into the most sacred mysteries of their religion. I give as a curious example, taken from one of Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s engravings, a scene in the representation of a funeral procession crossing the Lake of the Dead (No. 2), that appears in one of these early paintings at Thebes, in which “the love of caricature common to the Egyptians is shown to have been indulged even in this serious subject; and the retrograde movement of the large boat, which has grounded and is pushed off the bank, striking the smaller one with its rudder, has overturned a large table loaded with cakes and other things, upon the rowers seated below, in spite of all the efforts of the prowman, and the earnest vociferations of the alarmed steersman.” The accident which thus overthrows and scatters the provisions intended for the funeral feast, and the confusion attendant upon it, form a ludicrous scene in the midst of a solemn picture, that would be worthy of the imagination of a Rowlandson.
No. 2. Catastrophe in a Funeral Procession.
Another cut (No. 3), taken from one of the same series of paintings, belongs to a class of caricatures which dates from a very remote period. One of the most natural ideas among all people would be to compare men with the animals whose particular qualities they possessed. Thus, one might be as bold as a lion, another as faithful as a dog, or as cunning as a fox, or as swinish as a hog. The name of the animal would thus often be given as a nickname to the man, and in the sequel he would be represented pictorially under the form of the animal. It was partly out of this kind of caricature, no doubt, that the singular class of apologues which have been since distinguished by the name of fables arose. Connected with it was the belief in the metempsychosis, or transmission of the soul into the bodies of animals after death, which formed a part of several of the primitive religions. The earliest examples of this class of caricature of mankind are found on the Egyptian monuments, as in the instance just referred to, which represents “a soul condemned to return to earth under the form of a pig, having been weighed in the scales before Osiris and been found wanting. Being placed in a boat, and accompanied by two monkeys, it is dismissed the sacred precinct.” The latter animals, it may be remarked, as they are here represented, are the cynocephali, or dog-headed monkeys (the simia inuus), which were sacred animals among the Egyptians, and the peculiar characteristic of which—the dog-shaped head—is, as usual, exaggerated by the artist.
No. 3. An Unfortunate Soul.
The representation of this return of a condemned soul under the repulsive form of a pig, is painted on the left side wall of the long entrance-gallery to the tomb of King Rameses V., in the valley of royal catacombs known as the Biban-el-Molook, at Thebes. Wilkinson gives the date of the accession of this monarch to the throne as 1185 B.C. In the original picture, Osiris is seated on his throne at some distance from the stern of the boat, and is dismissing it from his presence by a wave of the hand. This tomb was open in the time of the Romans, and termed by them the “Tomb of Memnon;” it was greatly admired, and is covered with laudatory inscriptions by Greek and Roman visitors. One of the most interesting is placed beneath this picture, recording the name of a daduchus, or torch-bearer in the Eleusinian mysteries, who visited this tomb in the reign of Constantine.
No. 4. The Cat and the Geese.
No. 5. The Fox turned Piper.
The practice having been once introduced of representing men under the character of animals, was soon developed into other applications of the same idea—such as that of figuring animals employed in the various occupations of mankind, and that of reversing the position of man and the inferior animals, and representing the latter as treating their human tyrant in the same manner as they are usually treated by him. The latter idea became a very favourite one at a later period, but the other is met with not unfrequently among the works of art which have been saved from the wrecks of antiquity. Among the treasures of the British Museum, there is a long Egyptian picture on papyrus, originally forming a roll, consisting of representations of this description, from which I give three curious examples. The first (see cut No. 4) represents a cat in charge of a drove of geese. It will be observed that the cat holds in her hand the same sort of rod, with a hook at the end, with which the monkeys are furnished in the preceding picture. The second (No. 5) represents a fox carrying a basket by means of a pole supported on his shoulder (a method of carrying burthens frequently represented on the monuments of ancient art), and playing on the well-known double flute, or pipe. The fox soon became a favourite personage in this class of caricatures, and we know what a prominent part he afterwards played in mediæval satire. Perhaps, however, the most popular of all animals in this class of drolleries was the monkey, which appears natural enough when we consider its singular aptitude to mimic the actions of man. The ancient naturalists tell us some curious, though not very credible, stories of the manner in which this characteristic of the monkey tribes was taken advantage of to entrap them, and Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. viii. c. 80) quotes an older writer, who asserted that they had even been taught to play at draughts. Our third subject from the Egyptian papyrus of the British Museum (No. 6) represents a scene in which the game of draughts—or, more properly speaking, the game which the Romans called the ludus latrunculorum, and which is believed to have resembled our draughts—is played by two animals well known to modern heraldry, the lion and the unicorn. The lion has evidently gained the victory, and is fingering the money; and his bold air of swaggering superiority, as well as the look of surprise and disappointment of his vanquished opponent, are by no means ill pictured. This series of caricatures, though Egyptian, belongs to the Roman period.
No. 6. The Lion and the Unicorn.
No. 7. Typhon.
The monstrous is closely allied to the grotesque, and both come within the province of caricature, when we take this term in its widest sense. The Greeks, especially, were partial to representations of monsters, and monstrous forms are continually met with among their ornaments and works of art. The type of the Egyptian monster is represented in the accompanying cut (No. 7), taken from the work of Sir Gardner Wilkinson before quoted, and is said to be the figure of the god Typhon. It occurs frequently on Egyptian monuments, with some variation in its forms, but always characterised by the broad, coarse, and frightful face, and by the large tongue lolling out. It is interesting to us, because it is the apparent origin of a long series of faces, or masks, of this form and character, which are continually recurring in the grotesque ornamentation, not only of the Greeks and Romans, but of the middle ages. It appears to have been sometimes given by the Romans to the representations of people whom they hated or despised; and Pliny, in a curious passage of his “Natural History,”[1] informs us that at one time, among the pictures exhibited in the Forum at Rome, there was one in which a Gaul was represented, “thrusting out his tongue in a very unbecoming manner.” The Egyptian Typhons had their exact representations in ancient Greece in a figure of frequent occurrence, to which antiquaries have, I know not why, given the name of Gorgon. The example in our cut No. 8, is a figure in terra-cotta, now in the collection of the Royal Museum at Berlin.[2]
No. 8. Gorgon.
In Greece, however, the spirit of caricature and burlesque representation had assumed a more regular form than in other countries, for it was inherent in the spirit of Grecian society. Among the population of Greece, the worship of Dionysus, or Bacchus, had taken deep root from a very early period—earlier than we can trace back—and it formed the nucleus of the popular religion and superstitions, the cradle of poetry and the drama. The most popular celebrations of the people of Greece, were the Dionysiac festivals, and the phallic rites and processions which accompanied