Small Bronze Sculpture from the Ancient World
Papers Delivered
ata Symposium Organized
bythe Deparements of
Aneguiies and
Antiquities Conservation
and Held tthe
J. Paul Getty Museum
March 16-19, 1989
The} Pauley MuseumEgyptian Metal Statuary of the Third Intermediate Period
(Circa 1070-656 B.c.), from Its Egyptian Antecedents to
Its Samian Examples
Robert Steven Bianchi
Before beginning a study of the sophisticated metal sculpture created in
Egypt between the eleventh and seventh centuries 8.c. one must
acknowledge recent assessments of the Third Intermediate Period itself,
Traditionally Egyprologists had regarded this epoch in much the same
way as classicists had once regarded the dark ages in Greece at the
beginning of the frst millennium 8.c. From this vantage Egypt's
decentralized political system and the seeming eclipse of her influence
abroad appeared to be causes contributing to a perceived decline in her
‘material culture.' Egyptian art histories, some published as recently as
the 1980s, were quick to dismiss the art of the Third Intermediate Period
as retardataire, lacking in innovation, and uninspired.? Today, due in no
small part to the increase in the number of specialists focusing their
collective attention on the monuments of this epoch,? the Third
Intermediate Period is being viewed as an epoch of intense creativity and,
in certain specific instances, that creativity was itself the source of
religious formulations* and iconographic programs,$ which subsequent
Egyptian dynasties were to develop and embellish,
‘The factors contributing to such a cultural
flowering are many, but two among them emerge as fundamental. The
first is the composition of the Egyptian population, particularly that of
its ruling classes. Throughout the history of the Third Intermediate
Period the native Egyptians were themselves ruled by foreigners, the fist
of whom were the Libyans. These Libyans, who for various reasons had
carlier settled within Egypt's borders, emerged during the Twenty-second
Dynasty (circa 945-713 B.C.) as one of the ruling classes.” Lacking a
‘material culture of their own, the Libyans so completely appropriated the
external trappings of kingship and other visible aspects of ancient
Egypt’ culture that their ethnic identity was soon subsumed beneath a
thick veneer of what appears to be a progressive egyptianization.® The
same processes are observable, but to a lesser degree, regarding the
Kushites, a people living in Nubia, to the south of Aswan, who invaded
Egyptiin the eighth century 8.c. and eventually ruled from Thebes as
Pharaohs in their own right during the Twenty-fith Dynasty (circa 719~
656 8.c.), which was initially collateral withthe Twenty-second Dynastyee ne
6
Both Libyan and to a greater degree Nubian
acculturation are characterized by archaizing,”a phenomenon that
‘enabled Libyan and Nubian alike to survey Egypt's long cultural past in
sorder to select from that tradition those features that might immediately
be borrowed, transformed, and manipulated to suit their specific culrural
agenda, Archaizing in many ways masked the respective ethnic identities
ofthese foreign groups and, more significantly, enabled them to proclaim
their “Egyptianness.”"
(One further point requires emphasis.
“Throughout the cours ofthe Third Intermediate Period Egypr was ruled
by an inordinately large number of petty despots, each belonging ro one
ceanother of the complex series of overlapping, contemporary dynasties
that were centered in any number of capital cities throughout the land.
Whereas the dynasts were ostensibly in competition with one another, as
their simultaneous claims to Egypt's kingship might indicate," these
same petty princes might at other times become allied” ina political
system, whose model is that provided by the feudal lords of medieva!
Furope: Asa result there was a certain uniformity inthe material culture
of the Third Intermediate Period throughout the Egyptian Delta." This
spparent homogeneity inthe visual arts and the absence of one specific