History of Wood Carving - Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

The extreme dryness of the climate of Egypt accounts for the existence of a number of woodcarvings from this remote period. Some wood panels from the tomb of Hosul Egypt, at Sakkarah are of the III. dynasty. The carving consists of Egyptian hieroglyphs and figures in low relief, and the style is extremely delicate and fine. A stool shown on one of the panels has the legs shaped like the fore and hind limbs of an animal, a form common in Egypt for thousands of years.

In the Cairo museum may be seen the statue of a man from the period of the Great Pyramid of Giza, possibly 4000 B.C. The expression of the face and the realism of the carriage have never been surpassed by any Egyptian sculptor of this or any other period. The figure is carved out of a solid block of sycamore, and in accordance with the Egyptian custom the arms are joined on. The eyes are inlaid with pieces of opaque white quartz, with a line of bronze surrounding to imitate the lid; a small disk of transparent rock crystal forms the iris, while a tiny bit of polished ebony fixed behind the crystal imparts to it a lifelike sparkle. The IV., V. and VI. dynasties cover the finest period of Egyptian sculpture. The statues found in the tombs show a freedom of treatment which was never reached in later times. They are all portraits, which the artist strove his utmost to render exactly like his model. For these are not, like mere modern statues, simply works of art, but had primarily a religious signification (Maspero). As the spirits of the deceased might inhabit, these Ka statues, the features and proportions were closely copied.

There are to be found in the principal museums of Europe many Egyptian examples: mummy cases of human beings with the face alone carved, animal mummy cases, sometimes boxes, with the figure of a lizard, perhaps, carved in full Mummy relief standing on the lid. Sometimes the animal would be carved in the round and its hollowed body used as the case itself.

Of furniture, folding seats like the modern camp stool, and chairs with legs terminating in the heads of beasts or the feet of animals, Furniture still exist. Beds supported by lions paws XI. and XII. dynasties, from Gebelein, now in the Cairo Museum), headrests, 6 or 8 in. high, shaped like a crutch on a foot, very like those used by the native of New Guinea today, are carved with scenes, &c., in outline. In the British Museum may be seen a tiny little coffer, 4 in. by 21/2 in., with very delicate figures carved in low relief. This little box stands on cabriole legs 3/4 of an inch long with claw feet, quite Louis Quinze in character. There are incense ladles, the handle representing a bouquet of lotus flowers, the bowl formed like the leaf of an aquatic plant with serrated edges from Gurnah during the XVIII. dynasty; mirror handles, representing a little pillar, or a lotus stalk, sometimes surmounted by a head of Hathor, the Egyptian Venus or of Bes, god of the toilet; pin-cushions, in the shape of a small round tortoise with holes in the back for toilet pins, which were also of wood with dog-head ends (XI. dynasty, Cairo Museum); and perfume boxes such as a fish, the two halves forming the bottom and top of the perfume or pomatum was removed by little wooden spoons, one shaped in the form of a cartouche emerging from a full-blown lotus, another shaped like the neck of a goose, a third consisting of a dog running with a fish in its closed mouth, the fish forming the bowl. The list might be prolonged, but enough has been said to show to what a pitch of refinement the art of wood-carving had reached thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

Of the work of Assyria, Greece and Rome, little is actually known except from history or inference. It may be safely assumed that the Assyria craft kept pace with the varying taste and refinement of Greece and all the older civilizations. Important pieces of wooden Roman sculpture which once existed in Greece and other ancient countries are only known to us from the descriptions of Pausanias and other classic writers. Many examples of the wooden images of the gods, were preserved down to late historic times. The Palladium, or sacred figure of Pallas, which was guarded by the Vestal Virgins in Rome and was fabled to have been brought by Aeneas froth the burning Troy, was one of these wooden figures.