DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0091
78
EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI
has, and they are excellent specimens of one important technical point.
The Egyptian was inordinately proud of his work in hard stones. The
triumph of mastering the refractory medium filled him with satisfac-
tion, and he took great joy in the surface and color and texture of
granites for their own sake. Statues in such stones, therefore, were
never painted except sparingly, and then only a few salient details
were picked out. In these Hat-shepsut statues the eyes only are colored
to give life to the stone, and since they were broken up and buried only
a few years after they were made, this paint is preserved marvelously.
There was a considerable accumulation of rubbish under the granite
statues which looked like quarry chip from the grading of the temple
platform and waste from the stone cutters’ work during the building.
The hole was a convenient place to dump all such rubbish out of sight,
and throughout the Queen’s life it served that purpose. After her
death, work went on at the shrine of Hat-Hor which was built by
Thut-mose III. Unfortunately, however, rubbish dumping was not
done in even layers. It came rather in pockets, and in some places it
was piled and shored up with rough stone walls that went aimlessly
here and there through the mass. Hence we could never definitely say
whether any given pile was thrown in before Hat-shepsut’s death, or
during Thut-mose Ill’s reign alone, and unless an antiquity found has
some intrinsic evidence we can not date it more closely than to the
reigns of these two sovereigns.
This is unfortunately the case with a whole mass of sketches on
limestone flakes made during the two periods in the building of the
Deir el Bahri temples. Some of them were idle sketches of the work-
men—a bandy-legged dwarf or a dog scratching his chin with his
hind foot—and others were more serious experiments. One of the
most charming bits that have ever come out of Egypt is on a flake
of whitest limestone about the bigness of the palm of a man’s hand.
Some temple sculptor has been asked how he would draw a hippo-
potamus and, picking up this flake, he has portrayed a sedate beast
of a purplish brown hue with pink eyes and belly, and an enormous
jowl indicated with a few swift strokes of black (pl. 41). The majority
of these sketches, however, are more professional—actual trials of
details in the temple. A little bird was a hieroglyphic letter; a bril-
liantly colored duck was a study for an offering scene; but the most
instructive of all was a flake on which was worked up a commonly
recurring phrase in the inscriptions. The sculptor has tried three signs,
altering them to his liking, and then squared them off for transference
on to the temple walls, where they can be found today all finished.
EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI
has, and they are excellent specimens of one important technical point.
The Egyptian was inordinately proud of his work in hard stones. The
triumph of mastering the refractory medium filled him with satisfac-
tion, and he took great joy in the surface and color and texture of
granites for their own sake. Statues in such stones, therefore, were
never painted except sparingly, and then only a few salient details
were picked out. In these Hat-shepsut statues the eyes only are colored
to give life to the stone, and since they were broken up and buried only
a few years after they were made, this paint is preserved marvelously.
There was a considerable accumulation of rubbish under the granite
statues which looked like quarry chip from the grading of the temple
platform and waste from the stone cutters’ work during the building.
The hole was a convenient place to dump all such rubbish out of sight,
and throughout the Queen’s life it served that purpose. After her
death, work went on at the shrine of Hat-Hor which was built by
Thut-mose III. Unfortunately, however, rubbish dumping was not
done in even layers. It came rather in pockets, and in some places it
was piled and shored up with rough stone walls that went aimlessly
here and there through the mass. Hence we could never definitely say
whether any given pile was thrown in before Hat-shepsut’s death, or
during Thut-mose Ill’s reign alone, and unless an antiquity found has
some intrinsic evidence we can not date it more closely than to the
reigns of these two sovereigns.
This is unfortunately the case with a whole mass of sketches on
limestone flakes made during the two periods in the building of the
Deir el Bahri temples. Some of them were idle sketches of the work-
men—a bandy-legged dwarf or a dog scratching his chin with his
hind foot—and others were more serious experiments. One of the
most charming bits that have ever come out of Egypt is on a flake
of whitest limestone about the bigness of the palm of a man’s hand.
Some temple sculptor has been asked how he would draw a hippo-
potamus and, picking up this flake, he has portrayed a sedate beast
of a purplish brown hue with pink eyes and belly, and an enormous
jowl indicated with a few swift strokes of black (pl. 41). The majority
of these sketches, however, are more professional—actual trials of
details in the temple. A little bird was a hieroglyphic letter; a bril-
liantly colored duck was a study for an offering scene; but the most
instructive of all was a flake on which was worked up a commonly
recurring phrase in the inscriptions. The sculptor has tried three signs,
altering them to his liking, and then squared them off for transference
on to the temple walls, where they can be found today all finished.