DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0170
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
bulbous style, or only adopted it on festive occasions, and the
king took a liberal and indulgent view of them. In the studio
of the sculptor called Thutmosis they have found studies of
startling vividness which have something of the Rodinesque
quality of the great portraitists of the Middle Kingdom, and
which are very much to our taste; and in the ominous El
Amarna case in the Cairo museum you can also find female
torsos of Hellenic beauty. The court style did not achieve the
final organization of error; and the exceptions allow us to
look behind these outcrops and admire the ancient constantly
renewed source. Many of the portraits of Tutankhamen
even display, for all their decadence, the sensitive flexibility
of the artists of El Amarna.
The nineteenth dynasty promptly restored the world
power which had crumbled away under the sun-king, and
on the whole does not show much sign of sensibility. Im-
pressiveness at all costs is the order of the day; and we are
treated to an orgy of colossal sculpture. These are the things
for which the Cairo Museum was built; they look well
enough in the bank building. The worst, by the way, are
not the creations of Rameses, but date from the Middle
Kingdom, like the two in the vestibule which greet the visitor
on his arrival. It cannot have been easy to find such pedes-
trian things in the Middle Kingdom. Rameses has ‘usurped’
them: that is, carved his name on them. It is one of the
easy-going habits of these later kings to appropriate in this
simple fashion the statues of their predecessors. Rameses n
in particular was a persistent exponent of this practice; in his
old age he must have suffered from a morbid hunger for
stone, for he took indiscriminately whatever came to hand.
Taken as a whole, it was heterogeneous enough. The two
colossi of the king, right by the vestibule, are made of a fine
brown stone, and their effect is not so bad. Rameses appears
as the god Ptah. These divine dresses are the counterparts
of the various regimental uniforms affected by modern
152
bulbous style, or only adopted it on festive occasions, and the
king took a liberal and indulgent view of them. In the studio
of the sculptor called Thutmosis they have found studies of
startling vividness which have something of the Rodinesque
quality of the great portraitists of the Middle Kingdom, and
which are very much to our taste; and in the ominous El
Amarna case in the Cairo museum you can also find female
torsos of Hellenic beauty. The court style did not achieve the
final organization of error; and the exceptions allow us to
look behind these outcrops and admire the ancient constantly
renewed source. Many of the portraits of Tutankhamen
even display, for all their decadence, the sensitive flexibility
of the artists of El Amarna.
The nineteenth dynasty promptly restored the world
power which had crumbled away under the sun-king, and
on the whole does not show much sign of sensibility. Im-
pressiveness at all costs is the order of the day; and we are
treated to an orgy of colossal sculpture. These are the things
for which the Cairo Museum was built; they look well
enough in the bank building. The worst, by the way, are
not the creations of Rameses, but date from the Middle
Kingdom, like the two in the vestibule which greet the visitor
on his arrival. It cannot have been easy to find such pedes-
trian things in the Middle Kingdom. Rameses has ‘usurped’
them: that is, carved his name on them. It is one of the
easy-going habits of these later kings to appropriate in this
simple fashion the statues of their predecessors. Rameses n
in particular was a persistent exponent of this practice; in his
old age he must have suffered from a morbid hunger for
stone, for he took indiscriminately whatever came to hand.
Taken as a whole, it was heterogeneous enough. The two
colossi of the king, right by the vestibule, are made of a fine
brown stone, and their effect is not so bad. Rameses appears
as the god Ptah. These divine dresses are the counterparts
of the various regimental uniforms affected by modern
152