Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/352

 32 2 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. rocks which represented such an enormous outlay of manual labour, would be attacked without some guide which should pre- serve them from the chance of ruin by some ill-considered blow^ Did the Egyptian sculptor begin, then, with a clay sketch ? There is no positiYe information on the subject, but in all those numerous bas-reliefs which represent sculptors at work, there is not one in wdiich the artist has before him anything in the shape of a model or sketch to guide him in his task. It is possible that the sameness of his statues, especially of his colossal figures in granite or sandstone, enabled the Egyptian to dispense with an aid which the infinite variety of later schools was to render necessary. The Egyptian sculptor was contented with a few simple attitudes which he reproduced again and again. He doubtless began by marking the salient points and relative heights of the different parts upon his block. The rock was so hard that there was little risk of his journeymen spoiling the material by taking away too much, supposing them to be carefully overlooked. Marble would have been far more liable to such an accident. Even Michael Angelo, when he w^orked the marble with his own hands, spoilt more than one fine block from Carrara. Although w^e have no evidence to show that the Egyptians understood the use of clay models, we have some idea of the process by w^hich they were enabled to do without them, and of the nature of their professional education. The chief Egyptian museums possess works which have been recognized as graduated exercises in the technique of sculpture. They are of limestone, and of no great size — from four to ten inches high. The use of these little models is shown to have been almost universal by the fact that Mariette found them on nearly every ancient site that he excavated. Their true character is beyond doubt.^ At Boulak there are twenty-seven sculptured slabs which were found at Tanis. One is no more than a rough sketch, just begun. By its side is a completed study of the same subjects. Some of these slabs are carved on both sides ; on others we find one motive growing under his hands. The. western wall of the hypostyle hall contains many instances of this. It is decorated with sculptures on a large scale, in which the lines traced by the chisel differ more or less from those of the sketch. {Description, Ant. vol. ii. p. 445-) 1 M.^RiE'i'T]-:, N'oticr die Miisir, Nos. 623-6SS.