At Cairo International Airport, King Tutankhamun greets you with a seductive but edgy, "Come hither my love." Quite a remarkable thing to see as you enter the main concourse.
However, in Egypt the past is always present, and it is not just the spirit of Tutankhamun that lingers. Great age and astonishing modernity weave about one another in a dance as mysterious as the dancing image of the long dead pharaoh. A perfect example is the beautiful new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) out by the Giza plateau. Another example in the same area is this year's Forever is Now art exhibition. It is the fourth season for this display of international art works situated in front of the pyramids.
However, Cairo is not my love. My heart and my luggage were headed for Luxor and on to the deserts of Abydos and its temple. There I was going to study the beautiful raised relief art in preparation for a new novel in a proposed series called Temple in the Sand (see
https://www.amazon.com/Temple-Sand-Memoirs-Marjorie-Vernelle/dp/B0CQ1G7KHJ). I arrived in Egypt a solo female traveler to meet up with a group that would be spending time on their own special programs within the Hathor Healing Retreat held at the House of Life in Abydos. Most of my new companions were studying healing practices, though one was doing a master's thesis on whether the ancient temple still functioned as it was designed to function by Pharaoh Seti I (1290-1279 BCE). Though our goals varied, we all blended nicely together as we toured the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's Temple, and the Karnak and Luxor temples. This was followed by our trip into the desert and Abydos, the Temple of Seti, and its great ancient art. Sorry Tut, the dancing was swell, but my heart belongs to Seti (and his art).
Our accommodations on the edge of a small town within walking distance to the temple were in a beautiful full-service hotel, the House of Life. As in ancient times, one of the functions of the temple was to heal people in its own House of life, so the tradition continues with a variety of courses throughout the year by the famous specialists in ancient healing, Mr. Horus, and his companion Aset (Yvon Taken). Of course for those travelers who come only for a short stay or on a bus tour, these beautiful accommodtions serve them well, too. A lovely pool area awaits, full service dining, shops, and great information on the temple (click on the image for the information link ).
To say that the Temple of Seti I is the temple of mysteries is an understatement.
Egyptologist, David O'Connor, who worked 40 seasons in Abydos, says of the temple that as a royal mortuary temple it was seen as "a dynamic entity identical to Seti I" (O'Connor, Abydos, p. 43). That says a lot about Pharaoh Seti. However, there were two kings involved with this temple: Seti I and his son, Ramesses II. Upon entering the temple, one first sees the work of the son, who finished his father's building. The focus is mostly on pharaonic power and his Battle of Kadesh. His overwriting of one of his father's inscriptions is the cause of those images that look to some like helicopters and submarines. Ramesses, in what seems to have become a habit, also claims that he laid the foundation for this, his temple, though in fact he was a boy when his father did that. The guards at the temple, knowing that I came from the House of Life, kindly directed me to the second hypostyle hall and the chapels done by Seti I, saying "Here's where the energy of the real temple is." Certainly they are right, for one can feel a dimensional shift into something quite different. The mood changes, and so does the art.
Ramesses used "sunk relief," which cuts a deep outline around the figures, and in the case of his work on his father's temple, the work commissioned was not done by as skilled craftsmen as those who did his father's work. Seti used raised relief, done by some of the finest artisans. The work was drawn precisely, then sculpted by cutting away the area around the figures to make them stand out from the wall. Often forms were sculpted within the figures to indicate elements like knees, cheekbones, and chins. The figures were finally painted. As the work was time-consuming and costly, there was not enough time in Seti's short reign of eleven years to finish the whole temple or paint all of the figures, though the temple was consecrated and opened for service even during the decorative process. Those scenes that were painted are magnificent even after 3,300 years.
A look at the detail in this garment reveals
a lot about the skills of these ancient scribes. And yes, they were scribes, for in ancient Egypt there were two main sets of scribes: those who wrote documents and those who drew the figures. Both worked with hieroglyphs, though the document writers would sometimes come correct the hieroglyphs of the "scribes of the form." Some tombs even still show the red correction marks. Here one focuses on the beauty of raised relief legs with distinctly carved kness, the elegant proportions, and the exquisitely detailed pleating of the "woven air" linen shenti (kilt) of the king. Notice that there is an indication of a long diaphranous garment worn over the shenti, which even slightly changes the coloring of the skin. The pharaoh, however, still walks like an Egyptian with what (in a larger photo) appear, by how the toes are made, to be two right feet. Of course one of the things that Seti ordered was that the art be made as in ancient times, so the feet are old style. Seti I was the last pharaoh in a succession of kings who were restorers of the old traditions after the period of Akhenaten, whose name Seti ordered should never be spoken.
This temple unlike most of the pharaonic mortuary temples is unique in that there are chapels to seven major deities and two to more minor ones. Since ancient Abydos was a place of pilgrimage for the ancient Egyptians, much like Mecca is for Muslims today, the pharaoh designed the temple to be a place of worship that all of his people could make use of - a type of national monument. Abydos shows signs of people having worshiped the god Osiris (Auser or Aser) from at least 7,000 BCE. It is through the gap in the western mountains that people believed the soul passes to the afterlife. Pharaoh Seti said that he had loved the sacred soil of Osiris since the day of his birth. His temple was his great offering to the Lord of the Afterlife, and the high quality of the art representing the temple rituals was done to support the sincerity of his offering.
Not all of the work in the various chapels of this temple are painted, yet even the unpainted ones reveal a lot about the skill of these ancient artists. As one goes through the different chapels one can see the hand of different workers, especially if one compares how a specific image (the king's face, for example) is done. Here are some examples of how the pharaoh's face was represented.
These images of the king are done with a rather delicate touch and not deeply raised from the wall. There is not much modeling except in the ear, the design on the front of the crown, and the nails on the fingers of the hand. A smooth elegant beauty rises from the carved limestone surface that was used to cover the interior walls of the temple. The way the lines flow in these reliefs reminds me of some of the drawings of the old masters of the early Italian renaissance. Though these are carved, they almost seem like sketches in stone.
Here we have the pharaoh's image carved deeply enough for the light to cast shadows in certain areas of the face. Especially in the third one, we see indications of the cheekbone, the underside of the chin, and shadows indicating areas of raised flesh on the face.
This example seems to have combined both methods in that it keeps the rather smooth modeling of the face but manages to carve deep enough for the relief to pick up enough light to create subtle areas of light and shadow around the nose and chin. The more deeply carved areas around the crown, the cobra head, and the necklace, add to the simple beauty of the face by contrasting those details with the smoothness that the face is rendered with. The eye is a traditional forward-facing eye, yet carved to indicate a roundness under the lid, with a slight indentation behind the nose, rather than being just flat. It has been said that there are touches of an Amarna influence here that show that the art of that controversial period outlasted its religious revolution. Interestingly, the king's cap crown seems to have a design of small curls, whether that is reminiscent of hair one does not know. Though it is known that Seti I kept his head shaven and wore wigs of the kind used by the upper echelons of the military, which was his power base.
As for color, they ground pignments from stones or different colors of ochre, using what we call gum arabic as a binder and mixed it all with water. The colors were sometimes coated in a beeswax formula that protected them and gave a bit of a shine originally. As one can see there is no lack of detail in the work, just look at that ram's head, especially the eye.
I have always rather liked the way the ancient Egyptians saw the image and the word working as counterparts. Brian Alm in "Read Like an Egyptian" said that "the writers wrote the image and the painters painted the word." Like those ancient ones, I have never been able to separate the two, as one seems to prime the pump for the other. I came on this trip armed with several sets of implements: an S24 phone which has a fine camera for photography, a tablet and a journal for writing, and a watercolor sketchbook with a compact set of paints. I veered toward the photograph and the word, but the pictures I have taken and the art I have seen certainly inspire me and make my fingers itch to draw and paint. To add to that itch, I have discovered acrylic paint pens by Posca, which allow both drawing and painting, the best of both worlds.
As much as I loved being in Abydos and as fascinating as the Seti Temple is, the Nile called to me, for to the south of Luxor lay Aswan and beyond it, near the border with Sudan, was Abu Simbel. I will leave you with that thought until next time (yes, there is a part two). For now just enjoy a felucca ride on the mighty, ancient river.
Should you be interested in articles on art history combined with a discussion of wines, go to my other art blog, OfArtandWine.com
If you'd like to get a feel for the novel, Temple in the Sand: The Memoirs of a Pharaoh, here is a cinematic trailer for the book. Just click the white arrow.
© Marjorie Vernelle 2024