Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller.

  • Karl Otfried Müller
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    252/664
    this: the Egyptians were completely without the Greek repre- sentative impulse which constrains to represent what inwardly fills and agitates the soul, because it is beautiful and exalting. 2 [§. 233, 6.] Their representation is invariably guided by ex- ternal aims; it seeks to authenticate particular events, actions, services; it is altogether of an historical, monumental nature, as it were, an embodied inscription. Writing and image are here, so to speak, still unsevered and concrete; hence also the work of art is almost always accompanied by hieroglyphic characters, the import of which is only carried out and pre- 3 sented bodily to the view on a larger scale. The gods are not exhibited by themselves, but only in relation to their festival; hence there are no purely mythological scenes; the design is always to declare the acts of homage which the deity received 4 in a certain modification or situation. All religious scenes of Egyptian art are definite acts of homage by particular indi- viduals, commemorative monuments of the services performed to the deity. Here countless varieties of ofiering3 and modes 5 of testifying piety are scrupulously distinguished. In like manner life in the infernal world is constantly represented as the destiny of a particular person, as the judgment upon him 6 by the tribunal of the dead. In fine, the presumed_ purely scientific representation of the heavens degenerated in later times into horoscopes of individuals. 3. On representations from Egyptian religion and worship, Hirt uber die Bildung der J^gyptischen Gottheiten 1821 (from Grecian accounts). Champollion's Pantheon Egyptian (from hieroglyphic and other inscrip- tions). Plates to Creuzer's Symbolik, especiaUy to Guigniaut's edition of it (ReUgions de I'Antiquite, Planches, i. cah.). [K. Schwenk, die Mythol. der Jllgypter mit 13 lithogr. Tafeln 1846, discussed with pene- trating acumen and great mythological insight.] The coins of the Nomi, which extend from Trajan down to M. Aurelius as Caesar, are an impor- tant source of Egyptian symbolism, and are also interesting on account of peculiar combinations. See Zoega Numi Mg. Imper. R. 1786. Tochon d'Annecy Rech. sur les Med. des Homes de I'Egypte. P. 1822. 4. Descr. v. pi. 58. ■ The following seem to be undoubted personages of Egyptian artistic mythology: A. AMONG THE GODS. I, Phthas, the inscription in phonetic hieroplyplis Ptah, in close- fitting dress, with the feet joined together, leaning on the platform con- sisting of four steps (which is called rci rirr»^cc Bs^uiXix, and perhaps de- notes the four elements, Reuvens Lettres ^ Mr. Letronne, i. p. 28 sq.). Also dwarfish and ithyphallic as in the temple at Memphis, comp. Tolken in Minutoli s. 426. Likewise with a scarabajus as a head, inscription Ptah-Tore (*«§£/, Reuvens, ibid. p. 14). Cynocephalus, the ape, his sym- bol II. Ammon, inscription Amn, with a ram's or a human head, and a dcuble variegated f??ather upon it, artificial beard and the sceptre. Mo-