Italy
The route which Lepsius took to Rome was entirely determined by the Egyptological studies to which he had devoted himself with such great zeal and success during the latter part of the time in Paris. It led him first to Turin.
There he might hope to find all that was best and of most importance, for the Egyptian museum at Turin is now, and was at that time, one of the largest and richest in the world, and so far exceeded Lepsius’ expectations that instead of several weeks he allowed himself to be detained there for more than three months.
On the twenty-fourth of February he wrote to Bunsen: “I have not thought it necessary to hurry, as Turin is without doubt the most important point of my journey as far as the collection of materials is concerned. One realizes this thrice as strongly when one has staid here awhile and become familiar with the situation. I leave this excellent museum very unwillingly, but one would have to stay for years to exhaust it, and I do not think that I have employed my time ill. You will enjoy the rich harvest which I bring you from here. I have taken paper impressions of all the inscriptions engraved on hard stone; part of them with starch, which makes them indestructible. Unfortunately, I could not continue my Parisian collection of a hundred and twenty stelae in the same way, for they were unnecessarily afraid here of injury to the limestone from the damp paper, so that the most important stelae and many other objects in limestone I have partly counterdrawn with pith paper and partly copied, and have done this to some extent in the colors, the value of which I first learned to appreciate properly here. The greater part of the time, though, I have spent upon the rich stores of papyrus, almost the whole of which, with all the important fragments of every kind, I have counterdrawn or copied. I have taken special pains with the large perfect ritual, which can be found here and nowhere else.” He had not yet seen the stores of papyrus in London and Leyden. “It was a matter of special importance to me to possess some common basis for all the other fragments of the ritual (which are to be found everywhere; a portion of them are at Rome), for the special purpose of beginning an extensive collection of the different readings; very necessary for the study of hieroglyphics. Therefore, I have spared no pains to compare the whole Parisian papyrus, a copy of which I have, with that here. I have noted all the different readings, in the text as well as in the vignettes, and counterdrawn all that is lacking, which amounts to about twice as much as the Parisian copy. So that I now possess the most perfect ritual, in a volume of more than sixty sheets of paper, of half-folio size, stitched together, besides the collation of the Parisian ritual, a preparatory work which will be very valuable for future studies.”
In fact all the material that he so laboriously acquired at Turin formed the foundation for his celebrated edition of the Book of the Dead, of which we shall have to speak hereafter. Many historical dates, which are contained in the monuments preserved at Turin and the famous papyrus of the kings were also collected by him in 1836; yet he found, on his second journey to Turin in 1841, that in his first visit to the museum many of the treasures preserved there had been purposely withheld from him.
From Turin he went to Pisa, partly to make the acquaintance of Rosellini, with whom he had long been in scientific correspondence, partly to study the monuments which the latter had brought with him, and the papyrus and other written records which were intrusted to the care of the Italian Egyptologist.
“Rosellini,” he writes on the twentieth of March, 1836, “received me very cordially, and I find myself well off in this excellent family, where I spend the whole day, from nine o’clock in the morning till nine at night.” The monuments here had less to offer him, “but so much the more do I learn,” he writes, “from Rosellini’s Lexicon of Hieroglyphics. This also contains the accumulations of Champollion, and I shall copy it out in full. Besides this, I derive great benefit from the oral instruction and communications, which Rosellini gives me on all possible subjects without the least reservation. I quickly perceived, that I should not be able to leave this place as soon as I had expected.” The following verses, with which he took leave of the Rosellinis, may show how intimate the relation had become between the young German and the family of the Italian scholar:
From the South to the South
I am driven away;
From the North to the South—
Yet fain would I stay.
———
From country to country,
From dome unto dome;
From Strasburg to Pisa,
From Pisa to Rome.
———
Wert thou in the South land,
Thou home of my heart,
No farther I’d wander,
I’d never depart.
———
Yet linger I may not,
And so I prepare
In my heart a warm shelter,
And cherish thee there.
———
Then when farther I’m roaming
I’ll bear thee with me,
And Heaven, protecting,
Will guard me with thee.
Pisa, April 19, 1836.
After Pisa he visited Leghorn, where was lodged the Drovetti collection, which was afterwards purchased for the Berlin Museum, by the special advice of Lepsius. The owner had asked sixty thousand francs, and got thirty thousand. Amongst the monuments was the Colossus of Rameses II, and the valuable fragment of the statue of Usurtasen I. (throne and legs). This is now restored and is the great ornament of the Egyptian collection in the capital city of the empire. It may be seen, from a letter which Lepsius wrote to Bunsen about the collection, that the fragment of the statue of Usurtasen I. had only been brought to Europe by Drovetti in order to restore with it the slightly injured colossus of the same king. The fragment consisted of the same “black granite” (properly graywacke) as the better preserved statue of Rameses II.
In May, 1836, Lepsius at last arrived in Rome, richly laden with treasures. There, for the first time, he met Charles J. Bunsen, who had directed his attention towards Egyptian antiquity, and had assisted him with fatherly kindness during his residence in Paris. Bunsen was at that time living on the Tiber as Prussian Ambassador, under the title of Minister Resident. He presided as chief secretary over the Archaeological Institute, which had been founded by Gerhard, with his assistance, in 1829. Ten years before the arrival of Lepsius, Champollion had visited Rome, and found there an enthusiastic admirer and disciple in Bunsen. Absorbed in numerous affairs, and in other branches of research,24 the latter could devote but a small portion of his time to Egyptological studies. In Lepsius he believed that he had found the right man to continue the work of Champollion with greater success, and in a more profound and independent spirit, than the Master’s two disciples, Salvolini and Rosellini. He also hoped that Lepsius would be specially fitted to take charge of the business of recording secretary of the Institute in conjunction with Braun. For this he had already proved his ability in Paris.
The affairs of this learned society were at that time in a very bad condition. The most necessary pecuniary means were wanting, differences of opinion, which seemed entirely irreconcilable, divided the Parisian and the Roman-Prussian sections, and indeed there was serious question as to the continued existence of this beneficient Institute. But, as Michaelis, its historiographer, expresses himself, “Danger stimulated Bunsen’s elastic spirit,” and at the right moment Lepsius, together with Braun, “who was delighted with his expert colleague,” stepped into the breach. We will not say that it was Lepsius alone who averted the threatened danger, but it is certainly to be partly ascribed to his warm personal relations with Panofka, de Witte, and the noble Duc de Luynes, who was so influential in France, that the relations of the society to Paris, and its affairs in general, improved soon after his participation in the management. What impression he made on his appearance in Rome may be shown by the following passage from a letter which Bunsen’s wife wrote to her mother on the twelfth of May, 1856: “Lepsius,” says this estimable lady, “has been here since Monday. He makes a very pleasant impression in regard to character as well as talents; in short, he fulfills the expectations roused by his letters, which were clear, upright, intelligent, copious, but not excessive. He has naturally refined manners, but no stiffness, and is neither presuming nor shy. It is incredible, what material he has collected for his study of Egyptian antiquities, and his drawings are wonderfully executed. You can fancy that Charles (Bunsen) is delighted to talk of hieroglyphics with him; yet it does not make him idle,—he is busily occupied the whole day, and only at meal times and in the evenings does he enjoy such a great pleasure.”
At that time Bunsen was already contemplating the execution of his great work “The Place of Egypt in the History of the World,” and from the first was disposed to confide many of the special researches for it to Lepsius. Soon, however, (indeed long before his recall from Rome), he felt inclined to offer him the honor of being his collaborator. “Bunsen and Lepsius” were to appear upon the title-page as the authors; and if the elder scholar and statesmen furnished the great leading ideas, the young doctor, with bee-like industry, collected everything in Rome that might prove useful for the details of the work.
Bunsen knew how to value the labors of the new member of the board of directors and editing secretary of the Institute, and Lepsius soon felt at home in the inspiring atmosphere of his house.
The Ambassador and Gerhard both successfully exerted their influence in Berlin to induce the Academy, which was already well disposed towards the first critically trained German Egyptologist, to grant him additional assistance. It would be impossible to imagine help more energetic, more disinterested, or more efficacious, than that which Lepsius thus received from Bunsen. The hundreds of letters before us, addressed by the former to his patron, show how the relation between them became continually more intimate and cordial. The superscription changes by degrees from “Highly Honored Herr Minister,” to “Dearest Herr Privy Counselor,” “My Dear, Fatherly Friend,” and finally, “Most Highly Esteemed Friend.” When the young scholar writes to his beloved patron on special occasions, his letters, usually calm and confined to the matter in hand, acquire a heartiness and warmth otherwise alien to them. He once wrote to Bunsen on his birthday (1839): “My heartiest thanks for your splendid letter of August twenty-second, and for the delightful lines which I received yesterday. May the Lord grant you his most abundant blessing in the new year of your life just beginning, as in all that follow, and preserve to me your fatherly affection, which has already so often strengthened, encouraged, and refreshed me. I have far greater need of you, and am more dependent on you than it may appear to you. I feel it with every sheet that I receive from your hand, and that surprises me unawares in my disposition to triviality, timidity, and every sort of narrow-mindedness. Your words, even the most unimportant, fall like pearls upon my poverty, and I feed upon them from one letter to another.”
With what sincerity these ardent phrases were meant is evident from Lepsius’ letters to his father and mother, in which he always speaks of Bunsen with enthusiasm and child-like affection.
Even in after years Lepsius’ eye would still kindle, his measured speech grow fervent, when he recalled Charles Bunsen, the inexhaustible wealth of his ideas, the depth of his knowledge, the purity of his character, and the friendship which united the statesman and investigator, though twenty years the older, with the aspiring scholar; which only gained in strength from year to year, survived the death of the one, and was borne to the grave with the other.
Bunsen had the advantage of Lepsius in a rich, poetic, soaring imagination, otherwise they had many great qualities in common.
Frederick William IV. had honored Bunsen with the title of baron. Apart from this, however, he, like Lepsius, deserves to be designated as a genuine noble German freeman; that is, a man of unalterable intrinsic superiority, who derives the right to carry his head loftily, not from external circumstances, but from honest, indefatigable, difficult, and conscientious work. To such labor they both remained faithful through all the circumstances of life, and when we see the leaders of a turbulent party claiming the name of “workman” exclusively for the man with horny hands, and exerting themselves to restrict within the narrowest limits the hours of employment for the day laborer, we would point to these two men, who free from every material solicitude of life, turned their nights into day, bade defiance to bodily fatigue, and only sought refreshment in change of occupation, in order to fit themselves for the exalted enterprise which they had imposed upon themselves.
His first purely Egyptological paper presents the most brilliant evidence of the zeal and sagacity with which Lepsius, from the beginning, devoted himself to the study of the Egyptian writing and language. It appeared in the annals of the Roman Archaeological Institute, in the shape of a letter to his Pisan friend, Rosellini,25 and ranks among model works of this kind on account of its wonderful succinctness, clearness and comprehensiveness. Lepsius gives in it a complete summary of the whole system of writing of the ancient Egyptians. He distinguishes, with clearness and acuteness, the elements of which this is composed, and from the Master’s list of sound symbols, which was much too large, he singles out those elements which do not properly belong there, and fortunately rejects one of the fundamental errors of Champollion’s system. As we now know, the phonetic part of hieroglyphics, that is the part relating to sounds, consists simply of letters which were sounded,—our matres lectionis,—and syllabic signs. These by themselves alone can represent a syllable. Thus, the mere picture of a mirror is to be read ‘anch,’ but to this picture may also pertain all the sounds of the syllable which it represents: thus, in our case, an ‘a, n, and ch.’ Champollion, on the contrary, had known nothing of syllabic symbols, and thus regarded the mirror as a mere abbreviation of the word ‘anch,’ which he had also met with written out in full.
This error was done away with by Lepsius,26 and through him that immensely important element of writing, the syllabic symbol, received its due. The observations contained in this treatise on the relation of Coptic (See page 76) to ancient Egyptian, are also of fundamental value.
Lepsius’ letter to Rosellini gives a critical recapitulation of the discoveries of the Master. It is the first really methodical and scientific work of an adherent of the Champollionic system, and although after this Lepsius only returned incidentally to the linguistic and grammatical side of Egyptology,27 yet in this work, as everywhere where he planted the lever, he has pointed out the right way and method. In the Nubian Grammar, which was one of the chief works of his life, and which was completed at a late date, he showed how firmly he stood upon the grammatical foundation so early won, and how faithful he remained thenceforth to grammatical studies. He did not cease, too, to work at those studies, regarding the sounds of languages and the alphabet, to which he had early devoted himself. His “Standard Alphabet,”28 which originated long afterwards and amidst great opposition, was intended chiefly to enable missionaries and travellers to reproduce correctly in our own language the sounds of the foreign tongues examined by them. This was to be done by means of letters, easily and conveniently modified by dashes and dots. It became of great practical importance, as it was adopted by the English “Church Missionary Society” as the most available universal alphabet to be employed, according to their directions, by their emissaries. No one can deny that it is also of scientific value. Its applicability has been specially proved with the African languages, and in this department it has been most successfully employed in a great number of grammatical and lexicographical works, as well as biblical translations and the reproduction of narrations, legends, and proverbs in the various idioms. Of the Hamitic branch of the African languages, which is distinguished by grammatical genders, there are seven side-branches, from the ancient Egyptian to the Haūsa- and Nama- (Namaqua-) languages, which have been thus examined. Of the more remote native African idioms there are not less than twenty-two. In 1874, during the Congress of Orientalists at London, we ourselves were permitted to hold council with him and other leaders of science, concerning an acceptable universal method of transcription for hieroglyphic writing. Many of his propositions were adopted at that time, but the method of transcription agreed on in the British Museum did not become current, and it is undoubtedly in need of much improvement.
Lepsius had already given particular attention to the two special departments in which he was to achieve the greatest and most fruitful results; first at Göttingen, under the superintendence of O. Müller, then in Paris after the publication of Biot’s work, and finally at Rome, in the company of Bunsen. These departments were first, history, with its numerical groundwork of chronology, and in the second place, mythology.
Here, everything was still to be achieved, for before the hieroglyphics had been deciphered, scholars had been obliged to depend solely upon Grecian accounts of the Egyptian kings and gods, especially upon those given by Herodotus, and therefore had often relied on reports which were most inadequate, and which in many cases were misunderstood. The power recently acquired of reading the writing of the Egyptians disclosed a wealth of original material, which was unexpected, new, and authentic. The incontrovertible importance of this was self-evident, and even during Champollion’s lifetime many rushed upon the freshly discovered mines, and sought to rifle them for historical and mythological purposes. But, although at the outset many mistakes and uncertainties were rectified, and much that was incontestably new was established, yet on the other hand, error after error was introduced into the science by the rash course of the immediate successors of Champollion. They received on faith that which they only half comprehended, and applied it without care or criticism. They instituted comparisons upon bases either false or insufficiently established, and by means of them arrived at conclusions that we can now only regard with scorn and dismay. In place of the imperfect knowledge of former time, there appeared as its evil successor a disorder without parallel. The grateful, but difficult task undertaken by Lepsius, was to clear this away, and compel Egyptological research to conform to the same critical method which has become obligatory for other branches of study, and without which there can be no soundness in science.
Out of vague and unregulated fancies concerning Egyptian history and mythology, he formed a true Egyptian history and science of Egyptian divinities. By his strong hand were restrained the more or less ingenious and active divagations of Champollion’s successors, and he pointed out the path by which alone Egyptology could succeed in winning the name of a science.
His course was at the same time bold, prudent, and dexterous. He considered the whole extent of the monumental material collected by himself, or otherwise attainable, separated it into groups, sifted these, and treated the essential constituents which he thus extracted according to the same critical method to which he had become accustomed in other departments of science, under the tutelage of Hermann, Dissen, Müller, Bopp, Lachmann, and Boeckh.
After his journey to England and Holland, of which we shall soon have to speak, he possessed a sovereign comprehensive view of all of the written relics of the Egyptians to be found in Europe. But he carefully guarded himself against drawing conclusions from them which had not been thoroughly worked out, or from using them, like many other followers of Champollion, in the building of card houses.
In the historical group of his collectanea, which were arranged with the orderliness peculiar to himself, he brought together all the kings’ names which it was possible to obtain, and all texts provided with dates, as well as all writings on stone or papyrus which concerned the genealogical relations of the Pharaonic families. Thus, too, during his sojourn at Rome we see him chiefly occupied in collecting the building stones only for that chronological-historical edifice to be reared in more tranquil days, and which he expected to erect in common with Bunsen.
This self-control was to be well rewarded, for on his first and most important expedition to Egypt there flowed in upon him an affluence of new material, especially regarding the earliest epoch of Pharaonic history, which supplemented and in many ways modified that previously obtained. We can now take a comprehensive view of all the acquisitions of that time, and if we compare them with the two folio volumes of his Book of Kings,29 or rather with the first draught of the same as he completed it in 1842, we must be astonished at the wealth of material which he had collected by the close of his sojourn upon the Tiber. The work mentioned contains in its present form all the names of the Pharaohs which have been preserved on monuments or papyrus, and is an indispensable handbook to anyone occupied in the study of Egyptian history. Its accuracy is equal to its copiousness, in which it had of course gained immensely, compared to the first sketch, which he willingly and frequently showed us.
The production of a new book of this kind could only mean the giving of a new title to Lepsius’ Book of Kings, for the arrangement of this great work is so fine and faultless that a change could but injure it. If we regard the first draft of the Book of Kings, which was completed before the Egyptian journey (it was never printed), as the foundation of Lepsius’ later chronological labors, we must acknowledge that at that time it would have been entirely impossible to add anything new to what was there collected.
It is with such weapons as these that victories are won, but he who had forged them imposed upon himself one preparatory labor after another before he entered upon the combat, and used them for the great historical purposes which he had in view.
In Turin he had also laid the foundations for his later researches in mythology, especially that of the ancient Egyptians, and in this group of studies we see him proceed with exactly the same method and circumspection as in his chronological works. His predecessors had found the innumerable and motley figures of the Egyptian Pantheon, often accompanied by their names, portrayed upon monuments of stone and papyrus, and had compared them with those divine beings of the Egyptians mentioned by the classic writers. They had attempted to explain the significance of these figures, and in so doing, where the sources of information at their command would not serve them, they had given free play to their imaginations,—it is only necessary to remember the ingenious phantasies of Creuzer, Roth, etc. The gods throng through their writings in a wild confusion, and it had occurred to no one, not even to Champollion (whose Panthéon égyptien30 must nevertheless always be characterized as a valuable preparatory work), to proceed to an organization of the great crowd of gods, and to point out the historical principle by which they were to be classified.
This task Lepsius imposed upon himself, but here too, during his stay in Italy, he contented himself with sifting and studying all the materials at hand, and we are enabled to take a survey of his introductory labors in this province also. During his first sojourn in Turin he had already discerned that innumerable religious texts, existing in all the museums, on papyrus rolls, sarcophagi, mummy cloths, amulets, etc., belonged collectively to a larger work, to which he gave the name of “Book of the Dead.” This work, composed from many fragments, never reached a canonical conclusion, but the larger specimens of it included all the chapters which occurred alone, or in lesser number, on smaller papyri or monuments. Lepsius recognized the true significance of this book, which Champollion erroneously considered a book of ritual (rituel funéraire), that is, a book which comprised the prayers and formulas to be repeated and the hymns to be sung at the burial of the dead. It was usually found on the body of the deceased, under the mummy cloths, or in the coffin, and its contents only referred incidentally, and to a certain extent in a recapitulatory manner to transactions which were to take place on earth. The destiny of the soul which sprang from Osiris resembled the destiny of the god himself, and it is with this destiny that the “Book of the Dead” is occupied. It was given to the departed to carry with him into the grave as a passport and aid to memory. For in the other world it was necessary to sing hymns of praise, and with the help of the “right word,” which they imagined as endowed with magic power, to ward off demons and hostile beasts, to open gates, to procure food and drink, to justify oneself before Osiris and the forty-two judges, and finally to secure for the deceased all his claims as a god. Everything depended on being acquainted with the magical “right word,” and in order that it should always be at the command of the traveller through the next world, it was first written on the sarcophagus and then on the grave-clothes. From the collection of these formulas, then, arose the “Book of the Dead,” the vade mecum, the cicerone, for the pilgrim through the mysteries of the other life.
After the dead had received back all the faculties of the body which he possessed on earth, and when, after the justification in the hall of judgment, he had also received his heart, he advanced from portal to portal, and from degree to degree, until he had attained his final goal, apotheosis. In this last stage the pure spirit of light was freed from all the dust of this life; and then, being one with the sun-god Ra, as a shining day-star, he crossed the heavens in a golden bark, and received, himself a god, the attributes and the reverence of gods and the homage of men. Endowed with the power of clothing himself at will in any form he desired, he was permitted by day or night to sail through the firmament as sun or star in divine light, to mix with mortals upon earth, to soar through the air as a bird, or as a lotos flower, blooming beautifully, to repose in serene blessedness and breathe forth perfume.
As might be expected from what has already been said, in this book are to be found the elements of the Egyptian religious belief and doctrine of immortality. Although these are difficult to understand on account of the inflated mode of expression, as well as the confused superabundance of symbols, allegories, metaphors, and illustrations (unfortunately, these obscure the sense far more frequently than they elucidate it), and although much of it must have been misunderstood by Lepsius at the age of thirty, yet it could not escape him that a searching study of this fundamental book must precede any critical treatment of Egyptian mythology. On this account, as we know, in 1836 he made a copy of the large and very perfect hieroglyphic specimen of the “Book of the Dead,” and amended it during a second sojourn in Turin in 1841. In the year 1842, as we shall see, he published31 the great roll of papyrus, fifty-seven feet and three inches long. The seventy-nine tablets contained in this fine publication were transferred to the stone by the careful and skillful designer and lithographer, Max Weidenbach, a Naumburg fellow-countryman of Lepsius. This man, as well as his no less skillful brother, certainly deserves mention here, for under the direction of Lepsius they both succeeded in mastering Egyptian writing so thoroughly that their hieroglyphic manuscript was in no respect inferior to that of the best hierogrammatists of the time of the Pharaohs, It is to them that the publications of Lepsius owe the rare purity of style which distinguishes them, and we are indebted above all to the delicate apprehension and the skillful hand of the brothers Weidenbach that the hieroglyphic types which were restored for the Berlin Academy under the superintendence of Lepsius, turned out to be such models of beauty and style, that they are at present universally employed. Even in Paris the types produced in the French government printing office were set aside in their favor.
If at the present day we critically consider Lepsius’ edition of the “Book of the Dead,” we must certainly regret that it had for a basis the Turin copy, which is replete with errors of writing and defects arising from hasty work, and which dates from a comparatively late period. But, on the other hand, we must praise the industry, care and ability with which its editor studied the text before the excellent “preface” was written and the distribution of the whole into chapters was accomplished. This distribution has stood till the present day, and when we now speak of the first, seventeenth and hundred and twenty-fifth chapters as the most important sections of the “Book of the Dead,” in so doing we follow the construction given by Lepsius. In a few months there will be published a collection of the finest texts of the “Book of the Dead” from the best period, prepared by the excellent Genoese Egyptologist, E. Naville, under the auspices of the Berlin Academy. It was Lepsius, again, who gave the impulse to this great and useful undertaking at the Oriental Congress in London, 1874; and even in this most recent edition of the “Book of the Dead”32 the classification given by him will be preserved. It is precisely this which is wonderful and unique in his works; that they are of lasting stability, and that their substructure remains permanently fixed no matter what alterations may be made in details by more recent acquisitions. There is almost no edifice in the whole domain of Egyptology where the foundation stone does not bear the name of “Lepsius.”
Let us here anticipate by mentioning that throughout his life Lepsius did not cease to busy himself with the “Book of the Dead,” and that even in 1867, in a large and excellent work,33 he made an effort to trace out the origin of the whole work collectively, and of its principal parts. The sarcophagi of the ancient kingdom and the funereal texts which cover them, constitute the foundation of this important publication, which once more points out the path for research, and upon which many special investigations have already been, and in the future must be, based.
After his sojourn in Egypt, Lepsius was able for the first time to bring to a positive conclusion the studies on Egyptian mythology, which he had begun in Italy. Yet he wrote to Bunsen from Thebes that he had almost despaired of any real progress in the field of mythology, and had only collected the materials in obedience to a blind instinct. “Now,” he continues, “I have found the red thread, which will lead through this apparently endless labyrinth. I have made out the divinities, great and small, and also the most important data for the history of Egyptian mythology. The relation between the Greek accounts and the monuments has become clear to me; in short, I know that an Egyptian mythology really can be written.”
That which he found in Thebes he combined, at a comparatively late date, with what he had gained in Italy, and the results of all these collections, studies, and combinations were finally accumulated in his epoch-producing work on the first Egyptian Pantheon.34 This proves that even with the motley swarm of Egyptian Gods it is possible to follow the historical principle of classification. Lepsius was the first, not only to discover and more nearly determine the “group of the superior gods,” but also to establish clearly the reasons why the adored beings of whom it consists are associated together. Where variations occurred he explained their origin from local or temporal causes in a convincing manner. His conjectures as to the age of the Osiris myth have been confirmed by the inscriptions in the lately opened pyramids.
In his treatise on the gods of the four elements35 there is much with which we cannot now agree. Contrary to his opinion their names occur much earlier than the time of the Ptolemies. But in spite of this and other errors the paper stands, as far as method is concerned, on an equal footing with its predecessors, and it is here that he has summed up in a brief phrase the rule which he steadfastly obeyed during his long and active scientific career: “In all antiquarian investigations it will always be safest to begin with a chronological analysis of the material, before proceeding to a systematic arrangement thereof.”
Lepsius also adhered firmly to this rule when he entered upon that department of his science towards which at Rome he was impelled, not only by the influence of the Archaeological Institute to which he belonged, but by the tendency of his whole life. He there turned his attention to the art of the ancient Egyptians, and chiefly to their architecture. In his parents’ house at Naumburg he had seen the preference with which his father cultivated this branch of art; on all his journeys he filled his note-book with observations on the remarkable buildings which he encountered, and accompanied them with little drawings. We know how eagerly, particularly at Göttingen, he had followed the progress of the archaeology of art, which was greatly promoted at that time by the influence of Winckelmann. The air of Rome, too, was as thoroughly permeated with art then as it is now, and with even more enthusiastic artistic interests. There all conversation between aspiring friends so easily took, as it still takes, the form of a conversation on art. So that Lepsius, as well as Bunsen, who a few years later was to publish his celebrated work on Christian basilicas, felt the liveliest interest in these subjects and was forced by an inherent necessity to give special attention to the remarkable art of that people to whose resurrection he had pledged the best powers of his life.
In 1838, then, there appeared Lepsius’ dissertation on the columns of the ancient Egyptians, and their connection with the Grecian columns.36 When we designate this work also, which lay outside of the master’s special field of research, as original, and unsurpassed of its kind, in so doing we are in no wise “burning incense to our dead” but simply judging it as it deserves to be rated. Here, as elsewhere, Lepsius applies the law quoted above, by dividing chronologically the material which he has first thoroughly collected, and pointing out how the Egyptian columns arose from their original beginnings and developed themselves independently, here in cave-building, and there in open-air edifices;—he scrupulously maintains the division between the two. This classification alone is a real achievement, and any one who follows the progress of cave-building step by step with him, will see the Doric column with all its component parts develop organically before him. Even he who, out of regard for the omnipotence of the genius of Hellenic art, is averse to considering the Doric column as an architectural constituent borrowed by the Greeks from the Egyptians, will not be able to deny that the transformation of the pillar in the so-called proto-Doric column of the Egyptian cave-architecture (first and chiefly in the vaults of Beni Hassan), can be proved to be natural and necessary, while the Greek-Doric column, even in the oldest temples of the Doric order, makes its first appearance as a thing complete, and as fallen from heaven. It indeed forms from the beginning an organic and essential part of the monument of architecture to which it belongs, but while its origin cannot be definitely pointed out on Hellenic ground, it can be easily and positively traced in the Egyptian cave-architecture. Lepsius reverted to this question after his Egyptian journey, and in an academical treatise37 he criticized sharply yet admiringly the fundamental conditions, the properties, and the merits of that Egyptian art, whose development he here, as elsewhere, followed with peculiar interest. He gave his attention also to the canon of proportions, that is, the binding rule according to which the Egyptian sculptors were obliged to measure and shape the relative proportions of the different parts of the human body. He had already been interested in the study of this subject in Rome, for in October, 1833, he saw a little bust in the Palin collection which was furnished on the under surface and both side surfaces with mathematically exact squares, the sides of which appeared to give him the unit of the canon. “The whole bust,” he tells Bunsen, “is wrought by this unit, which, in fact, according to my measurements of various statues, is contained about twenty-one times in the whole height.”
This canon was well known to the Greeks, and Diodorus refers to it in the last chapter of his first book. According to him the body was to be divided into twenty-one and a quarter parts, and Lepsius now found that this rule conformed to the teachings of the later sculptors of the Ptolemaic era, who undoubtedly divided the human form up to the top of the forehead into twenty-one and one-quarter parts, but up to the crown of the head into twenty-three parts. Previous to this mode of division the canon had been twice altered, and both of these older rules (the more recent refers to the sculptures of the time of the pyramids), had for a fundamental unit the foot, which, taken six times, corresponded to the height of the body when erect, not indeed, as one would have expected, from the sole to the crown of the head, but only to the top of the forehead. The distinction between the first and second canon principally concerns the position of the knee: in the Ptolemaic canon, known to Diodorus, Lepsius found the general distribution itself changed. This he first discovered at Kom Ombos. We have always found the estimates of Lepsius entirely confirmed by our own measurements; yet, as the labors of Charles Blanc in the same department demonstrate, some other unit than the foot might be the basis of the canon of proportions, such as the finger in men, the claw in lions—ex ungue leonem.
The application of this obligatory rule (of the canon) impressed upon the works of Egyptian plastic art that stamp of uniformity with which it has been so often and so bitterly reproached. Yet we must regard the artistic talents of the Egyptian sculptors from the first with great respect when we consider the oldest specimens of Egyptian sculpture, which far excel the later in freedom of method and in realistic fidelity to nature, and which nevertheless are in no way inferior to them in all that concerns delicacy of execution.
Let us then suppose that this most ancient artistic race was surrounded by pure barbarians, who in the struggle for the bare necessaries of existence had no superfluous force to expend in the adornment of life; it is easy to understand that the guardians of Egyptian culture, the priests, must have made every effort to protect against retrogression and ruin the possession which was so recently won, and which was exposed to constant peril. The canon of proportions held Egyptian sculpture firmly fixed upon the lonely pinnacle so painfully attained, and even though it checked farther progress in a lamentable manner, yet, on the other hand it had this merit, that by its aid Egyptian plastic art preserved untouched through every epoch its remarkable purity of style and great technical skill. This latter even extended to the production of the simple household furniture. Lepsius teaches us to value this law correctly, and explains the peculiarity of the methods of sculpture by the special qualities of the Egyptian national character, which gave its full value to every detail with great fidelity, and only accorded the second place in its regard to the aspect of the whole. The same people whose language was rich in pronominal substantives and who, in an objective sense, said, “I give to thy hand,” rather than “I give to thee,” “the speech of his mouth,” rather than “his speech,” was obliged to do justice to each separate portion of the body. For this reason, in figures in alto-relievo and in paintings, the eye was set en face in a countenance in profile, in order that it might have its full value, regardless of the detriment which accrued to the whole figure from such an error.
Lepsius teaches us to regard and value Egyptian sculpture correctly and to consider the detached figures which we see ranged in the museum in connection with the architectural surroundings for which they were originally intended. The erroneous view that Egyptian sculpture was architectural in its spirit and execution has long been subverted by the figures in the round from the ancient kingdom, found during the last decade. These are true to nature and well preserved, and Lepsius knows how to set forth their merits properly.
In his investigations concerning the canon of proportions, we see him apply the measuring-scale for the first time, and his researches in the province of Egyptian metrology were subsequently to yield a rich harvest to science.
With all this purely Egyptological work, and his extensive labors for the Institute, he did not neglect his old linguistic studies, and resumed the investigations to which his dissertation on the Eugubian tablets had given the impulse. The opportunity for the prosecution of this work had formed no insignificant element of his attraction to Rome, and we see him make a fine collection of Umbrian and Oscan inscriptions, and draw up two papers on ancient Etruria, which did not appear in print until several years later, and formed the extra profits, as it were, of his sojourn in Italy. It is hard to understand how he found time so far to complete them that from 1840 to 1842 he only had to correct them, and to oversee their passage through the press, when we consider that he in no wise withdrew himself from the social life of Bunsen’s house, and from intercourse, grave and gay, with eminent strangers. Lepsius himself calls the years in which he had the good fortune “to build huts at Rome,” “a great holiday of life, earnest and serene, instructive and elevating, a determinative period in his development.”
Under Bunsen’s guidance, he says, he had learned to know life and science upon classic ground from their highest and noblest sides.
In his intercourse with Bunsen he also acquired the interest in politics, and especially in ecclesiastical politics, which he cherished throughout his life, as is proved by his letters to his patron the statesman, and to his father, as well as his own journals and the diaries of his wife. In one of his note-books we find the plan, which, however, was never taken into consideration, for a new episcopal order for Germany. The seat of the supreme leader of the church and the counselling authorities was to be Magdeburg.