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Protectors of the kingdom: bronzes are a neglected aspect of Egyptian art, but an exhibition now in Switzerland reveals the great significance of the finest examples

Apollo, April, 2008 by Guy Weill Goudchaux

The Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny is currently host to 67 Egyptian works of art, almost all bronzes and many highly renowned. Organised by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where it was first shown, this travelling exhibition is a rare opportunity to scrufinise works that are neglected in the popular imagination, dazzled by the gold of Tutankhamun--also currently on a world tour.

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In any Egyptian museum, visitors will be immediately struck by the dense assembly of sculptures in granite, quartzite and wood, often with extensive traces of original polychromy. Bronzes appear less prominent, and this distorts our understanding of Egyptian sculpture as surely as--despite the example of Michelangelo--the concentration on painting rather than sculpture distorts our appreciation of renaissance art.

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Many Egyptian bronzes have suffered from being cleaned using acid or an electrolytic bath, as is the case of a supposed Isis Nursing Horus in the present exhibition (Fig. 4), which now is the colour of Victorian bathroom taps. Nevertheless, the organisers were right to include this small sculpture. Compared, for example, with a similar group, also from the Middle Kingdom, depicting Princess Sobeknakht nursing her son, formerly in the collection of Alphonse Karm, the 'Isis' is the more powerful work, posed to highlight her torso and give her figure a more readable linearity. Could one of these bronzes have been seen by Rodin, whose bronze Squatting Woman (1882) looks similar?

The bronze used in ancient Egyptian sculptures is not the usual alloy of 10% tin and 90% copper. Throughout the period, "bronze' sculptures were mostly made of copper with some added lead or silver. 'Black bronze', known to Egyptians as hmty-km, was, as the American scholar and curator John Cooney discovered, created by adding gold. When the bronzes were buried, their surface changed in appearance according to the chemical nature of the alloys and the earth in which they lay, taking on a patina of green or brown, mingled with either red or blue.

However, in their original temple settings they would have looked very different. Sculptures were often silvered or gilded, and many were in precious metals. The most impressive survivor (not in the exhibition) is a massive silver seated Horus (weighing 16.5 kg) now in the Miho Museum, Shiga. Probably dating from the Third Intermediate Period, the figure, whose wig is made of lapis lazuli, was originally gilded to a depth of about a centimetre. In the exhibition, Egyptian craftsmen's mastery of gold inlay in bronze is exemplified by the sumptuous belt on a fragmentary sculpture of King Pedubaste (c. 818-793 BC), which seems to swing, suggesting a body in movement. The priorities of Ancient Egypt were not the same as ours. When northern Egypt was threatened by invasion by the Sea Peoples, the warrior pharaoh Ramses III (who reigned from c. 1184 to 1155 BC) offered to the gods of Thebes 2,756 sacred images, for which the temple's craftsmen used 3,750 lb of gold and as much of silver and more than 22,426 lb of copper, lead and tin. As protectors of the kingdom, did the gods have priority over the need for weapons?

The bronzes now on show in Switzerland are only a minute part of a vanished world. During the three 'Intermediary Periods' that separate the Old, the Middle, the New Kingdoms and the Late Period, many bronzes from the previous epoch were probably melted for economic reasons. Were they carefully or indiscriminately chosen? Some, such as a Lucifer-like New Kingdom Seth were modified in antiquity. Others survive only in the form of a wooden core, which was originally covered with hammered copper or lead plates. One example in the exhibition, a Ptolemaic kneeling

king, is of such outstanding quality that it seems the wooden figure was the sculpture's final form. It has been argued that the lead covering of such images was intended as a magical protection.

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These bronzes were hollow or solid casts, or created by a combination of parts made by both techniques. The lost-wax process seems to have come into use at the end of the Old Kingdom. Details were added or modified by cold chiselling. There is no reason to accept the view of some archaeologists that this was possible only with the appearance of steel tools from the early stage of the Late Period onwards. Cast bronzes always need some degree of chiselling, and the tools of heavy hammered copper preserved in the Cairo Museum seem adequate for the task.

Of the six bronze figures that have--exceptionally--been lent from Greek national collections, several belonged to Ioannis Demetriou, a distinguished 19th-century Alexandrian collector. The)' include an outstanding early-18th-Dynasty figure of Hepu holding a stick and a 26th-Dynasty figure of a kneeling man with a face that looks almost Buddhist (Fig. 1).

Two Egyptian ex-voto offerings from around the late 25th Dynasty were discovered during excavations in the 20th century inside the sanctuary of Hera on Samos. A man with a kilt, found in fragments, is an astonishing cousin of the marble Greek kouroi, which were themselves inspired by Egyptian sculpture. The rigidity of pose of a sensual standing Neith (Figs 2 and 3) is broken by the slight swing of her arms.

Protectors of the kingdom: bronzes are a neglected aspect of Egyptian art, but an exhibition now in Switzerland reveals the great significance of the finest examples

Apollo, April, 2008 by Guy Weill Goudchaux

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