The Life Of Ancient Egyptians

12 Pages 3111 Words

rast, are seldom depicted. There is one example in the f 12th-dynasty tomb of Khnumhotep at Beni Hasan where a sculptor is hacking stone from a block with his long-handled axe to approximate the shape of a statue. And in Ty's tomb we see two men chipping at the surface of an emerging statue with oval stone hammerheads wedged into forked wooden shafts. Sometimes a monumental stone statue would be roughly shaped even while being quarried, like that of Osiris that still lies in the granite quarry where it originated, near Shellal south of Aswan. The finer work on a sculpture was done with chisel and mallet, the latter club-shaped during the Old Kingdom and subsequently either club-shaped or round-headed. This method made it easier to determine the force of a blow and, by adjusting the angle of the chisel, to alter the thickness of the flakes removed. To achieve a smooth finish the sculptor used an adze, familiar from our description of woodworking, followed by grinding and polishing with the oval stone or with silicate powder, leather and water. The work would then be passed to the painters for polychrome treatment. It is difficult from extant illustrations to determine the kind of material being used in any given scene. Only occasionally is there a dappled texture indicating granite. Sometimes we can draw conclusions from the juxtaposition of other scenes. Sculptors shown alongside stone vessel makers were probably using stone too, and the linkage is reinforced by the general predominance of stone statues in archaeological finds. Again, the use of carpenters' and joiners' tools will suggest that a soft stone such as limestone was being employed. And this is consistent with the prevalence of limestone, as against the harder granite, diorite, breccia etc., in statues occurring in tombs and temples. If, however, we are shown sculptors actually working alongside the carpenters and joiners themselves, we can infer that it was wood they were wo...