Egyptian sculpture

134 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

The portraits of Nefert-yti are perhaps the best examples of the widely differing types of style, ranging, as they do, from the most beautiful and delicate faces to a hideousness which is positively repulsive. Petrie sums up the art of Tell el Amarna in a few words: “The natural but ungainly attitudes, the flourishing ribbons, the heavy collars and kilt, the ungraceful realism of the figures, the loss of all expression and detail of structure—all these show the death of a permanent art in the fever of novelty and vociferation.”’ When the novelty had passed, and the Egyptian artist returned to his old conventional style, his natural artistic expression had been destroyed by the forcible imposition of foreign ideas; he therefore could only copy what had gone before, and from this period onwards the decadence of Egyptian art sets in. Although the art of Akhenaten could and did reach very high levels, its result was the death of indigenous Egyptian artistic feeling.

STATUES

The statues of Akhenaten vary so greatly that it is difficult always to recognise the man. The chin is often exaggerated, the eye is sometimes brought forward too far under the brow, though often it is in the right place. The portraits of him found at Tell el Amarna are, however, very much better and more human than those found recently at Karnak. It is possible that the Karnak statues were intended to be seen from below, and therefore the characteristic long face and chin have been exaggerated in order to allow of the foreshortening when seen from beneath.

The marked features of Akhenaten are the narrow eyes, with heavy, drooping lids, the full lips with a sharp edge, the long thin chin, and the pierced large ears. In good examples we get the impression of an actual, though often unflatter_