Egyptian sculpture

144 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

sentation of the eyes and of the mouth is reminiscent of Tell el Amarna. The figures of both god and goddess are also of the type of Tell el Amarna; the god has the pendulous abdomen which is so familiar in the figures of Akhenaten.

The statue of Horemheb also shows the Amarna influence. The king stands holding a long staff between his pendent left hand and his body; he steadies the upper part of it by the right hand laid across his chest. The face, particularly about the mouth, is of the type of Tell el Amarna, but the representation of the body is a return to the Egyptian canon. The eyes have been inlaid, the ears are large and are not pierced ; the head-dress is the blue crown with the outstanding uraeus, the tail of which goes in a wavy line to the top of the head-dress.

RELIEFS

In the relief sculpture, the characteristic figures of the king and queen are emphasised to the point of caricature. The abnormal width of the hips in Akhenaten, the narrowness and thinness of the arms and legs, the prognathous face, the large lips, the enormous ear with its exaggerated hole, are all markedly in evidence. The representation of the king is cruel in its hideousness. The queen’s figure is equally exaggerated, and were she known only from the relief sculptures, nothing more inhumanly ugly could be imagined; the enormous mouth, the thick lips, and the thin long chin, the ear set too high, and the whole ensemble placed upon a neck far too long, suggest that the artist desired to represent her in the worst possible manner (Pl. XX XVII. 2). It is more likely, however, that the deformity was more by accident than design, and that the artists to whom the relief sculpture is due were not the great artists of Tell el Amarna, for the reliefs are the least satisfactory manifestation of the genius