Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/385

Caricature. 353 sycamore in which an hippopotamus is perched ; a hawk has climbed into the tree by means of a ladder and proceeds to dislodge him ; finally, we have a fortress defended by an army of cats, w'ho are without other arms than their claws and teeth, against a storming party of rats provided with arms offensive and defensive, and led by one of their own species, who is mounted on a chariot drawn by two greyhounds. •' The artist's idea — at least in the lower part of the picture — seems to have been to paint the cats defeated by the animals upon which they prey. It is the world turned upside down, or if the painter must be credited with a deeper meaning, it is the revolt of the oppressed against the oppressor." ^ The lower part of the plate contains a scene of the same kind taken from a papyrus in the British Museum. A flock of geese are being driven along by a cat, and a herd of goats by two wolves with crook and wallet ; one of the wolves is playing on the double flute. At the other end there is a lion playing draughts with an antelope. One of the tombs has upon its walls a picture of a humble and timid cat attempting to propitiate a lion by the oft'ering of a goose. - In the opinion of some these scenes are satires upon royalty and religion. This is an evident exaofo^eration. We have no reason to suppose that the Egyptian intellect ever arrived at the maturity required for scepticism. Neither the authority of Pharaoh nor that of the priests seems to have ever been called in question. But although their anger was not stirred by the government of the world, they could find something to laugh at in it. In the cat presented to an ass we cannot fail to see a parody of Pharaoh receiving the homage of some vanquished enemy. Still more personal is the cat oftering a goose to a lion. The cat can only be that unlucky fellah who, in the Egypt of the Pharaohs as in that of the Khedives, has never succeeded in keeping clear of the bastinado and the corvde except by giving presents to the sheikh of his village or the niudir of the neiehbourine town. In laying this scene upon the wall the artist was writing a page of his own biography and of the history of all the people about him. He revenged himself in his own way upon the greedy functionary 1 Prisse, Histoirc de F Art Egyptieiu text, pp. 143, 143. - Ibid. p. 144. VOL. II. Z Z