Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
It is known that from a very early period the burial customs of the Egyptians included the making of portrait statues of the dead in stone or other materials. Many of these, such as the ‘Sheikh-el-beled’ in Cairo, the Prince Hem-On in Hildesheim, and the ‘Scribe’ in the Louvre, are among the finest works of Egyptian art. We know also that this ancient custom survived in Egypt until about the beginning of the Christian era, and it has often been asserted that the type of the archaic statues of the Greeks was decisively influenced by the contemporary works of the Egyptians. For these reasons the question of the origin of the Egyptian tomb statue has a general interest, outside the sphere of Egyptology.
1 I must emphasize that the following discussion concerus only the use of the tomb statue as such, that is, an Egyptian funerary custom, not the origin of the Egyptian statue in general, as a feature of Egyptian art. Beside the tomb statue there was always from the earliest times the temple statue, the psychological basis for which lies elsewhere. I need mention only the discoveries in the oldest strata of the temples of Hierakonpolis and Abydos in which, besides the seated statue of King Khasekhem (J. E. Quibell, Hierakonpolis I, pls. 39, 41) and the ivory figurine of a king of the early period (W. M. F. Petrie, Abydos II, pl. 2, 3, 13; p. 24), there were found a number of statues and statuettes of various materials. The Min-statues from the temple of Coptos (J. Capart, Primitive Art, p. 223) also belong here.
2 In the most recent literature this view seems to be much less favored.
3 Curtius, L., Antike Kunst I, pp. 61 f.Google Scholar
4 Kees, H., Totenglauben, pp. 84, 86.Google Scholar
5 Maspero, G., Histoire ancienne I (1895), p. 25 f.;Google ScholarÉtudes de mythologie I (1893), p. 8.Google Scholar See also Erman, H., Religion2 (1909), p. 148Google Scholar.
6 Schäfer, H., Propyläenkunst,2 p. 38.Google Scholar
7 Cf. Scharff, A., Die Altertümer der Vor-und Frühzeit Ägyptens II, pp. 25–72.Google Scholar
8 The eyes of black and white stone found by G. Möller together with a small club of lapis lazuli in a tomb near Abusir-el Meleq are not as yet explained, but considering the great weight of negative evidence, it is certainly not logical to interpret them as remains of a portrait statue of a king carrying a club, for they might just as well be from the figure of an armed attendant. It seems to me questionable however whether the slate statuette (h. 40cm.) with sheath, in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, from the MacGregor collection (see Recueil de travaux XXII, p. 66, pl. VI) can be taken for an attendant. That it came from a tomb near Negada is, so far as I can see, pure conjecture. Indeed A. Scharff informs me that he considers it “not older than the Ist or IInd dynasty.” May it not actually come from the Delta?
9 Reisner, G. A., The Early Dynastic Cemetery of Naga-ed-Dẹr, Part I (1908), andGoogle ScholarMace, A. C., ib. Part II (1909)Google Scholar.
10 It is absent also from the later tombs of the provincial town of Upper Egypt which lay near the present Naga-ed-Dẹr, down to the VIth dynasty, even from the great mastabas found there. Cf. , Reisner, A Provincial Cemetery of the Pyramid Age (Naga-ed-Dẹr III, Oxford, 1932).Google Scholar The same is true of the tombs of the IIIrd dynasty at Bẹt-Khallaf and Reqâqnah, cf. Garstang, J., Mahasna and Bẹt-Khallaf (1902) andGoogle ScholarTombs of the Third Dynasty at Reqâqnah and Bẹt-Khallaf (1904),Google Scholar and certainly also of the cemetery at Aulâd-es-Sheikh, although very little digging has been done there. Cf. Ranke, H., Karara, pp. 8 ffGoogle Scholar.
11 E. g. Schäfer, H., Propyläenkunst2, pp. 228 f.Google Scholar
12 Borchardt, L., Statuen I, pp. 1 f.Google Scholar The material is dark “red-mottled hornblend granite.” H. 39 cm. It is now listed as “Cairo 1.”
13 Scharff, A., Altertümer II, pl. 20Google Scholar and pp. 65 f. H. 42.5 cm. The archaic seated figure in Naples, h. 44 cm. (Bissing-Bruckmann, Denkmäler I, pl. 3), the origin of which is unknown, may also belong here.
14 Here again we must bear in mind that the question concerns only the antecedents of tomb statues as such. A purely artistic precedent is seen in the slate statue mentioned above, of King Khasekhem of the IInd dynasty, from the temple of Hierakonpolis.
15 As read by Sethe, K., Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Ägyptens III, pp. 39 ffGoogle Scholar.
16 This is evidently the basis for Meyer's, Eduard statement, Geschichte des Altertums2 (1909) p. 132:Google Scholar “Spuren der Gräber des Binothris und seiner beiden Vorgänger sind bei Memphis erhalten.”
17 Quibell, J. E., Archaic Mastabas (1923), pl. 26 and p. 10.Google Scholar
18 Further details in Müller, H. W., Die Totendenksteine des Mittleren Reiches, p. 174,Google Scholar note 6. I cannot accept his dating to the IIIrd dynasty. The style is much more archaic than the Hesire reliefs, and furthermore, this is the memorial of a royal princess, for whom one of the best artists of the time would have been employed.
18a See Firth, C. M. in Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte XXV, p. 149.Google Scholar
19 It is true that no evidence of a mastaba of a king has yet been discovered in the immediate vicinity of the tombs among which Quibell found the princess's gravestone.
20 The royal residence during the 1st dynasty (cf. Sethe, K., Urgeschichte, pp. 178 f.),Google Scholar as well as in the IInd, must for political reasons have been in the region of the later Memphis.
21 That the last two kings of the IInd dynasty again had their tombs built at Abydos must have been due to some special reason, but at present I can advance no plausible explanation.
22 Later it developed the familiar niche-structure, which , Balcz (Die altägyptische Wandgliederung, 1930, p. 19)Google Scholar has designated as characteristic for the Lower-Egyptian form of royal tomb. No satisfactory explanation has been given of the so-called “Tomb of Menes” at Negada, which has this structure. It is a huge mastaba, not built over subterranean chambers but containing above ground a number of rooms grouped about a burial chamber.
23 It is just possible that this change took place in Lower Egypt before the union under Menes. In that case the use of tomb statues for the higher officials of Lower Egypt may have developed further during the time of the Ist dynasty.
