, customs and customs of its ancient inhabitants, based on centuries-old legends. The soil supplied the Egyptians with hard stone, the sun dried and made their wooden products and fabrics durable, and the religious beliefs of the Egyptians encouraged them to build temples for the gods and tombs to their great people so that these buildings would remain forever. God-like kings of Egypt thought to acquire immortality in heaven and earth, depicting their deeds on the indestructible walls of temples. The Egyptian priests taught that the afterlife of the deceased depends on the state of his body on earth after death, on whose image it took, and also on those sacrifices in the form of food and drinks that his shadow received (Ka) or which at least were depicted on the walls of his tomb by surviving relatives. From here came the embalming of the dead, whose mummies, including several thousand, have survived to this day, and laying them into strong stone or wooden sarcophagi, often inserted one into another, and the burial of the dead in deep mines, over which, if not naturally elevated rocks, stone monuments were erected and strong slabs were laid; hence the custom and tradition to place the statue of the dead man in a special section of the tomb, as well as the custom to depict various foods plastically or in a painted picture on the walls of the sacrificial peace, so that the deceased never needs food.
Fig. 97. Restoration of the Temple of Hona in Thebes (20th Dynasty). By Perrot and Shipie
Only the walls of polished granite were left uncovered; they didn’t touch even wall paintings. All other stone and brick walls were faced from top to bottom, inside and out, with a thin layer of plaster, and this layer was covered with multicolored plastic images, most of which are already phonetic hieroglyphs, which play, in terms of content, the role of writing; as works of art, they constitute the main part of the entire ornamentation of the building and, harmoniously merging with it, form one harmonious decorative whole.
Columns in Egyptian stone buildings are strong enough to properly fulfill its purpose, that is, to serve as supports. But their decoration in a striking manner does not correspond to their purpose, often giving them the appearance of plants with long and thin trunks, the flowers of which, not yet unfolded or already blossoming, support the invisible abacus and form the capital of the column. Obviously, in order for the column to appear more solid, several trunks that make up the rod of the column were usually tied into bunches by strong hoops, and in the same place between them small stems of the same colors were passed as fastenings. In general, the ornamentation of the Egyptian columns of this kind gave the impression of something gloomy, although it was obvious that it had to express the contrast between the earthly life and the celestial life depicted on the ceiling of the building in the form of stars and birds. "The Egyptian," said Borchardt, "imagined his columns, imitating plants, freely ending and ornamented them according to this."
Fig. 98. Relief with lotus flowers in the tomb (6th dynasty). According to Priss d'Aveno
Fig. 99. Ancient Egyptian ornaments. Drawings by Max Kunert
Fig. 100. Relief with papyrus in the tomb (4th dynasty). According to Priss d'Aveno
Fig. 101. Papyrus column from Karnak. By Perrot and Shipie
It is not unbelievable that many of the ornaments borrowed from the plant kingdom found a place in Egyptian art only because they had long been given a symbolic meaning, as can be seen especially about the lotus flower, which was obviously personified by the sun. Other ornamental motifs in Egyptian art are also symbolic. If this cannot be said with complete confidence about an ornament depicting a dark blue sky with stars, which we constantly see on the ceilings of Egyptian tombs and temples, as well as images of kites flying with outstretched wings (Fig. 99, y ), undoubtedly, solar circles, and the winged disk of the sun over the entrances to the temples (x), and the sacred snakes, urey (x and u), and the cross, with a ring or loop above, serving as a symbol of eternity (f, c), скарабея – блестящего египетского жука (Ateuchus sacer, ш), который, олицетворяя с the battle of earthly life and the future life of a person, is often both as decoration and as an independent artistic work.
It is necessary to distinguish between two types of Egyptian plastics: sculpture and flat images that obey the same laws of style, regardless of whether they are painting or embossed work.
Material for sculptureThe Egyptians served stone, wood, ivory, bronze, and clay. Numerous colossal statues were made of granite, basalt or diorite; life-size statues of sandstone or limestone; the smaller ones are made of wood or bronze. Clay figures were always small. Statues of sandstone and limestone were usually covered with a layer of paint, while statues of solid colored stone were painted only occasionally or only in some of their parts. The most important monuments of Egyptian sculpture are statues of gods and people; There are also animal figures. Sculptures of people were placed in tombs and temples. In the first, besides a few statues representing the deceased in various forms, the images of his servants were also placed. Statues of kings, builders and founders of these buildings were placed in front of the temples and inside them;Often these statues also represented the same person in several forms.
Fig. 102. Lotus column. By borchardt
Fig. 103. Relief of the Temple of Abydos (Horus and Anubis). By Maspero
Of course, the Egyptian sculptors knew better the structure of the human body and reproduced it more correctly than the artists of the peoples mentioned above. The hot climate of Egypt, forcing to wear only the lightest clothes, contributed to the study of the naked body. The best of the ancient Egyptian images of a person in a standing or sitting position almost leave nothing to be desired, if at all to demand from the sculpture the transfer of a nude body frozen in stillness. Such a conditional reproduction of human figures can be explained by the initial stage of the development of art, above which no people rose to the Greeks, only at the beginning of the 5th century. BC e. gone further along the path of artistic creation. Using the example of Egyptian sculpture, he founded his theory of frontalism in plastic of ancient and primitive peoples in general, as well as cultural peoples who stood on the same level of development with the peoples of the ancient East.
In Egyptian sculpture there are also entire groups of human figures, and it is precisely in them that the law of frontality is manifested especially strongly. If a figure was depicted on a throne with a child in her arms, the latter, facing directly to the viewer, made a right angle with the main figure. If the group consisted of two or three figures, then they were always depicted stretched out in a single line, when viewed from the front (Fig. 104). At the same time, the main figure was twice or three times larger than the rest, especially when the latter represented his wife or children.
The rule that such a person - in most cases, the king - was depicted as a giant in comparison with the surrounding figures, was also observed in Egyptian images on a plane. This method of designating the spiritual superiority of one person over others by increasing the size of his figure should be recognized as quite natural at a certain stage in the development of art.
Fig. 104. Pta-Mai Group. From the photo
Egyptian images on the plane in their historical development were also subject to well-known general laws. Despite the few recent improvements brought about by the desire for freedom, these images constantly retained their silhouette character. The transition from painting on a plane is also almost imperceptible, which, however, due to sharp definiteness of the contours, looked more like painted reliefs than like real paintings, to images with slightly deeper contours, and from these latter to coylenglyphs or hollow reliefs (reliefs en creux) whose outlines are so deep that it was possible to model the depicted figures and objects without touching the background (see Fig. 103), and, finally, to real bas-reliefs, that is, images slightly protruding on the hollowed background. In any case, the Egyptians themselves, as Erman remarked, did not see a significant difference between painting, sunken reliefs and bas-reliefs; and at present it is hardly possible to say with complete certainty about many monuments, what were the main motives that prompted artists to choose one or the other of these kinds of technology.
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Play gameThe laws of the style of Egyptian painting and plastics were determined partly by the famous requirements of custom, partly by the imperfections of technology. And here we see that the ability to depict various phenomena of life on a plane is younger than the art of correctly reproducing individual human figures in all their volume. But technical incompetence in most cases is covered by the conditional rules of decency, thus serving virtues by virtue of necessity. If you look closer to the individual figures, it turns out that throughout the entire existence of Egyptian art, the rule to depict faces in profile prevailed. Together with the further history of the development of art, we will get acquainted with its more advanced models, representing exceptions to this rule. But the profile image of the figures was only partly possible for Egyptian artists, which depended on their desire to express everything accurately and clearly. Head, arms and legs were given in profile, shoulders and eyes visible from the front. Between the upper part of the chest, represented by en face, and the legs depicted in profile, there was the middle of the body, part of which was drawn in a straight position, and part at the side. The hands are striking in their unnaturalness: the first four fingers are always the same length; palms and upper arms are often alone in the place of others; but even more strikingly, complete neglect of the correct position of the legs. In Egyptian art, at all stages of its development, the rule to depict the legs in profile, standing one next to the other, and, moreover, from the inside, was observed, so that only one thumb could be seen closing all the others. But at all times there were, according to the pictures, single exceptions to this general rule; for example, the foot closest to the viewer sometimes maintained a natural position in which all five fingers are visible. This happened when the artist suddenly had the idea of reckoning with reality. However, the monuments known to the author of this work in the originals or copies, do not indicate the existence of such exceptions in the ancient period of Egyptian art. In the epoch of the New Kingdom, the correct positioning of the legs is quite often and is observed more noticeably, although it still does not constitute a general rule. Hands do not have an organic connection with the body, and their movements are usually unnatural and angular. If it was necessary to present any member of the body, an arm or a leg, stretched out, the ancient Egyptians constantly depicted the stretched arm or leg that is more distant from the viewer. If the Egyptian artists did not have any reasons that prompted them to depict the figure looking to the left, they always turned their faces to the right. Both of these rules were discovered by Erman. For our part, we note that, in view of the many exceptions, these rules cease to be so. But Erman is right, as far as the image of high-ranking persons is concerned, to which this usual, consecrated by tradition, primitive artistic technique was constantly applied.
As far as the Egyptian artists were from understanding the laws of perspective in their images on a plane, this is evidenced above all by their way of depicting the landscape surrounding objects. The author of this book already had a case earlier, on another occasion, to find out in detail that landscape played a prominent role in the meaning of the background in many figured images of Ancient Egypt, but was never an independent branch of art in it; representing the background, at best, he transmitted only a few parts of inanimate nature, marking them as on a geographical map: reproduced many well-captured details, but never imagined a complete and, moreover, promising whole. For example, a quadrangular pool of water surrounded by trees, depicted in the funeral chambers in Add-el-Qurnah, has the appearance of a drawing representing a regular square, and its water, according to custom that has existed since time immemorial in Egypt, is indicated by a series of zigzag lines drawn perpendicularly along blue field; 24 trees surrounding the pool from all sides, although they are depicted at the edges of the picture exactly on the places where they should be, with their tops facing all four sides. The image of the sacred garden in the tomb of Eleifia from the time of the 17th dynasty represents a drawing shift with a perspective view (fig. 105).
Fig. 105. The sacred garden in the tomb of Eleifia. By Perrot and Shipie
About the reproduction of atmospheric phenomena in Egyptian images on the plane, of course, there can be no question. In Egyptian art, we find no signs of either the correct transmission of light and shadow, nor the correct distribution and combination of colorful tones. Each paint was superimposed on the space intended for it, without mixing with others. Colors found in nature were transmitted only approximately. Egyptian men and horses were depicted as reddish-brown; Asian men and Egyptian women yellow. The motley costumes of the foreigners (the Egyptians themselves preferred to wear clothes made from completely white linen fabric) were reproduced with all the variety of their colors. Many images of the gods were luxuriously illuminated with yellow, red, green or blue colors, representing, in this way, a whole symbolism of colorings, which, however, is not available to our understanding. Finally, it is remarkable that Egyptian art, at all stages of its development, from the very epoch of its inception, turned out to be completely powerless when it was necessary to express mental movements in facial expressions; it portrayed moral unrest with the help of body movements, and the faces had the same expression, resembling a forced smile.
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