DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4859#0029
Career and
rank of the
Egyptian
artist
Families as
schools of
art
THE TOMB OF TWO SCULPTORS AT THEBES
fore, only exceptional men could afford to show much independence of
spirit, and the many unfinished or scamped pictures seem to reflect this
measure of servitude, though precisely the opposite deduction may
sometimes be made.1 This comparative poverty may have been a con-
tributory motive for the double burial in our tomb, the owners preferring
one finely decorated chamber to two inferior sepulchres.
Since his occupation does not seem to have been lucrative, we must
in part attribute to professional pride the exceptional frequency with
which the artist handed his craft down to his descendants, a habit which
is exemplified once more in the case of the owners of Tomb 181.2 An
important consequence of this custom is that the maintenance of efficiency
and the transmission of tradition in art were provided for less by schools
or guilds of draughtsmen than by families, within whose circle profes-
sional knowledge was tenaciously guarded, along with the moderate
emoluments of professional posts. If, then, we have to qualify the idea
that artists are born, not made, since Egyptians of high attainments
adopted the career, less owing to a spirit that bloweth where it listeth,
or inherited genius, than to their position in a family line which inclined
to this calling from material motives and early familiarity with it; yet,
on the other hand, these humble nurseries of the arts were open to
individual talent and initiative, and sensitive to the national mood, as
well as freed to some extent from the iron bonds of priestly tradition or
the inane regulations of a state bureaucracy. A happy mingling of free-
dom and conservatism seems to be exhibited by the family to which we
have here gained an introduction. Essentially unmoved by the surface
current of the day, though it touched art more powerfully than any
other department of life, the style of this tomb is its own, and yet in the
end proved to be in harmony with the most sustained chords of national
life. This domestic school of Neferhet and Senennuter may well have
provided an excellent training ground, alike in the art of life itself and
that of the representation of life, an atmosphere in which good work was
1 See my Tomb of Nakht, pp. 7, 54-
2 Erman, loc. cit. In one third of the cases which Spiegelberg includes in his Graffiti the profession has
been confessedly inherited or bequeathed. Tomb 323 shows four generations of draughtsmen.
rank of the
Egyptian
artist
Families as
schools of
art
THE TOMB OF TWO SCULPTORS AT THEBES
fore, only exceptional men could afford to show much independence of
spirit, and the many unfinished or scamped pictures seem to reflect this
measure of servitude, though precisely the opposite deduction may
sometimes be made.1 This comparative poverty may have been a con-
tributory motive for the double burial in our tomb, the owners preferring
one finely decorated chamber to two inferior sepulchres.
Since his occupation does not seem to have been lucrative, we must
in part attribute to professional pride the exceptional frequency with
which the artist handed his craft down to his descendants, a habit which
is exemplified once more in the case of the owners of Tomb 181.2 An
important consequence of this custom is that the maintenance of efficiency
and the transmission of tradition in art were provided for less by schools
or guilds of draughtsmen than by families, within whose circle profes-
sional knowledge was tenaciously guarded, along with the moderate
emoluments of professional posts. If, then, we have to qualify the idea
that artists are born, not made, since Egyptians of high attainments
adopted the career, less owing to a spirit that bloweth where it listeth,
or inherited genius, than to their position in a family line which inclined
to this calling from material motives and early familiarity with it; yet,
on the other hand, these humble nurseries of the arts were open to
individual talent and initiative, and sensitive to the national mood, as
well as freed to some extent from the iron bonds of priestly tradition or
the inane regulations of a state bureaucracy. A happy mingling of free-
dom and conservatism seems to be exhibited by the family to which we
have here gained an introduction. Essentially unmoved by the surface
current of the day, though it touched art more powerfully than any
other department of life, the style of this tomb is its own, and yet in the
end proved to be in harmony with the most sustained chords of national
life. This domestic school of Neferhet and Senennuter may well have
provided an excellent training ground, alike in the art of life itself and
that of the representation of life, an atmosphere in which good work was
1 See my Tomb of Nakht, pp. 7, 54-
2 Erman, loc. cit. In one third of the cases which Spiegelberg includes in his Graffiti the profession has
been confessedly inherited or bequeathed. Tomb 323 shows four generations of draughtsmen.