Egyptian sculpture

146 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

is a difficult one to maintain for long, is represented continually in the Tell el Amarna tombs amongst the inferiors in attendance on the king and queen, both within doors and without, for, in the driving scenes, the guards run in this stooping position. In no other reign is the marked inferiority of the lower classes so emphasised as under Akhenaten. Hatshepsut’s soldiers march upright, the courtiers in the presence of the earlier Pharaohs, even of the god, stand erect. Akhenaten alone insisted on his position as the son of the Sun-god, to whom all other creatures must bow. That it was not the natural position of the peasant is shown by many small scenes which occur in the tombs, where peasants are represented as following their usual avocations in the ordinary posture. The well-known scene of the Master’s Return (P.T.A., Pl. V.), with the servants preparing for his arrival, shows none of this extreme humility; the only stooping figure is stooping to pursue his occupation of sweeping the floor.

The Egyptian artist, although attempting to follow the new conventions of Akhenaten, which in many cases completely ruined his artistic feeling, still retained his marvellous facility for representing the facial character of any nation. The group of negroes (Pl. XXXVIII. 1) squatting on the ground are a party of slaves waiting to be sold; they are guarded by three men armed with clubs, one of whom is using his weapon freely on the heads and backs of the captives; a scribe is noting the numbers and condition of the human cattle. The artist of this relief has caught the various facial types of the negroes and has represented them without exaggeration or forcing. The captive Semites form another well-known group. They are being led into Egypt by Egyptians, and the methods of securing the prisoners are still the conventional methods of the earlier periods. The