, 1889-10-31
EGYPTIAN wax PORTRAITS.
Curious Works of Art Found In the Ruins
of Buried CitIes.


Curious Works of Art Found In the Ruins
of Buried CitIes.
Wheu the moderns read in Pliny of the
extreme degree Of excellence to which
Greek artists had attained in his day and
of the prices which some of their works
fetched. equivalent to e10, 900 or e12 900
of our money, scholars and other com
petent authorities dismissed these as
travellers tales. They could not bring
themselves 10 believe that these stories
were true, or that Rubens, Holbein, Sir
Thomas Lawrence and other later celeb
rites had been anticipated if not surpass-
ed in the centuries before the Christian
era. And yet it was SO, and Pliny no more
than Herodotus deserved to be called the
father of liars. The graves ave given
up their dead and revealed secrets which
it was thought had been forever hidden
in the tomb. 1t is from the land of
Egypt that these discoveries come.
The explorations on the site of Mem
phis and Thebes had prepared the way
for the discoveries in the province of
Faijum. These consist Of a number of
portraits found in the sand at Rubaijat,
which are in the possession of Theodor
Graf, in Vienna, and are now on view at
the Societe encouragement pour I'm
dustrie Rationale, A Rue de Pennies. Ac-
cording to an ancient Egyptian custom
the countenance OF the deceased was
represented at the head of the m
or coffin. This custom was adhered to
in the Graco-Roman epoch of Egypt,
but instead of the plastic head, which up
TO that time had been alone in use, a
painting was substituted representing a
real portrait of the deceased. These
portraits, which were painted on a thin
panel of wood, were laid over the face OF
the mummies, the outer bandages of the
shrouds being then wrapped about them
80 as to cover the margin of the picture,
the latter alone being visible.
A mummy of this kind, therefore,
presented the appearance of a living
body, looking out of an opening in the
bandages for the survivors to gaze upon
in the collins, the lids of which were
made to be thrown back for that pur-
pose. The only other graves where
these curious pictorial works have been
sound were opened in the winter of
1878 by the English engineer, Mr..
Petrie, at Harvard, but the pictures in
them are said to be not nearly equal to
the specimens discovered at Rubaijat.
The tombs themselves, built in the rocks,
were ransacked ages ago by thieves.
who, in their search for gold, destroyed
both collins and mummies. Luckily,
the pilferers deemed the pictures to be
of no value, so were thrown away-but
not to perish-in the dry dust of the
desert.
Herr Crafts collection numbers ninety
five specimens of varying interest in
point of execution, put all valuable as
works of art. They are portraits on cy-
press wood, the more ancient being
painted in wax colors, laid on with the
cestrum or spatula, a lancet shaped in
strument-the later specimens being pro-
duced by water colors, to which was
added the yolk and white of eggs or
other resinous binding substances. The
painting with wax was done without the
employment of neal and without using
the brush, the a~ncients being ignorant of
the process of dissolving wax in turpen-
tine. On examining these rows of heads
gazing calmly out of large, lustrous eyes,
shut now for over 2 900 years, one seems
to be brought face to face with the last
of humanity in a more real way thar has
hitherto been in our power.
One is also struck with the modern
look of many of these ancient portraits.
There is a face of an old man of wonder
ful force of character and intellectual
power. The painter Mcneil, of Berlin,
has declared that nothing finer than this
has been done in portrait painting. The
female faces are nearly all tinged with
melancholy, but some are of great beau
ty, and they almost without exception
reveal traces of the distinction of the
originals. There is a very modern mead
of an old lady with short gray locks.
The fidelity of execution in these paint
ings is so great that doctors have been
able to detect the existence of dropsy.-
Architect.