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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 Museum Egyptian 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 Dynasty ee 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

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