Egyptian sculpture

OLD KINGDOM 63

covered with a white skull-cap; the garment reaches from the waist to the knees, and is fastened at the waist with a loop, and one fold turns back on itself in a way that is less usual in other statues.

The seated scribe is of a type which is found throughout Egyptian art; he squats cross-legged on the ground with a papyrus unrolled on his lap. The fine workmanship shows that the figure is a portrait of a noble, who is represented as a learned man. The eyes are inlaid, the face is that of a man in the prime of life, the lips are well modelled, and in this case the cheeks certainly call for attention on account of the fineness of their representation. The ear, partly hidden under the wig, is set in the right position. The body is that of a man accustomed to an easy life, for the muscles are not developed in the way that is seen in some of the other figures. The hands, and especially the nails, are carefully rendered. The figure is painted; the loin-cloth white and the necklace also.

The wooden statues of the Old Kingdom, though different in technique, follow the same conventions as those in stone. The best known of such figures are those of the Sheikh el Beled (Pl. XII. 1) and his wife (Pl. XII. 2), and an unnamed mutilated figure which is now in the Cairo Museum (Pl. XII. 3). All three figures have lost the lower part of the legs; the Sheikh, however, has been repaired in modern times. The figure of the Sheikh shows a man of a type so common at the present day that the name, by which it is now known, was given to it by Mariette’s workmen, as soon as it was found, on account of its likeness to a local official. He is a short stout man, holding a staff in one hand, and the right hand has held some object now lost. The eyes are inlaid, which brings the fossa too near the nose, but the setting of the eye is natural, and the inlay gives a lively expression to the whole face. The modelling, as would

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