Читать книгу Egyptian Art: Studies онлайн

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The care that Bissing has taken to render what is due to each of the experts who discovered a piece or spoke of it, deserves the more praise since many Egyptologists of the present generation have adopted the attitude of ignoring what has been said or written before them. They seem to insinuate to their readers that archæology, religion, grammar, history, nothing indeed that they touch on, has ever been studied before, and that the bibliography of a subject begins with the first essay they have devoted to it. Although the past of Egyptology is so short, it is a difficult subject to know, and it is not surprising if Bissing has misrepresented some features or ignored others. For example, he attributes the merit of recognizing in the animal’s tail that the kings attach to their back, not a lion’s tail but a jackal’s4 to Wiedemann; I do not know if I was the first, but I think that I certainly stated this before Wiedemann.5 A little farther on, I regret that Bissing was not acquainted with my notice of the statue of Montouhotpou in the Musée Egyptien:6 I am curious to know if he accepts my explanation of the disproportion between the feet, legs, and bust. It seems to me that it was not intended to be on the same level as the spectator, but that it ought to be placed in a naos, on a fairly high platform which could be reached by a staircase in front: seen from below, foreshortened, the effect of the perspective would redeem the exaggeration of form and re-establish the balance between the parts. It seems also that Bissing was not acquainted with the part of the Musée in which this Montouhotpou is discussed, for he does not refer to it again with regard to the Amenemhaît III discovered by Flinders Petrie at Fayoum.7 Farther on again, it would have been in keeping to note that Legrain found the debris of a statuette in black granite in the mud of the favissa at Karnak, which so closely resembles the admirable Ramses II of Turin that it might almost be the replica or a sort of original rough model.8 Unfortunately the head is wanting, but we have been almost entirely successful in restoring the body: if it is not by the same sculptor who took such pleasure in modelling the Turin statue, it comes from the same royal studio. The few differences to be noted between them arise solely from the inequality of the stature: it was necessary to simplify certain details or to suppress them in the smallest of the statues.