Greek terra-cotta statuettes : their origin, evolution, and uses / By Marcus B. Huish.

  • Marcus Bourne Huish
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Greek terra-cotta statuettes : their origin, evolution, and uses / By Marcus B. Huish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    64/426 page 32
    'I'lic saying, “/Tr Africa semper aliquid noviP may, ])m haps, be claimed to be as applicable to statuettes as to man}' other things, and consequent!)' it is to h'^gypt that we must look for the fotis et origo of votive and funerary terra-cottas. This need not in an}' way impair the admitted fact that the instinct which gave rise to these uses originated spontaneous!}' in many countries ; but it is in Egypt that we find veiy early data concerning them. Whilst in Greece they can with onl}' shadowy probability be traced to the second millennium before Christ, in Egypt records of them go back uninterruptedly to the eighteenth dynast}: (u.c. 1700—iqooj, a date com- pared with- which all other records appear to be quite modern. As has been said, “ Long before the first Greek carver made his childish essays Eg}'ptian xArt stood full-grown and self- contained.” The “ manufacture ” of statuettes in h^gypt—for there, as elsewhere, it mainly came under that designation—was carried out for the most part in a somewhat different fashion from that of other countries. Although they were made in the usual way, but a small number of statuettes amongst the thousands IM'oduced came under the category of “terra-cottas,” as we undcistand the word. 1 he rc.sults in that material were ap- parently too commonplace in appearance, and called for too little ingenuity to please the Egyptian’s fastidious tastes. A whitei and .sandiei earth was used in preference, and learning from the glass-maker the secret of brilliant glazes, he covered his pieces with the well-known coloured glazings, azure blue, which was so highly esteemed by the ancients, being the most l^opular. This i)rocess was also used in very early times by the ^Assyrians, and was imitated by the Phcenicians, and even
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