The human image in Old Kingdom nonroyal reliefs (Continuación)

The Fourth Dynasty

With the reign of Snefru, the style of the previous dynasty relaxes. In contrast with the wish of nobles in the Third Dynasty to have themselves represented at an advanced stage of their career and with pitiless realism, several contemporaries of the first king of the Fourth Dynasty appear in relief with a demeanor that is particularly youthful and pleasant, even sweet. This is especially the case with Metjen (cat. no. 29),33 Netjer-aperef,34 and Akhet-hotep (Saqqara A I),35 but it is true as well for Iy-nefer,36 Ra-hotep,37 and Akhet-aa (cat. no. 18).38

The smooth surface of the figures in the mastabas of these officials is intentional on the part of the artist; modeling was apparently of no interest at this time. Variations in the perfectly flat surface are rare and extremely subtle. In the relief of Akhet-hotep now in the Brooklyn Museum (57.178), they are limited to summary indications of the collarbone, left biceps, and right elbow and to even more superficial modeling on the lower limbs. But the thickness of the relief is rarely so spectacular in the Old Kingdom as it is here—so much so that Mariette described the decoration of Akhet-hotep's mastaba as sculpture in the round (fig. 64).39 This is something extremely rare in Egyptian art, where relief is, by nature, rather thin.40 The proportions of the figures of the deceased are often massive, particularly in the legs. The sole exception to this state of affairs is found in the tablet of Ra-hotep's false door (British Museum, London, 1242), in which the abnormal slenderness of the legs is exactly in the spirit of the Third Dynasty, as are two other details: the chair seat shown from above, which disappears completely after King Khufu;41 and the sculptor's unusual interest in anatomy, expressed here in the neck muscle (the sternocleidomastoid), the collarbone, the lower ribs, the deltoid shoulder muscle, the muscles of the forearm extended toward the offering table, the hipbone showing under the cloak (as rare as the two sharply differentiated knees), the fibula, and the ankle-bone. All this suggests that the tablet of Ra-hotep's false door, which looks quite isolated with respect to the rest of the tomb walls, was carved before the other walls or by an artist rooted in the past.

From Snefru to Khufu there is not much change in the depiction of the human figure, except in the thickness of the relief, which passes abruptly from exceptionally high to much lower raised relief. The latter, in fact, sometimes even comes close to the kind of low relief found on modern coins or medals, as in the slab stelae from Giza (cat. nos. 51-53) or the relief from the tomb of Irery.42

Despite longstanding opinion, nonroyal monuments of the Fourth Dynasty are quite numerous, enough so that they may be counted by the dozens; several of them have simply been attributed wrongly to the Sixth Dynasty.43 A good example of relief in the Fourth Dynasty is found in the mastaba of Khufu-khaf (G 7140).44 The tomb owner was probably a son of Khufu—perhaps even the same man as the future pharaoh Khafre,45 for whom the mastaba had been prepared before his accession to the throne. In the reliefs of his imposing tomb, located in the Eastern Cemetery of Giza, the figures of Khufu-khaf strike the visitor both by their exceptional height and by their marvelous workmanship. The most representative scene shows the official and his wife with their arms entwined, turning to the left to receive offering bearers and scribes (fig. 65).46 The key characteristics of the two figures here are their lack of expression and the nearly total absence of individuality in their faces47—qualities so marked that they almost call to mind the classicism of ancient Greece. Just as in Greek classicism, the man has an athletic physique, with a thin waist, well-proportioned shoulders, and strong legs. Another characteristic—this time in contrast to Greek classicism, which sought to emphasize anatomy—is the absence of modeling to animate Khufu-khaf's exemplary silhouette: he is a cartoon cutout, in which the muscles of the forward arm and forearm are barely perceptible.48 This indifference to anatomy is certainly not due to a lack of means; instead, it reflects a particular vision of the human being, since in the same tomb the hieroglyphs are executed with precision and an incomparable refinement.

Although their faces show no sentiment, the figures of the couple themselves are arranged with a touching intimacy. The pose of Khufu-khaf's wife, Nefret-kau, has nothing conventional about it. In Old Kingdom reliefs the wife normally puts her arm around her husband's neck,49 but here Nefret-kau holds on to her husband's arm, looping her own arm about that of Khufu-khaf and putting her other hand on his wrist, actually snuggling up against him.50 There is no way of knowing whether the official himself or the artist who designed his chapel's reliefs was the one who took the initiative in showing conjugal tenderness with such daring. Be that as it may, the period itself doubtless also played a part: such freedom of expression could have existed only when the rules of composition had not yet been set into a fixed routine.51

The dominant features of Khufu-khaf's relief reappear in most Fourth Dynasty mastabas. Faces with little individuality but often rather youthful features (which is a means of idealizing the deceased), serene, smiling, or even blissful expressions, and a general lack of interest in anatomy all serve to make the figures of the officials depicted in these monuments representations that are timeless in character.52. Noteworthy in this respect are the grace and striking youthfulness in the face of Neferi (fig. 62), even at the peak of his career, when he has a flabby chest and potbelly,53 or the ravishing smile of Mer-ib (fig. 63), at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty. It is hard not to see these images as comparable to the statue of Ra-her-ka and Mer-si-ankh as it appears on the cover of the recent catalogue devoted to Old Kingdom statuary in the Louvre, with its chief characteristic a kind of faith in the future illuminating the faces of the official and his wife.54 Considering the harsh "facsimiles" of nobles of the Third Dynasty, we can only wonder what might explain this new direction in the Fourth Dynasty's concept of the individual. Is it the expression of political and social well-being, or simply a reaction against the art of the preceding period? Or are we to see in the use of the same mold for everyone the desire to leave no place for the individual?55 This overall picture of the Fourth Dynasty has to be amended somewhat, because not all the officials of that time are shown with angelic faces or innocuous features. Senenu-ka (G 2041), for example, has a big nose, fat lips, and a double chin and is neither smiling nor youthful.56 Nefer (G 2110) is famous for his raptor's beak of a nose, which occurs both in his reliefs (cat. no. 79) and his "magic head" (usually called "reserve head"), and for his double chin.57 As for the woman named Debet (British Museum, London, EA 157A)—an appellation meaning "female hippopotamus," which she can hardly have received by chance—her bovine neck, short and quite pointed nose, little eyes, and waistless body all give her a very individual appeal.58

There are also exceptions in the use of modeling. On the false-door jamb of Irery (British Museum, London, 1168)59 and the false-door tablet of Huti (cat. no. 85),60 the normal cookie-cutter aspect of the foreground is relieved by modeling atypical of the Fourth Dynasty—in the case of Irery, even despite the thinness of the relief. In Huti's relief the representation of the iliac bone, added to that of numerous other anatomical details, leads me to believe that this mastaba is nearer in time to the Third Dynasty than I have argued elsewhere: it could date to the beginning of Khufu's reign rather than to the time of Djedefre.61

  1. Photos FERE 6807, 6810, 6812; Porter and Moss 1978, p. 493. On the back wall of the false door the deceased has quite full cheeks, which add to his youthful appearance. The mastaba of Metjen (cat. no. 29) has the cartouche of Snefru on its walls.
  2. Porter and Moss 1981, p. 879 (with the cartouche of Snefru).
  3. On reliefs in the Kofler-Truniger collection (A 85) and the Metropolitan Museum (58.44.2); Porter and Moss 1978, p. 453. Only the fragment in the Bible Lands Museum, Jerusalem (EG 1), shows the deceased somewhat morose. The reliefs in Akhet-hotep’s mastaba have no royal names, but all their stylistic features resemble those of monuments from the time of Snefru.
  4. On the left jamb of the false door Egyptian Museum, Cairo, CG 57121; Porter and Moss 1981, p. 894 (with the cartouche of Snefru).
  5. On the relief Louvre, E 11.430 (Ziegler 1990b, p. 191) the deceased looks almost simple-minded. It should be noted that Ra-hotep has quite different features elsewhere in the tomb. On the British Museum fragment (see below) he has a much more mature face, with small eyes, thick lips, and a strong nose with a bump in profile. The same prominent nose appears on a fragment in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo (19.11.24.3 G), where only its profile is preserved, and on Ra-hotep’s statue (fig. 31). No royal name occurs in the mastaba of Ra-hotep, but all its stylistic features associate it with the time of Snefru.
  6. On the relief Louvre, B 2. Because of his round cheeks and very sweet expression, Akhet-aa appears younger in this relief than in Louvre, B 1 (cat. no. 18). Even when he seems older, however, he still has relaxed features. Akhet-aa’s mastaba has occasionally been dated to the end of the Third Dynasty (Ziegler 1990b, p. 96, with earlier bibliography) because the statue found in the tomb is archaic in style. This is not a totally convincing argument, since the statue of Metjen (cat. no. 28) is of the same type, yet we know that Metjen ended his career under Snefru. Moreover, the relief style of Akhet-aa is immensely closer to that of Snefru’s time than to that of Hesi-re and Kha-bau-sokar (for instance, in its texts with column dividers, which do not appear in the reliefs of Hesi-re and Kha-bau-sokar).
  7. Mariette and Maspero 1889, p. 69.
  8. Except in the reign of Senwosret I, during the Amarna Period, and under the Ptolemies.
  9. Cherplon 1989, pp. 32 nn. 28, 29, p. 155.
  10. British Museum, London, 1168-71. In other monuments, such as those of Khufu-khaf (G 7140) and Senenu-ka (G 2041), the relief is moderately thick.
  11. There are in fact hundreds of square meters of relief and dozens of statues from the Fourth Dynasty; see Cherplon 1989, pp. 83-110; Cherplon 1995, PP- 39~4I; Cherplon 1998, pp. 108-10. The striking number of nonroyal monuments with the name of Khufu (at least fifty; see Cherplon n.d.) is enough in itself to make us reconsider the question.
  12. Porter and Moss 1974, pp. 188-90.
  13. Stadelmann 1984a, pp. 165-72.
  14. Porter and Moss 1974, p. 189 (9).
  15. Khufu-khaf, however, has a rather long nose, which rises from his face at a marked angle, and his wife has a small and fairly individual chin. But in PM 2 (ibid., p. 188), the deceased and his mother have practically interchangeable faces, with the same angle of the chin and the same pretty face; in PM 10 and 13 (ibid., p. 190) the portraits are frozen stereotypes.
  16. The deceased’s figure in PM 5 (ibid., p. 1 89) has not much more modeling. The deltoid and the muscles of the knee and legs are discernible; see Cherplon 1989, pl. 14.
  17. Cherplon 1995, pp. 33-34.
  18. I cannot help recalling here the following anecdote. In May 1998, when Hosni Mubarak visited France, Paris-Match wanted to publish a photograph of the Egyptian president and his wife. Mubarak agreed, even though the presidential couple had never appeared together in an official portrait in Egypt. The photograph that resulted, however, was quite different from that normally seen in European courts. Mme Mubarak spontaneously took the arm of her husband, thereby adopting the custom of ancient Egypt, in which it is the wife and not the husband who displays a gesture of affection. In doing so she duplicated, without realizing it, the precise pose of Khufu-khaf’s wife (Paris-Match, May 28, 1998, P- 49).
  19. The only royal names associated with monuments in which the gesture of Khufu-khaf’s wife appears are those of Snefru, Khufu, Djedefre, and Khafre; see Cherplon 1995, p. 33.
  20. Several such reliefs are dated by royal names appearing in the monuments: from the time of Sened and Peribsen: Sheri (Cherplon 1989, pp. 22-23); Khufu: Neferi (ibid., pp. 97-98, pls. 10, 11), Min-nefer (unpublished, excavations of Zahi Hawass), Akhet-hotep (G 7650; Barracco 3, Alinari photograph 34761), Nen-sedjer-kai (G 2101), and the wife of Ni-hetep-khnum (Cherplon 1989, pl. 3); Djedefre: Seneb (Cherplon 1984, pl. 10, which contrasts with the realism of his statue, ibid., pl. 11); Khafre: Nesut-nefer (G 4970; Porter and Moss 1974, p. 144 [4]; Junker’s photographs do not allow for judgment); Menkaure: Ka-nefer (G 2150; Porter and Moss 1974, p. 78 [8]). Others, without cartouches, can be dated to the same general period on other grounds: Dedi (unpublished, excavations of Zahi Hawass); Hetep-her-en-ptah (Cherplon 1989, pl. 25b); Irery (British Museum, London, 1168-71; ibid., cover ill., pl. 27a); Ka-aper (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 46.33; the wife, however, has an awful face, with little eyes and turned-down lips); Ka-em-heset (Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JE 47749; Forman, Forman, and Vilimkova 1962, pl. 25); Mery (Carnegie Museum of Art, plttsburgh, 73.11, with a rather inane expression); Setju (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, AEIN 6-7, from Saqqara B 6; the dating to the end of the Fourth Dynasty or the beginning of the Fifth proposed by Jorgensen [1996, p. 54] is unlikely because of the wig, whose profile exhibits a single, sharp setback; see Cherplon 1989, p. 56, criterion 30).
  21. Cherplon 1989, pp. 97-98 (time of Khufu).
  22. Cherplon 1995, pp. 36-37; Ziegler 1997a.
  23. Is it in this sense that we are to understand Herodotus’s report of the tradition that Khufu was a tyrannical king because he leveled society during his reign? Probably not, since the artistic features described here apply not only in the reign of Khufu but throughout the Fourth Dynasty, including the reign of the “good king Snefru.”
  24. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 07.1000/1003-05 (with the cartouche of Khufu).
  25. For the nose, see also Louvre, B 51, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 06.1886; for the double chin, Louvre B 51, and Barracco 1. For the term “magic head,” see Tefnin 1991.
  26. Cherplon 1989, pp. 100-102. The other women represented on the same false door are not as heavy as Debet.
  27. Ibid., pp. 129-30.
  28. Ibid., pp. 111-12.
  29. The time of Snefru seems unlikely because Huti’s relief does not have the characteristic thickness of examples produced during that reign.
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