36 



DISCOVERY 



Meir can be assigned to a time later than the end of 

 the reign of Pi5pi II, about 2720 B.C. From then 

 onwards until the Eleventh Djiiasty, about 2040 B.C., 

 with which began the Middle Kingdom, the scenes, 

 hitherto represented in reliefs or frescoes on the walls 

 of the fimerarj- chapels, were reproduced in the form 

 of wooden models — some of them being of beautiful 

 workmanship — which were placed along with the 

 mummy in the subterranean burial-chamber. 



With the advent of the Twelfth, or perhaps rather 

 towards the end of the Eleventh, Dynasty, the Cusite 

 barons again began to have their tomb-chapels adorned 

 with painted reliefs, these reliefs being of a very 

 remarkable character. In the interval between the 

 Sixth and Eleventh to Twelfth Dynasties a new and 

 local school of art seems to have grown up at Cuss. 

 The artists who executed the reliefs in the earlier Middle 

 Kingdom tomb-chapels at Meir, those of Senbi and his 

 son Ukhhotpe, had broken away to a very great extent 



sentations of animals, not in the figures of the owner 

 of the tomb-chapel or of his wife or yet of officiants 

 engaged in performing strictly liturgical acts, all such 

 being executed in the old traditional manner. 



It is possible that this naturalistic art originated not 

 among the craftsmen of Custe, but of Heracleopolis 

 Magna, now called Ehnasiyeh el-Medlneh, the seat of 

 the central government during the Ninth and Tenth 

 DjTiasties, which lasted from about 2500 to 2220 B.C. 

 Anyhow, it was certainly in that city that some of the 

 finest literary works of ancient Egypt were produced, 

 viz. the so-called Eloquent Peasant, The Instruction 

 which King Akhthoi made for his Son Merikere' , The 

 ■ Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, and possibly also 

 The Dialogue with his Soul of One who is Weary of Life 

 — works of striking originality and of marked freedom 

 in thought and style. 



The new and free spirit which inspired the early 

 Middle Kingdom artists of Custe makes itself strongly 



Fir,. I.— HUNTING SCENE IN SENBI'S TOMB-CH.\PEL. 



from the artistic traditions and conventions of the Old 

 Kingdom or Memphite school, and had developed a 

 style of their own which is characterised by its re- 

 markable freedom, especially in the treatment of the 

 human form. 



It is not in the choice of subjects, but in the rendering 

 of them, that the early Middle Kingdom art of Cuss 

 differs from the traditional art of Memphis. The 

 Cusite artists, indeed, still employed the same stock 

 scenes as are to be found on the walls of the mas(abehs ^ 

 of Sakkareh and Gizeh, but tl^ey imbued them with 

 a new vigour and carried them out with a freedom 

 hitherto unknown. This break with old-established 

 conventions, be it noted, is as a rule observable in the 

 figures of persons of little social importance, such as 

 herdsmen, fishermen, and the like, and in the repre- 



1 The tomb-chapels of the Old Kingdom nobles are so 

 designated because in shape- — they are rectangular flat-topped 

 masses of masonry with sloping sides- — they closely resemble 

 the stone bench, mastabeh, upon which the customers sit 

 outside the open Arab shop. For an excellent representation 

 of a group of mastabeh'tornbs see A. Erman, Life in Ancient 

 -Ej'J'/'^ English translation by H. M. Tirard, London, 1894, p. 311. 



felt in a hunting scene in the tomb-chapel of Senbi 

 (Fig. i). In the choice and general arrangement of the 

 various figures of animals it closely resembles other 

 Egj^tian hunting scenes, in particular that which 

 once decorated one of the walls of the pyramid-temple 

 of the Pharaoh Sahure' (Fifth Dynasty), and which is 

 now preserved in the great Egyptian collection of the 

 Berlin Museum. The Memphite sculptors of reliefs 

 were distinctly more successful in depicting animals 

 than in rendering the human form, and the animals in 

 the last-mentioned scene give one a vivid impression of 

 life and motion. But even in this respect the sculptors 

 of Memphis have been sui"passed by those of Cusse. 

 Neither in the Sahure' hunting relief, nor in the similar 

 reliefs occurring in the Old Kingdom mastahehs at 

 Sakkareh, Gizeh, and Meidum (see e.g. that in the 

 mastabeh of Ptahhotpe ^), is there anything quite as 



2 The mastabeh or tomb-chapel of Ptahhotpe, a high ofhcial 

 of the Fifth Dynasty, contains some of the finest reliefs, 

 executed by the Old Kingdom Memphite sculptors (see J. E. 

 Quibell, The Ramesseum, London, 1S96 [out of print], and 

 N. de G. Davies, The Mastaba 0/ PtahUetep and Akhethetep at 

 Saqqareh, 2 parts, London, 1900-190 1). 



