Egyptian sculpture

76 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

is put on flat and fills all the space within the outlines. The only exception to this is the ox-leg, where there seems to have been some attempt at representing the naturalistic coloureffect of the object, though the leg itself is entirely conventional in drawing. The man is painted in the dark red usual for male figures, the colour is laid on quite flat ; the white of the eye is in startling contrast, emphasised by the black outline and black iris. There is no detail in the face except the eye and eyebrow; even the ear is hidden under the black mass which represents the hair. The hand is merely in outline, the fingers are not indicated, only the thumb is separated and is given an exaggeratedly long upper joint. The garment is white, outlined in red, with a red line to indicate the one fold. The leg of the ox is also white and outlined in red; the streaks of pale red above and below may be, as I have already suggested, an attempt at naturalistic colour; it might also conceivably be a method of indicating shading, but on the whole it seems more probable that it is merely a convention for that particular object. The hieroglyphs, in other colours than red, show the red outline; the sign, which appears to represent a rainbow, is interesting. The background is coloured grey, so that even the white paint shows clearly on it. It is to be noted that the backgrounds in the decorated tomb-chapels at Saqqara are painted grey in varying shades, sometimes pale, as in this instance, sometimes almost black, as in the well-known tomb of Ptah-hotep. The same pale grey is also found farther south in the early Old Kingdom tombs at Meydum.