IIC3 Comte de Caylus (1692–1765) from A Collection of the Antiquities of Egypt
Anne‐Claude‐Philippe de Tubières, Comte de Caylus was a wealthy collector and antiquarian, as well as an accomplished printmaker and theorist of art. After a precocious military career during the War of the Spanish Succession, he travelled widely, visiting England and the Netherlands but also journeying eastwards, going first to Italy but also to Greece and the Levant, including Constantinople. In 1731 he was accepted into the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. In addition to his archaeological and antiquarian interests, he is known for a series of Oriental tales which he published in 1745. The Contes orientaux were in part translated from manuscripts originating in Constantinople then held in the King’s library in Paris, but they also included original works composed by Caylus himself. His principal work, however, was the multi‐volume Collection of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities which commenced publication in 1752 and continued after his death. The first volume included studies of all four of his chosen areas, the present extracts being taken from the ‘Premier partie. Des Egyptiens’. After an introductory text, from which the extracts are taken, the bulk of the work consists of a large number of illustrations of Egyptian antiquities on which Caylus composed detailed commentaries, this attention to the object being one of the distinguishing features of his work. It is worth noting that, in the case of Egypt, these included hieroglyphic and demotic inscriptions as well as objects: texts which to Caylus, as to everyone else at the time, remained unintelligible. In our extracts, Caylus draws attention to the extremely ancient nature of Egyptian civilization and argues for its exemplary status with respect to the later civilizations of classical Greece and Rome. The extracts are drawn from Recueil d’antiquités Egyptiennes, Etrusques, Grecques et Romaines, Paris 1752, pp. 1–7. They have been translated for the present volume by Chris Miller. (Further texts by Caylus on drawing, composition and the art of Watteau can be found in Art in Theory 1648–1815 IIA11, IIA12 and IIIC4 pp. 352–6, 356–63 and 569–73 respectively.)
The origins of the Egyptians are lost in the era of fable. History tells us nothing about the beginnings of this People, which from the first appears with the traits of wisdom and grandeur that characterise all its ideas. We see it surrounded by the Arts, which it explored in depth, acquainted as it was with their vast extent and their every subtlety and, since Egypt is the source whence the Ancients derived the principles of taste, we cannot do better than begin here the examination of monuments that have escaped the ravages of time.
The mysteries in which the Egyptians wrapped their religion, in order to induce a greater respect for it, have covered the history of their country in an impenetrable veil, while a people that worked, it would seem, for nothing other than posterity, did not foresee that, by employing the symbolic writing known by the name of hieroglyphs, it obstructed its own intention, so true is it that the purview of mankind is blinkered and profoundly imperfect.
It is not therefore the nature of Egyptian antiquities to permit of thorough illumination. For the most part, one must confine oneself to glimpsing certain thoughts, and such explanation as one is able to provide today cannot cast sufficient light on any point of their history. The knowledge that can be had of this people is limited to a small number of figures and characters. Alas, even the little that we know of them is blanketed in obscurity and savours of the mystery that prevailed in this country. This is why I must again set before the reader’s eyes some of the conjectures that have already been proposed and even to draw certain of them from modern authors. However, I shall attempt to eliminate as much repetition as I can and focus on those pieces that have not been published or whose explanation represents something new for me. I do not willingly confuse eras and, as I have often pointed out, I should like to be able to distinguish the furthest reaches of antiquity from the century of the Ptolemies. But, to be able to do this, one would need more elements of comparison. Above all, I have taken care to identify the era in which Roman domination makes itself felt; this was by no means difficult, since it is the period of inferior taste, whereas the Egyptians had, by the elevation and nobility of their thought, inspired in the Etruscans and Greeks a firm and decisive taste for the sciences and the arts. Indeed, their interaction with every other people served only to enhance their glory, since many came there to study whatever the Egyptians were willing to impart to foreigners. Though they made conquests and travelled, these facts are irrelevant to Europe, since it is evident that the Egyptians had no love for navigation. Moreover, what country could they have found, I do not say only on the coasts of the Mediterranean but in the other parts of the world by which they were surrounded, comparable to the land that they inhabited, in terms of its fertility, its cultivation or indeed its magnificence? What resource could they have discerned in the barbarity of Europe? What enlightenment could there be in countries endowed with no knowledge other than what they had glimpsed in Egypt itself? They were wise, moderate and humble and followed the profession of their parents. This same spirit of constancy prevailed in all their customs, to which they were strongly attached and it does indeed seem that they were happy. I shall say no more on this point, since I can add nothing to the elegant description of this country given by Monsieur Bossuet; it leaves nothing to be desired and I refer the reader to it. However, since the intention of this great man in writing a universal history did not allow of his entering into much detail about the arts, I shall set out in brief my reflections on the Egyptians, resulting from my reading of the ancient authors and modern travellers, and my examination of the monuments.
Architecture seems to me the art on which they concentrated their efforts. It is not of the kind that strikes us by its agreeable harmony or reveals at first glance the nature of the thing that it is decorating; but solid, majestic building, in which one sees the germ of everything that the Greeks were subsequently able to discover in it. The Egyptians were unacquainted with the Orders, meaning that they were not yoked to proportions. They were inventors and did what seemed best to them; they seem to have tolerated nothing that was not useful. They employed columns and pilasters and decorated them with capitals, string courses, bases and fluting; they shaped and decorated pediments; but there is some indication that all these ornaments were merely arbitrary, since they were never repeated.
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I think they saw columns not only as a sturdy and reliable means to pierce and impart a lighter appearance to the immense spaces occupied by their buildings but also found them necessary to hold up their ceilings, since the art of vaulting was completely unknown to them. The descriptions of the two labyrinths and of the ruins of Thebes, found in Herodotus and in our travellers, elevate the mind. Yet we have only inferior engravings or inadequate drawings to represent them, which are better suited to destroying than embellishing an idea. The scale of the stones that the Egyptians employed would be enough in itself to excite our admiration. What patience it must have required to carve them! What forces to set them in their places! These objects, considerable as they are, vanish, so to speak, from the mind when one recalls the idea of the pyramids or of Lake Moeris.1 Those monuments, because of the grandeur of the enterprise – always, it seems, crowned with success – are an inexhaustible source of astonishment. Thus the art of constructing vaults was unknown to the Egyptians and if any are found in their country, they must be thought to derive from their contacts with the Greeks and Romans. […]
The progress of sculpture in Egypt seems to us to have been very slow but it is possible that we are mistaken. This art, treated with the same spirit as architecture, reached, among the Egyptians, a similar degree of perfection. In this art too they sought solidity, an attribute to which they always aspired. If this fact is once accepted – and I consider it proven – the pose that they retained for so long in their statues, with