Egyptian sculpture

70 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

it is therefore not surprising that the sculpture from their tomb should be of a very high degree of artistic feeling and technique. The primitive ideals are still very markedly in vogue in this procession of women; there is no grouping, each figure is a separate entity quite unconnected with the others. The figures are also all of one height, but the difference in the character of each one is worth noting. Thus the woman at the head of the procession is standing while the others are still walking; the sculptor has rendered the muscular movement of the walking figures with very delicate modelling, quite distinct from the modelling of the motionless figure. The relief is extremely low, not more than one-eighth of an inch, yet the sculptor has succeeded in conveying a sense of movement by the slight modelling. In this piece of sculpture can also be seen how the Egyptian artist, like his Greek successors, admired and endeavoured to represent the human form as seen under a garment. The Egyptian, with his ideal of simplicity, preferred a robe of plain, straight lines, the more complex mind of the Greek rejoiced in a complexity of folds and pleats; but to both, the outer wrapping, half hiding, half revealing, only enhanced the beauty of the form beneath. In later periods of Egyptian art this ideal became entirely formalised, and the women are represented in dresses so tight and transparent as to appear nude; in the Old Kingdom, however, the garment is faithfully indicated. The man at the end of the procession is not so well rendered as the women; he is probably put in for the exigencies of grammar. The inscriptions, which divide the figures and fill the blank spaces between them, are partly for utilitarian, partly for artistic, reasons. The artistic reason is to fill an uninteresting space with signs of irregular outline, all different yet all ending with the circular sign—the determinative of an