Scribes Of The Contours: Archaeologists Uncover Lost 18th Dynasty Masterpieces

[00:00:07][music] Almost 5,000 years ago at the dawn of recorded history, [music] an extraordinary civilization was born in Egypt on the banks of the Nile. The monumental [music] ruins that have come down to us still inspire both tremendous admiration and innumerable questions.

[00:00:31]Preserved in our museums, the incredible wealth of artifacts attest to what degree for 3000 years, [music] this pharaonic civilization indulged in the production of works of art.

[00:00:43][music] Behind this immense creative output lies an essential figure [music] the man who the simple sharpened re brush gives birth to all Egyptian art.

[00:01:01]Engraved on a found in Abidos, one of these men appears seated next [music] to his wife. And for anyone who knows how to read the hieroglyphs engraved on the stone, he himself describes his qualifications.

[00:01:17]I know how to estimate dimensions, [music] received until an element is in place.

[00:01:23]I know the posture of the male statue and the appearance of the [music] female, the attitude of the 11s of prey, the arm movements of a hippopotamus hunter and the leg movements of a running [music] man.

[00:01:36][singing] I know how to make pigments and products that melt without fire burning them and that moreover are insoluble in water.

[00:01:47]Nobody will know of this except me and my eldest son, the God having ordered that he become an initiate.

[00:02:00][singing] [music] For almost 3,000 years, the Egypt of the Pharaohs endured in a world which, even though no longer ours, still remains recognizable.

[00:02:24]A unique [music] landscape whose frontiers seem sculpted by nature.

[00:02:30]Thanks to its regular flooding, the life sustaining Nile River, a fertile green band between two deserts was ideal for agriculture. on its banks. The necropolises were built. [music] [music] [music] Of this world, among the vestages which continue to be discovered thanks to archaeological excavations, there is scarcely an object or pillar that doesn't bear the trace of a drawing [music] or an inscription.

[00:03:11][music] the first of all of all the weapons architecture or bar linked status in my representation of the teachings a monument without an image is a monument that does not work which images on the rights of the on the walls of the tombs so that they act magically in the world of the gods.

[00:03:50]The necropolis of the ancient kingdom and the graves of its highest ranking officials is located in the region of Sakara in [music] northern Egypt near the pyramid of the pharaoh Joseah.

[00:04:01]It is largely thanks to [music] the discovery of the funeral chapels and tombs of the nobility that we first came in contact with Egyptian art. [music] [music] The Egyptian Maba is an ensemble consisting first of a funeral chapel dedicated to the deceased and often [music] containing several rooms.

[00:04:25][music] Underneath this [music] chapel, a deep shaft was dug that led to a burial chamber in which were placed the sarcophagus and the mummy of the deceased. [music] The shaft was then walled up.

[00:04:45]On every level of this funeral structure, [music] and regardless of the nature of the surface, drawings, bar reliefs, and inscriptions succeeded one another according to precise graphic rules.

[00:05:03][music] Here we are in the chapel of a named person, that is to say this is the visible part of this tomb in which the culinary ceremony took place.

[00:05:19]According to the information given on the buttress, it was [music] around 2500.

[00:05:36]In front of this was placed an offering table on which offerings were deposited daily to feed the deceased in the afterlife.

[00:05:47][music] So there are these main types. So he was a priest and he was head of the butchers in the royal palace and he was favored by Imaru among the people and here is his name so the image must have context, why it is there, you will never have a statue of a character that does not bear the inscription character. There was a statue without which there is no Egyptian. The moment must accompany the image, whether it be in or out, otherwise the image is inert.

[00:06:32]Through the scenery, he will show what he has been through in his life. He was a leader who opened doors in the royal palace. It is to ensure that, uh, in this process, through creative virtualization, all the elements are there to allow the deceased to continue to exist. We will represent in the shadow everything that will nourish the deceased and thus allow him to survive in the afterlife.

[00:07:03][music] The second dynasty begins to have, in particular, representations of meals.

[00:07:10]Little by little, this setting will become more and more complex. And apart from the fact that we represent the daily offering, we will also represent the way in which these offerings are produced, and that is why we will have a whole setting which is based on scenes of agriculture, crafts, fishing.

[00:07:37]There is something very striking about Egyptian art. They are great observers of nature, great observers of animals, and it is true that they have an interest that is always very sensitive in the representation of animals. This is very clear with birds. We see a stylization that is absolutely obvious, at the same time a naturalistic approach, and we can very precisely identify the species that is represented.

[00:08:00][grunting] [music] The idea is indeed that paradise is made up of the representations with which we surround it in its chapel. There you go, it's obvious that uh it's uh once again the magic a bit of the maybe seen in the super horned scholars who are deadly and ultimately feared that great effective the dangerous and well we cut off their head there is a door to prevent it finally from coming in it is without saying anyway on [laughs] the performative virtue of defun in ancient Egypt.

[00:09:10][music] [music] [music] immediately an Egyptian image simply because it is built on a series of conventions [music] which does not like to move at all for about 3 million and it is a system we have sometimes called an aspectual system within the same representation to combine the most characteristic aspects of the elements of the composition. For example, if you want a human representation, we will see the face in profile because a profile face allows you to draw the entire outer contour of the face more clearly than a front face, at least according to the buildings, but on these profile faces we will see a front eye because the front eye is obviously much more eloquent than a profile eye, a very unrecognizable triangle, and so this system is applied to all Egyptian images. So there's a rotation of planes. There's a way a means of simplifying the art, bringing things to the frontal plane and rotating um for example shoulders and uh hips and so on so that everything is readable. In other words, if the person is shown in perspective, one leg might cover the other leg. Therefore, it doesn't exist. There must be no ambiguity. It is also for the image a static image because ultimately in the static the representation of a character sitting on a static seat in an attitude of walking which is not truly walking it is a kind of stat uh precisely not to evoke movement because movement is considered as something fleeting and which is passing because it is unfolding while the static nature of representations all the potentialities of this system it works for writing or for the image it is always about representing things in the most permanent way possible the least ephemeral possible the least volatile it is always about aiming for permanence and perpetuity 15 dynasty some 23 centuries before Christ appears the proof that image substituted for reality after the burial of Meraruka the room was sealed off so that people couldn't physically enter with offering the images that decorate The walls are there to magically replace them.

[00:12:19]On one wall, the only one that has been partly painted are vases and large receptacles in various sizes and shapes.

[00:12:27]Two lines of text frame these images.

[00:12:30]They describe the list of offerings.

[00:12:33]round loaves of bread, a000 jars of beer, 2000 gazelles, and many other dishes to feed the deceased in the afterlife.

[00:12:43]As of about 2000 BC, the sarcophagus was made of wood and continued to be entirely covered with drawings and magic formulas.

[00:12:55][music] Finally, the mummified body of the deceased was placed inside. where it would continue to defy time.

[00:13:14][music] In certain tombs, beside the mummy or slipped into her bandages, were found roles of papyrus. These manuscripts were known as the book of the dead, literally translated as the book of coming forth into the day. proving the Egyptians believed in life after [music] death.

[00:13:52]They could contain up to 165 chapters.

[00:13:55]The Louvra Museum displays one that is more than 20 m long.

[00:14:05][music] The Book of the Dead is a collection from God which is in a way a kind of guide for the afterlife for the deceased Egyptian. It's a kind of manual for traversing the afterlife and reaching the realm of the dead. and this book of the dead is indeed composed of complete texts in a way but I disbelieve the correspondences between image and text in time we have rather to make an illustrated book integrated into the text of the book the text there is no in you can enter into the texts in the book of the temple Every image serves to listen here to corpses, chakras, a votour, a courteau a mouth of face.

[00:15:02]Well, all of this is a set of signs and images identified with Egyptian flora, so it is a reference, so apparently it was necessary to write it, you can write a word, you can lengthen it, you can condense it, saving the opposites. And so it is an extremely flexible and elastic system which also allows us to further improve the visual aspect of the texts. When you look at a text, they are extremely well laid out, right? the columns lie and simply because whoever masters it manages to lengthen and guide the words according to the arrangement [music] interpretation [music] [music] The draftsman in Egypt, it is the writing of the contours. So it's the SC, but it's mainly responsible for drawing the outlines. That's the Egyptian cartoonist. This is what we call the ambition of the status of the draftsmen who are not separated in a watertight manner from the other but the site of the draftsman thread and moreover we realize this very well when we examine reality for example which is the village of the community of artisans of the coral in the valley of the kings and the great ones we found a huge number of field workers and professionals who also master writing and he plays with writing, he imagines how much with a lot of text so these are also the Egyptian draftsmen are also these are people for whom there is no watertight distinction between the two professions, between that of scribe and that of draftsman.

[00:17:24]So the question that arises is what is the hierarchy between the scribe and the draftsman.

[00:17:31]And in fact, we now understand, looking a little differently at the drawings that interest us, that there is a real hierarchy, as there was ultimately in Europe, I would say there was, for example, in the Middle Ages, that the artists did not necessarily know how to write, and so we realize, by seeing a certain number of monuments, and I know that some artists made a wall decoration in a tomb and were then undoubtedly led to make the dedication in hieroglyphs, that the Egyptian, thanks to its enormous achievements not only in spelling but in grammar, so it is obvious that a certain number of artists drew but did not know how to write well, so they had rudimentary graphic instruction, let's say, but they were better artists than scribes. All the written texts we have show how much the mission of the scribes was not only to the government, but they had a whole category that was ultimately devoted to the transmission of literary and moral texts, what we call sacristan texts, which from generation to generation preferred the texts and the moral precepts that shaped Egyptian society. And these scribes were undoubtedly the elite of the scribes, with surely some addicts to this rule, and that the scribes who wrote were still the elite of the scribes, and that the scribes who drew came a little below, that they were not required to know how to write.

[00:19:29]During the period of the new kingdom, the [music] site for new royal necropolises was moved south through.

[00:19:36]Between 1, BC, Egypt enjoyed the [music] most glorious and prosperous period in all Egyptian history.

[00:19:44]During three dynasties [music] lasting nearly five centuries, the mountains on the west side of the Nile across from Theves became the valley of the kings. [music] And like Sakara, the elite of the kingdom were buried near their sovereigns.

[00:19:59][music] It's here in this necropolis under the reign of Amotep. [music] monarch of the 18th dynasty that the cup bearer of the king whose name was su chose to be buried his [music] closed to the public today allows us to grasp some of the trade secrets of these artists responsible for the decoration of chapels and tombs [music] [song] [music] [song] [music] [song] [music] Here we have an exceptional tomb since it is not finished but we can see the different aspects of work and we can see the different aspects of work with techniques on some walls, a grid has been laid which can be of different sizes depending on the size of the person since the future deceased is the owner of the tomb is represented in large size and the people he watches over are represented in small size. So we have tiles that are a size that corresponds to the size of the characters. It is difficult to say at what exact moment the painting because it seems that in fact each script has its own little ring. Some start by making a very fuzzy drawing, while others, on the contrary, will simply make a sketch and apply the paint first, and then very precisely refine the flat areas of color.

[00:22:04]So I think that the pigments that are used most of the time are mineral pigments that the Egyptians found around, it's going to be all the others, uh, copper-based ones too, which are what we find in nature. The most stable colours are obviously ochre and greens. Black, for example, which is soot that is used, is actually much less stable. Simply passing your hand over it doesn't make the color disappear, and that's why it's often less well preserved.

[00:22:44]Ah, tastes vary according to eras. It's immediately obvious when you enter a tomb. We can say that it is from the 18th or 19th dynasty. The tombs of the 18th Dynasty.

[00:22:54]I keep saying that this is really the great period, that is to say, very carefully and delicately this polychronization, for example in the and what is very interesting in the is that it has parts really barely then barely and then totally the most beautiful the last pharaoh of the 18th dynasty whose tomb [music] is located in the heart of the valley of the kings.

[00:23:34]What it reveals to [music] us is unrivaled by comparison with the tombs of other pharaohs. Even if this is one that remained unfinished [music] due to the sovereign's premature death, the artists couldn't complete their work. [music] [music] We understood well thanks to the documentation. There was the left and the right, that's a well-known thing, but we can clearly see that there is even a kind of rivalry between left and right. On the one hand, they say hollow things.

[00:24:41]If we arrive at some and then some who make the appeal and who tell the story of the work. We really have some heritage sites waiting for us, then uh there is either [laughs] by the visit or by an iconographic program that can be carried out on the walls. So this with the team leader and this program in fact of funeral books on the books of cave peas which are distributed in general which correspond to the 12 hours of the night. We can clearly see on these tombs that the pharaoh has difficulties which would indicate his heart and he arrives. So all of this is quite codified. So here, we're completely in code.

[00:25:55]To which there are beginners and more experienced masters.

[00:26:07]And we can see that the first line is drawn in red and then the teacher comes to correct it in black. That's the impression we get. So these are the illustrators who are also writers of the text and the drawing and then comes the sculptor and he will execute with extraordinary talent the modeling of the pharaoh of the gods and sometimes the hogs [music] [music] [music] [music] And then to the one who fills in the colors.

[00:27:54][music] So, we can ask ourselves the question if a black patron, a red patron, a purple patron, a blue patron and so on.

[00:28:11]It's a real question and we don't have the answers we have yet, but we can imagine there were colors, at least for the last tower there is also a tent of particular ban, what is very important is that intended particular in barief and the eyes highlighted in black. which really misses the whole rest.

[00:28:47][music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [ music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] To build and later decorate the tombs of the pharaohs. All the artisans were grouped together [music] housed near the valley of the kings in deine.

[00:30:17][music] [music] Here it's a relatively privileged community and we're taking full advantage of it.

[00:30:38]a community which governs in a whole series of societies for example several so it is really a somewhat private community and these people are deses who are not really part of the Egyptian high society who still certainly enjoy real consideration in the Tebain region we must not distinguish among the artists architects draftsmen painters similarly we are still in a context of quite a creator and uh we have the impression that sometimes some draftsmen were obviously also painters and also architects.

[00:31:23]On the hillside by dear Elmine, these [music] artists built and decorated their own tombs.

[00:31:30]One of them discovered in the early 20th century by Ernestoelli, [music] attests to the dazzling rise of a contour scribe who became an architect.

[00:31:40][music] The extraordinary contents of the unviolated tomb of K are still visible today in the Egyptian museum of Tin.

[00:31:52]Among the multitude [music] of artifacts found inside the tomb is the sculpted standing figure of the architect K.

[00:32:03][music] [music] Car was certainly started life or started his career as a scribe. He could not have made the career letter he did without a scribal training. And we have some of his walking sticks that name him K the scribe. So there's no question that he was a scribe. And he rose through the ranks and became an architect or an overseer of the king's works. I think he was an operative kind of man because there are tools in the tomb tools were tools that had use and were inscribed not once but twice.

[00:32:58][grunt] It's well said on his on his ruler on his cubit it was a magic cubit again it was never used it's made of gold which has not been done It was simply Um C is very impressive. There's no question about it because there are over 500 objects in it and it tells us about how he lived. For example, there are numbers of coffers, wooden coffers that have pedimental lids. A very simple thing, but you have to have a large house in order to store all these. You can't stack them because of the the type of roof on the lids. And they're all full of underwear, for example, which is monogrammed. The fact that his underwear monograph monograms suggests that he used a laundry service and he wanted his laundry to come back to him. What we don't know of course is how he died, why what his wife died of.

[00:34:36]We don't know where they lived. He might have lived at the village at Dar Medina while he was working on sight. But certainly those pokey little houses could not have accommodated all that material, all that furniture that was in his tomb. I mean it was a very well furnished uh tomb which means that he came from a large um spacious home.

[00:35:00]M.

[00:35:01][music] [music] [music] [music ] [ music] [music] Under the auspices [music] of another pyramid, far from the banks of the Nile and its necropolises, the crouching scribe continues to grace the galleries of the muse with his enigmatic presence.

[00:35:57]It is [music] this vanished world in which artes to explore.

[00:36:07]She's preparing [music] exhibit on the contour scbes in the role of drawing in ancient Egypt.

[00:36:14]And it is within the framework of this [music] exhibit that the laboratories of the center of research and restoration of French museums are bus restoring the bits of stone covered [music] with drawings.

[00:36:25]These ostra found in great numbers in a well near the village of artisans, DM [music] constitute an unprecedented and complex new source of information.

[00:36:36]For Egyptologists, they raise questions concerning the personality of these designers and about their environment.

[00:36:57][music] [music] [music] What is quite revealing in this category of objection is that for once these objects are the expression of a draftsman's breath, tracing outlines that will allow him to give life not on paper, there is no paper, but on a shard of stone or a piece of pottery, to his imagination, there is no fountain, not always, I believe that one of an artist's ways is to finally relax or distract himself by drawing satirical things.

[00:38:13]It must also be said that the presence of the moral code was strong. Ostraquins served their purpose simply because paper was a relatively expensive medium, and therefore it was much simpler to write on pebbles, right? It's like a notebook, let's say. Uh, the obscurants, in fact, it's paper from notebooks set aside, but their purpose is not at all obvious. The more you understand, the more you see that it's done with such precision, and the use of colors, it was n't done in 3 minutes. There are techniques about them and then a lot of uses, right? It's not just scribbling, you know.

[00:39:14][music] [music] And we can clearly see that it doesn't meet the needs.

[00:39:32]The hairs are depicted in a lot of detail, huh.

[00:39:39]So this one isn't quite a bit, it's a window command. So it's a carpenter working on commission, and there's the drawing of interest with the measurements that specify the dimensions of this piece, and he tells him, "You do it quickly, quickly, quickly for tomorrow."

[00:40:01]Um, I think some are actually drafts.

[00:40:04]Yes. Um, they're working on maybe a contour that they want to get right. But the dancer, the dancer doing the back bend, is certainly something else. It's done for the delight of the man. Um, these are men after all.

[00:40:21]These aren't women. These are men who are drawing for their own pleasure and their own delight when they're not actually working on serious doodles or serious sketches. So, I think this is what men do. They are men who have a good hand, good will, often to something.

[00:40:45]It so happens that the Egyptians, in particular, in a dance in the south at the end of the construction sites, uh, so there we imagine that, but so there, in fact, it's how they are dressed too, right? At the same time, we see that It's funny, he's bald and he's hot in his neck, and that's what Pascal Verd is.

[00:41:23]So that means he's a man of the people, someone who isn't really fashionable. And it would seem that ultimately, when the Egyptian elite wanted to entertain themselves with scenes of daily life, and especially satirical scenes, rather than putting themselves in the spotlight, they preferred to put "ruffians" in quotes, that is, commoners who were created for positions or roles more in their place. Exactly. There you go, that was their fantasy.

[00:41:54]All these men are on the... you never see an elite type, they're all bald [music] and [music] paper.

[00:42:19]One of these copies, recently found in the Muse Louvre and subsequently restored, allows us to see the papyrus in its entirety.

[00:42:31]The erotic papyrus is interesting. I think once again we're talking about artists who live in the desert, who live and work in the desert.

[00:42:41]Um, and a piece of expensive papyrus has fallen off the back of a lor [groan] and they put it to good use for the delectation of each other. Um, and they make this erotic papyrus. It might have it might have importance, political importance. It might be about the priests or what the priests in the temples get up to. Who knows? We don't know. But what's more interesting is the fact that the erotic papyrus is a one part erotic and one part satiric. Now what I would like to know is whether the satiric part was shown to the family rolled up and the the erotic uh part was only shown among the men and not the the women and the women folk and the children.

[00:43:31]It's the position of the two um the two themes that interest me. Why in one Papyrus do you have something that is a story about mice um doing uh human things and and the other the other part of the papyrus is outrageously erotic.

[00:43:50][music] Several European museums, [Music] One of which is the Royal Museum of Arts and History in Brussels, have collaborated [Music] to present an exhibition on the contour art of ancient Egypt.

[00:44:10]And thus, certain works must be sent to Paris and the Louvre Museum.

[00:44:16][Music] [Music] But one can't have 3000 old limestone flakes travel in any ordinary [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] So what's amusing is that in fact these are two objects that, uh, both... There's a delightful design in the wood, and so it really expresses a notion, but more than an idea, actually. So it's a bit like denying things too. So there would obviously be an extraordinary Louvre, sure to be able to attribute it to Rams VI. What's very, very nice is that ultimately, we've almost given the place a bit of volume, and then there's also the... which is still very good, with a slightly pinkish tint, as if it were lightly made up, successfully.

[00:46:36]No, it's that kind of creation.

[00:46:58]The graphic system, which adds images or writing symbols throughout its history—don't forget that it's 3,000 years of history— the language has evolved, there are graphic elements, some biblical, some too many, but fundamentally the system has never removed anything itself. It's a system that adds things but also removes some things, and ultimately, in its functioning, there are no very significant changes between the very beginnings of Egyptian history around 3000 BCE and the end of history in the Greco-Roman period. No significant changes, just like the political and religious system. Very few of the fundamentals that existed at the creation of the historical civilization with the first dynasties were still in effect in the Greco-Roman period. And besides, every time foreign states dominated Egypt and the Egyptian pharaohs were Assyrians, persecutors of the Greeks... and Roman jobs, despite all these foreign cultures, all these foreign powers, always have this foundation, forming the basic outline of civilization. So the graphic system and the writing system, which truly constitute the expression of a religious system, have varied very little over time.

[00:48:19][music] [music] In Egypt, the notion of art for art's sake appears to be absent [music] from the Egyptian mentality in which the work of contourists [music] I still believe that sometimes the human element is in the relationship of man to being so obsessed with the ideal. There is no bad, no bad, no bad, it means that it was still very... I am not at all convinced that systematic and absolute conviction does not, on the contrary, reveal a reality in relation to what was found.

[00:49:28]In chapter 109 of the Book of the Dead, the fields [music] of offerings, that great herefter which the Egyptians hope to reach after death, are described as a place of delights.

[00:49:41]Here begin the spells [music] for ones coming forth by day. For entering and coming forth from the world of the dead, reaching [music] the fields of re finding oneself in the field of offerings, the great [music] place rich in winds, [singing] and there to be powerful, happy, to labor, to reap, to eat, to drink, to make love, to do all that one does on earth.

[00:50:05][music] [singing] [music] Ah.

[00:50:33]Oh.

[00:50:35][music] [music] [singing] Ne.

[00:51:00][music] [singing] Ah. [singing] [singing] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]