SOME form of art exists everywhere on the globe, but the story of art as a continuous effort does not begin in the caves of southern France or among
the North American Indians. There is no direct tradition which links these strange beginnings with our own days, but there is a direct tradition, handed down
from master to pupil, and from pupil to admirer or copyist, which links the art of our own days, any house or any poster, with the art of the Nile Valley of some five thousand years ago. For we shall see that the Greek masters went to school with the Egyptians, and we are all the pupils of the Greeks. Thus the art of Egypt has a tremendous importance for us. Everyone knows that Egypt is the land of the pyramids, those mountains of stone which stand like weathered landmarks on the distant horizon of history. However
remote and mysterious they seem, they tell us much of their own story. They tell us of a land which was so thoroughly organized that it was possible to pile up these
gigantic mounds of stone in the lifetime of a single king, and they tell us of kings who were so rich and powerful that they could force thousands and thousands of
34 Art for Eternity
workers or slaves to toil for them year in, year out, to quarry the stones, to dragthem to the building site, and to shift them with the most primitive means till the tomb was ready to receive the king. No king and no people would have gone to suchexpense, and taken so much trouble, for the creation of a mere monument. In fact, we know that the pyramids had their practical importance in the eyes of the kings and their subjects. The king was considered a divine being who held sway overthem, and on his departure from this earth he would again ascend to the gods whencehe had come. The pyramids soaring up to the sky would probably help him to makehis ascent. In any case they would preserve his sacred body from decay. For the Egyptians believed that the body must be preserved if the soul is to live on in thebeyond. That is why they prevented the corpse from decaying by an elaborate method of embalming it, and binding it up in strips of cloth. It was for the mummyof the king that the pyramid had been piled up, and his body was laid right in the
centre of the huge mountain of stone in a stone coffin. Everywhere round the burial chamber, spells and incantations were written to help him on his journey to the other world. But it is not only these oldest relics of human architecture which tell of the role played by age-old beliefs in the story of art. The Egyptians held the belief that thepreservation of the body was not enough. If the likeness of the king was also preserved, it was doubly sure that he would continue to exist for ever. So they orderedsculptors to chisel the king's portrait out of hard, imperishable granite, and put it in the tomb where no one saw it, there to work its spell and to help his soul to keepalive in and through the image. One Egyptian word for sculptor was actually 'He-who-keeps-alive'. At first these rites were reserved for kings, but soon the nobles of the royal household had their minor tombs grouped in neat rows round the king's mound; andgradually every self-respecting person had to make provision for his after-life byordering a cosdy grave, where his soul could dwell and receive the offerings of foodand drink which were given to the dead, and which would house his mummy andhis likeness. Some of these early portraits from the pyramid age, the fourth 'dynasty' of the 'Old Kingdom', are among the most beautiful works of Egyptian art (Fig. 37). There is a solemnity and simplicity about them which one does not easily forget. One sees that the sculptor was not trying to flatter his sitter, or to preserve a jolly moment in his life. He was concerned only with the essentials. Every lesser detail heleft out. Perhaps it is just because of this strict concentration on the basic forms ofthe human head that these portraits remain so impressive. For, despite their almostgeometrical rigidity, they are not primitive as are the native masks discussed in Chapter 1. Nor are they as lifelike as the naturalistic portraits of the artists ofNigeria. The observation of nature, and the regularity of the whole, are so evenlybalanced that they impress us as being lifelike and yet remote and enduring.
This combination of geometrical regularity and keen observation of nature is characteristic of all Egyptian art. We can study it best in the reliefs and paintings
that adorned the walls of the tombs. The word 'adorned', it is true, may hardly
fit an art which was meant to be seen by no one but the dead man's soul, In fact, these works were not intended to be enjoyed. They, too, were meant to 'keep alive'. Once, in a grim distant past, it had been the custom when a powerful man died to
let his servants and slaves accompany him into the grave so that he should arrive in the beyond with a suitable suite. They were sacrificed. Later, these horrors were
considered either too cruel or too costly, and art came to the rescue. Instead of real servants, the great ones of this earth were given images as substitutes. The pictures and models found in Egyptian tombs were connected with the idea of providing
the souls with helpmates in the other world. To us these reliefs and wall-paintings provide an extraordinarily vivid picture of life as it was lived in Egypt thousands of years ago. And yet, looking at them for the first time, one may find them rather bewildering. The reason is that the
36 Art for Eternity
Egyptian painters had quite a different way of representing real life from our way.Perhaps this is connected with the different purpose their paintings had to serve. What mattered most was not prettiness but completeness. It was the artists' taskto preserve everything as clearly and permanently as possible. So they did not set out to sketch nature as it appeared to them from any fortuitous angle. They drewfrom memory, according to strict rules which ensured that everything that had togo into the picture would stand out in perfect clarity. Their method, in fact, resembled that of the map-maker rather than that of the painter. Fig. 33 shows it ina simple example, representing a garden with a pond. If we had to draw sucha motif we might wonder from which angle to approach it. The shape and characterof the trees could be seen clearly only from the sides, the form of the pond wouldbe visible only if seen from above. The Egyptians had no compunction aboutthis problem. They would simply draw the pond as if it were seen from above,and the trees from the side. The fishes and birds in the pond, on the other hand,would hardly look recognizable as seen from above, so they were drawn in profile. In such a simple picture we can easily understand the artist's procedure. Thereare many children's drawings which apply a similar principle. But the Egyptianswere much more consistent in their application of these methods than children everare. Everything had to be represented from its most characteristic angle. Fig. 34shows the effect which this idea had on the representation of the human body. Thehead was most easily seen in profile so they drew it sideways. But if we think of thehuman eye we think of it as seen from the front. Accordingly, a full-face eye wasplanted into the side view of the face. The top half of the body, the shoulders andchest, are best seen from the front, for then we see how the arms are hinged to thebody. But arms and feet in movement are much more clearly seen sideways. That is the reason why Egyptians in these pictures look so strangely flat and contorted.Moreover the Egyptian artists found it hard to visualize either foot seen from theoutside. They preferred the clear outline from the big toe upwards. So both feet areseen from the inside, and the man on the relief looks as if he had two left feet.It must not be supposed that Egyptian artists thought that human beings lookedlike that. They merely followed a rule which allowed them to include everything inthe human form that they considered important. Perhaps, as I have said, this strictadherence to the rule had something to do with their magic purpose. For how could aman with his arm 'foreshortened' or 'cut off' bring or receive the required offeringsto the dead ? The point is that Egyptian art is not based on what the artist could see at a givenmoment, but rather on what he knew belonged to a person or a scene. It was outof these forms which he had learned, and which he knew, that he built his representations, much as the primitive artist built his figures out of the forms he couldmaster. It is not only his knowledge of forms and shapes that the artist embodies.
in his picture, but also his knowledge of their significance. We sometimes call a mana 'big boss'. The Egyptian drew the boss bigger than his servants or even his wife. When we understand these rules and conventions, we understand the language ofthe pictures in which life of the Egyptians is chronicled. Fig. 35 gives a good ideaof the general arrangement of a wall in the tomb of a high Egyptian dignitary of theso-called 'Middle Kingdom', some nineteen hundred years before our era. Theinscriptions in hieroglyphs tells us exactly who he was, and what titles and honourshe had collected in his lifetime. His name, we read, was Chnemhotep, the Administrator of the Eastern Desert, Prince of Menat Chufu, Confidential friend of the King, Royal Acquaintance, Superintendent of the Priests, Priest of Horus, Priest of Anubis, Chief of all the Divine Secrets, and—most impressive of all—Master ofall the Tunics. On the left side we see him hunting wild-fowl with a kind of boomerang, accompanied by his wife Cheti, his concubine Jat, and one of his sons who,despite his tiny size in the picture, held the title of Superintendent of the Frontiers. Below, in the frieze, we see fishermen under their superintendent Mentuhotephauling in a big catch. On top of the door Chnemhotep is seen again, this timetrapping waterfowl in a net. As we understand the methods of the Egyptian artist, we can easily see how this device worked. The trapper sat hidden behind a screen of reed, holding a cord which was linked with the open net (seen from above). When the buds had settled down on the bait, he pulled the rope and the net closed.
over them. Behind Chnemhotep is his eldest son Nacht, and his Superintendent of the Treasures, who was also responsible for the ordering of the tomb. On the
right side, Chnemhotep, who is called 'great in fish, rich in wild-fowl, loving
the goddess of the chase', is seen spearing fish. Once more we can observe the conventions of the Egyptian artist who lets the water rise among the reeds to show
us the clearing with the fish. The inscription says : 'Canoeing in the papyrus beds,
the pools of wild-fowl, the marshes and the streams, spearing with the two-pronged
spear, he transfixes thirty fish; how delightful is the day of hunting the hippopotamus'. Below is an amusing episode with one of the men who had fallen into the water being fished out by his mates. The inscription round the door
records the days on which offerings are to be given to the dead, and includes prayers
to the gods.
I think when we have become accustomed to looking at these Egyptian pictures we are as little troubled by their unrealities as we are by the absence of colour in a photograph. We even begin to realize the great advantages of the Egyptian method. Nothing in these pictures gives the impression of being haphazard, nothing looks
as if it could just as well be somewhere else. It is worth while taking a pencil and
trying to copy one of these 'primitive' Egyptian drawings. Our attempts always
look clumsy, lopsided and crooked. At least my own do. For the Egyptian sense of
order in every detail is so strong that any little variation seems to upset it entirely. The Egyptian artist began his work by drawing a network of straight lines on the
wall, and he distributed his figures with great care along these lines. And yet all this geometrical sense of order did not prevent him from observing the details of nature with amazing accuracy. Every bird or fish or butterfly is drawn with such truthful- ness that zoologists can still recognize the species. Fig. 36 shows such a detail of
Fig- 35—the birds in the tree by Chnemhotep's fowling net. Here it was not only
his great knowledge which guided the artist, but also an eye for colour and outline.
It is one of the greatest things in Egyptian art that all the statues, paintings and
architectural forms seem to fall into place as if they obeyed one law. We call such
a law, which all creations of a people seem to obey, a 'style'. It is very difficult to explain in words what makes a style, but it is far less difficult to see. The rules which govern all Egyptian art give every individual work the effect of poise and
austere harmony.
The Egyptian style was a set of very strict laws which every artist had to learn from his earliest youth. Seated statues had to have their hands on their knees; men
had to be painted with darker skin than women ; the appearance of every Egyptian
god was strictly laid down : Horus, the sun-god, had to be shown as a falcon or with a
falcon's head, Anubis, the god of death, as a jackal or with a jackal's head. Every
artist also had to learn the art of beautiful script. He had to cut the images and symbols of the hieroglyphs clearly and accurately in stone. But once he had mastered
42 Art for Eternity
all these rules he had finished his apprenticeship. No one wanted anything different, no one asked him to be 'original'. On the contrary, he was probably considered thebest artist who could make his statues most like the admired monuments of the past. So it happened that in the course of three thousand years or more Egyptian art changed very little. Everything that was considered good and beautiful in the timesof the pyramids was held to be just as excellent a thousand years later. True, newfashions appeared, and new subjects were demanded of the artists, but their mode ofrepresenting man and nature remained essentially the same. Only one man ever shook the iron bars of the Egyptian style. He was a king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, at the time known as the 'New Kingdom' which was foundedafter a catastrophic invasion of Egypt. This king, called Amenophis IV, was a
heretic. He broke with many of the customs hallowed by an age-old tradition. Hedid not wish to pay homage to the many strangely shaped gods of his people. Forhim only one god was supreme, Aton, whom he worshipped and whom he hadrepresented in the shape of the sun. He called himself Akhnaton, after his god, andhe moved his court out of reach of the priests of the other gods, to a place which is now called El-Amarna. The pictures which he commissioned must have shocked the Egyptians of his day by their novelty. In them none of the solemn and rigid dignity of the earlier Pharaohs was to be found. Instead, he had himself depicted lifting his daughter onto his knee, walking with his wife in the garden, leaning on his stick. Some of his portraits show him as an ugly man (Fig. 38)—perhaps he wanted the artists to portray him in all his human frailty. Ahknaton's successor was Tutankhamen, whosetomb with its treasures was discovered in 1923. Some of these works are still in the modern style of the Aton religion—particularly the back of the king's throne(Fig. 39), which shows the king and queen in a homely idyll. He is sitting on his chair in an attitude which might have scandalized the strict Egyptian conservative
almost lolling, by Egyptian standards. His wife is no smaller than he is, and gently puts her hands on his shoulders while the Sun-god, represented as a golden orb,
is stretching his hands in blessing down to them.
It is not impossible that this reform of art in the Eighteenth Dynasty was madeeasier for the king because he could point to foreign works that were much less strict and rigid than the Egyptian products. On an island overseas, in Crete, there dwelta gifted people whose artists delighted in the representation of swift movement.When the palace of their king at Cnossos was excavated some fifty years ago, people
could hardly believe that such a free and graceful style could have been developedin the second millennium before our era. Works in this style were also found on the Greek mainland; a dagger from Mycenae (Fig. 40) shows a sense of movement andflowing lines which must have impressed any Egyptian craftsman who had beenpermitted to stray from the hallowed rules of his style.
But this opening up of Egyptian art did not last long. Already during the reign of Tutankhamen the old beliefs were restored, and the window to the outside worldwas shut again. The Egyptian style, as it had existed for more than a thousandyears before his time, continued to exist for another thousand years or more, and the Egyptians doubdess believed it would continue for all eternity. Many Egyptianworks in our museums date from this later period, and so do nearly all Egyptian
buildings such as temples and
palaces. New themes were intro- duced and new tasks performed,
but nothing essentially new was
added to the achievement of art. Egypt, of course, was only one
ofthe great and powerful empires which existed in the Near East
for many a thousand years. We
all know from the Bible that
little Palestine lay between the Egyptian kingdom of the Nile and the Babylonian and Assyrian
empires which had developed
in the valley of the two rivers Euphrates and Tigris. The art of Mesopotamia, as the valley of the two rivers was called in Greek, is less well known to us than the art of Egypt. This is at least partly due to accident. There were no stone quarries in these valleys, and most buildings were made of baked brick which,
in course of time, weathered away and fell to dust. Even
sculpture in stone was comparatively rare. But this is not the only explanation of the fact that
relatively few early works of their
art have come down to us. The
main reason is probably that these people did not share the religious belief of the Egyptians that the human
body and its likeness must be preserved if the soul is to continue. In the very
early times, when a people called the Sumerians ruled in the capital of Ur,
kings were still buried with their whole household, slaves and all, so that they should not lack a following in the world beyond. Graves of this period have
recently been discovered, and we can now admire some of the household goods
of these ancient, barbarous kings in the British Museum. We see how much refine- ment and artistic skill can go together with primitive superstition and cruelty.
There was, for instance, a harp in one of the tombs, decorated with fabulous animals (Fig. 41). They look rather like our heraldic beasts, not only in their general appearance but also in their arrangement, for the Sumerians had a taste for symmetry and precision. We do not know exactly what these fabulous animals were meant to signify, but it is almost certain that they were figures from the mythology
of these early days, and that the scenes which look to us like pages from a children's book had a very solemn and serious meaning.
Though artists in Mesopotamia were not called upon to decorate the walls of tombs, they, too, had to ensure, in a different way, that the image helped to keep the mighty alive. From early times onwards it was the custom of Mesopotamian kings
to commission monuments to their victories in war, which told of the tribes that had been defeated, and the booty that had been taken. Fig. 42 shows such a
relief representing the king who tramples on the body of his slain foe, while others of his enemies beg for mercy. Perhaps the idea behind these monuments was not
only to keep the memory of these victories alive. In early times, at least, the ancient
beliefs in the power of the image may still have influenced those who ordered them. Perhaps they thought that, as long as the picture of their king with his foot on the neck of the prostrate enemy stood there, the defeated tribe would not be able to
rise again. In later times such monuments developed into complete picture-chronicles of
the king's campaign. The best preserved of these chronicles dates from a relatively
late period, the reign of King Asurnasirpal III of Assyria, who lived in the ninth
century B.C., a little later than the biblical King Solomon. They are kept in the British Museum. There we see all the episodes of a well-organized campaign; we see the army crossing rivers and assaulting fortresses (Fig. 43), their camps and
their meals. They way in which these scenes are represented is rather similar to Egyptian methods, but perhaps a little less tidy and rigid. As one looks at them, one
feels as if one were watching a newsreel of 2,000 years ago. It all looks so real and
convincing. But as we look more carefully we discover a curious fact: there are plenty of dead and wounded in these gruesome wars—but not one of them is an
Assyrian. The art of boasting and propaganda was well advanced in these early days. But perhaps we can take a slightiy more charitable view of these old Assyrians. Perhaps even they were still ruled by the old superstition which has come into this story so often : the superstition that there is more in a picture than a mere picture. Perhaps they did not want to represent wounded Assyrians for some such strange
reason. In any case, the tradition which began then had a very long life. On all these monuments which glorify the warlords of the past, war is no trouble at all. You
just appear, and the enemy is scattered like chaff in the wind.
