CHAPTER VI.

IVORY.

Mr.

IN the preceding chapter we have often had occasion to mention inlaid lines of ivory set round carved wooden panels, and even whole panels of ivory set in wooden borders (pp. 132-138). The artists of Cairo preferred this combination of substances, and the use of ivory alone is rare, though the Egyptians had every opportunity of obtaining large quantities of it through the Sudan trade. In the Coptic churches of Old Cairo, indeed, we find ivory more prevailingly used than in mosques or Muslim houses. Butler thus describes the screen of the church of Abu-s-Seyfeyn:* "It is a massive partition of ebony, divided into three large panels-doorway and two side panels-which are framed in masonry. At each side of the doorway is a square pillar plastered and painted; on the left is portrayed the Crucifixion, and over it the sun shining full; on the right the Taking Down from the Cross, and over it the sun eclipsed. . . . In the centre a double door, opening choirwards, is covered with elaborate mouldings, enclosing ivory crosses in high relief. All round the framing of the doors, tablets of solid ivory, chased with arabesques, are inlet, and the topmost part of each panel is marked off for an even richer display of chased tablets and crosses. Each

* The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, vol. i., pp. 86, 87.

of the side panels of the screen is one mass of superbly cut crosses of ivory, inlaid in even lines, so as to form a kind of broken trellis-work in the ebony background. The spaces between the crosses are filled with little squares, pentagons, hexagons, and other figures of ivory, variously designed, and chiselled with exquisite skill. The order is only broken in the centre of the panel, where a small sliding square, is fitted; on the is inlaid, above and betablet containing an Arawith scroll-work.

In

no through-carving; the in the form requirednext the design is chased the ivory ground and a piece is then set in the round with mouldings of ivory alternately. It is of the extraordinary richdetails, or the splendour Mr. Butler ascribes this with the tradition of the tury, and though the style lead us to infer a date centuries, his authoritabe disregarded.

the church called El

window, fourteen inches slide a single large cross low which is an ivory

bic inscription interlaced these ivories there is block is first shaped cross, square, or the like; in high relief, retaining raised border; and the wood-work and framed ebony, or ebony and difficult to give any idea ness and delicacy of the of the whole effect." screen, in accordance church, to the tenth cenof the arabesques would later by two or three tive statement must not

Another screen, in Mu'allaka, in the fortress

of Babylon, is unique of its kind. "Above and below are narrow panels of carved cedar and ebony, alternately, chased with rich scroll-work and interwoven with Kufic inscriptions; the framework is also of cedar, wrought into unusual star-like devices, and the intervals are filled with thin plates of ivory, through which, when the screen was in its original position, the light of the lamps behind fell with a soft rose-coloured glow, extremely pleasing.

There is an almost magical effect peculiar to this screen, for the design seems to change in a kaleidoscopic manner, according as the spectator varies his distance from it." This changing effect has often been remarked as a characteristic of Saracenic geometrical design, and is due to the combination of large and small patterns in such a manner that different parts of the design stand out more conspicuously at varying distances.

These Coptic screens are undoubtedly the models upon which the ivory carvings of the mosques were founded. Probably Coptic artists were employed for the work just as Coptic architects had been proved the most skilful for the planning of the mosques themselves. There is a close analogy between the style of the Coptic screens and that of the Muslim pulpits, with the necessary exception that the cross which forms so prominent a feature in the former is omitted in the latter, and the designs are restricted to geometrical patterns filled in with arabesques. A fine example of the Muslim development of the art is seen in the pair of pulpitdoors in the South Kensington Museum (nos. 886 and 886a, of the St. Maurice collection), one of which is engraved in part in fig. 69. The doors in their present modern frame-work are 6ft. 7in. high, and each leaf is ft. 6in. wide. The design is marked out by wooden mouldings, and the interstices are filled with ivory tablets, carved with delicate arabesques, no two of which are the same. Above and below each leaf is a horizontal panel filled with ivory scroll-work. It will be noticed, that fine as is the style of carving, the effect is harder than that of the best period of wood-carving in Cairo, though these doors probably belong to the same epoch, the fourteenth century. The stiffness is the fault, one must conclude, of the material, not of the artist; for the men who chiselled the panels of El-Māridāny and Kūsūn (pp. 132—138) were in all probability the mates of those who carved the ivory panels of these doors. The designs are also very similar, though varied with the

*The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, vol. i., p. 212.