Egyptian sculpture

LATE PERIOD 155

the ground with his knees raised and his arms crossed above the knees; the figure is wrapped in a cloak which covers the whole body and legs, and affords a flat surface on which to engrave inscriptions. This figure is of the time of the XXIInd dynasty, and is one of the best examples of the art of that period. The eyes are unusually large and well opened, they project to the level of the brow or slightly beyond, but the depth at the corners beside the nose is deepened to the requisite degree, and therefore the projecting part of the eye is not so noticeable. The smiling mouth still shows the drill-holes at the corners, which the sculptor has not completely cut away; the chin is pushed forward in rather an ungainly manner by the short beard, otherwise the modelling of the face is almost as good as in the statues at the end of the New Kingdom. The hair is represented by straight horizontal lines across the forehead, which flow outwards to the shoulders. The ears are exaggerated in size, and project too much from the head. The appearance of the arms under the cloak is well rendered, but the upper part of the arm is slovenly in execution, and the hands are hardly recognisable as such. The front of the statue is decorated with a scene of the man himself offering incense and a libation to the god Amon and to a goddess who wears the crown of Lower Egypt. The feet, which project forwards, are indicated in so conventional a manner that unless the type of statue were known from the finer examples of the early New Kingdom, it would be impossible to say what the curve at the base of the statue represents.

The statue (Pl. XLII. 3) representing a king kneeling and holding forth a cartouche on which his name, now destroyed, was once inscribed, is in a style unlike that of the New Kingdom, but it has at the same time certain characteristics which differentiate it from the work of the later periods.