DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0108
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
of words and music. They found an ideal medium in the
white limestone which absorbed the colour; it served their
purpose as well as the adoption of oil-technique served
modern painting. It is hard to differentiate adequately
between the artistic activities of this period.
And what about Rahotep and his wife? The only
explanation remaining is to attribute their peculiarities to the
particular desires of the man who ordered them to be made-
among these desires we must include the use of artificial
eyes. These extremely costly eyes are of crystal with silver
points for the pupils. Perhaps they were fashionable in a
certain privileged class; at all events they cramped the plastic
effect and put special difficulties in the way of the painter,
whose business it was to prevent their seeming like foreign
bodies. Less naturalistic glass eyes were also in use.
There is something abnormal to me about the way in
which the married pair are fashioned out of separate blocks
with no connexion between them. Why are they not
together? Was the man originally alone and was the woman
added later? Was she substituted for another during the
prince’s lifetime? There is no discoverable resemblance
between her and the wife of the prince on the reliefs; but
the condition of these reliefs and the conventions of all
relief sculpture prevent our applying this test.
Possibly Rahotep and his cold-hearted wife belonged to
a special class of Egyptians about whom we know less than
we know about the rest of these stone people. This is the
most probable hypothesis; it enlarges our ideas about the
social structure of ancient Egypt, which seemed to us so
easy to compass. Alongside our Family and The Elders this
disunited couple forms a third category which never lacks
in any cultivated society, and least of all in one where princes
are to be found. The representation, to us only too con-
vincing in its naturalism, corresponds with our idea that we
have here a nightmare vignette of modern marriage.
92
of words and music. They found an ideal medium in the
white limestone which absorbed the colour; it served their
purpose as well as the adoption of oil-technique served
modern painting. It is hard to differentiate adequately
between the artistic activities of this period.
And what about Rahotep and his wife? The only
explanation remaining is to attribute their peculiarities to the
particular desires of the man who ordered them to be made-
among these desires we must include the use of artificial
eyes. These extremely costly eyes are of crystal with silver
points for the pupils. Perhaps they were fashionable in a
certain privileged class; at all events they cramped the plastic
effect and put special difficulties in the way of the painter,
whose business it was to prevent their seeming like foreign
bodies. Less naturalistic glass eyes were also in use.
There is something abnormal to me about the way in
which the married pair are fashioned out of separate blocks
with no connexion between them. Why are they not
together? Was the man originally alone and was the woman
added later? Was she substituted for another during the
prince’s lifetime? There is no discoverable resemblance
between her and the wife of the prince on the reliefs; but
the condition of these reliefs and the conventions of all
relief sculpture prevent our applying this test.
Possibly Rahotep and his cold-hearted wife belonged to
a special class of Egyptians about whom we know less than
we know about the rest of these stone people. This is the
most probable hypothesis; it enlarges our ideas about the
social structure of ancient Egypt, which seemed to us so
easy to compass. Alongside our Family and The Elders this
disunited couple forms a third category which never lacks
in any cultivated society, and least of all in one where princes
are to be found. The representation, to us only too con-
vincing in its naturalism, corresponds with our idea that we
have here a nightmare vignette of modern marriage.
92