Caricature and Other Comic Art

elight in caricature and burlesque. In the Egyptian collection belonging to the New York Historical Society there is a specimen of the Egyptians' favorite k

tian Ca

ens: a lion on his hind-legs engaged in laying out as a mummy the dead body of a hoofed animal; a tiger or wild cat driving a flock of geese to market; another tiger carrying a hoe on one shoulder and a bag of seed on the other; an animal playing on a double pipe, and driving before him a herd of small stags, like a shepherd; a hippopotamus washing his hands in a tall water-jar; an animal on a throne, with another behind him as a fan-bearer, and a third presenting him with a bouquet. No place was too sacred for such playful delineations. In one of the royal sepulchres at Thebes, as Kenrick relates, there is a picture of an ass and a lion singing, accompanying themselves on the phorminx and the harp. There is also an elaborate burlesque of a battle piece, in which

Soul, Egypti

pirits, is represented on his throne, near the stern of the boat, waving away the Soul, which he has just weighed in his unerring scales and found wanting; while close to the shore a man hews away the grou

nveying Home their M

e wine-jars. In the valuable works of Sir Gardner Wilkinson[2] many of these curious pictures are given: the vineyard and its trellis-work; men frightening away the birds with slings; a vineyard with a water-tank for irrigation; the grape harvest; baskets full of grapes covered with leaves; kids browsing upon the vines; trained monkeys ga

bauchery have received little addition during the last three thousand years. Even the seductive cocktail is not modern. The ancient Egyptians imbibed stimulants to excite an appetite for wine, and munched the biting cabbage-leaf for the same purpose. Beer in several varieties was known to them

with th

osely into ancient life, we are struck with the similarity of the daily routine to that of our own time. Every detail of social existence is imperishably recorded upon the monuments of ancient Egypt, even to the tone and style and mishaps of a fashionable party. We see the givers of the entertainment, the master and mistress of the mansion, seated side by side upon a sofa; the guests coming up as

niture with which the apartment was provided. This too transparent flattery could not escape such inveterate caricaturists as the Egyptian artists. In a tomb at Thebes may be seen a ludicrous representation of scenes at a party where several of the guests had been lost in rapturous admiration of the objects around them. A young man, either from awkwardness or from having gone too often to the wine-jar, had reclined against a w

d for the next man to step upon. One of the extensive colored plates of Sir Gardner Wilkinson's larger work presents to our view a solemn and stately procession of funeral barges crossing the Lake of the Dead at Thebes on its way to the place of burial. The first boat contains the coffin, decorated with flowers, a high-priest burning incense before a table of offerings, and the female relatives of the deceased lamenting their loss; two barges are filled with mourning friends, one containing only women and the other only