Egyptian sculpture

64 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

be expected at this period, is naturalistic, and shows a man of middle age (Pl. IX. 4).

The figure of the lady, generally called the wife of the Sheikh, was found in the same tomb. Though only the torso, the attitude is strikingly fine. She stands with the head well poised, the youthful athletic figure shows that the women of the Old Kingdom were not of the harem type. She has the same round face as her husband, but the eyes are sculptured, not inlaid, and the expression has a charm and alertness very different from his solid ponderous good-nature. The lady wears a wig like that of Nefert, the strands, parted in the middle, taken plainly across the forehead, and falling on each side of the face. The garment is the usual long, narrow dress of the women, with two shoulder-straps. On the right side of the body is a flat shallow cavity with two mortise holes, suggesting that she held some object close against the body, but as the arm and hand on that side have disappeared, no conjecture can be made.

The third of these figures is a man, again with inlaid eyes. He wears the short-curled wig which is characteristic of the period. The modelling in this statue, although fine in many ways, falls short of some of the other figures in the rendering of the neck. It is, however, a good example of the technique of wooden figures in showing the method of fastening the arms to the body by the mortise-and-tenon joint pegged into place. These three figures have at one time been painted, but no trace of colour now remains, though when the Sheikh el Beled was found the face was covered with colour, and a letter of Mariette is still extant in which he laments that a wet squeeze taken clandestinely at the Paris Exhibition, to which the figure had been lent, had entirely removed all trace of colour.