Egyptian sculpture

LATE PERIOD 157

with scenes of religious import which may represent weaving or embroidery. The designs are made by inlaying gold wire in the bronze, the lines having been grooved out in the bronze and the gold beaten into the hollows.

The XXVth dynasty saw a rise in the art of Egypt which found further expression in the XXVIth, though hampered and finally stifled by mere copying of the archaic. In the XXVth dynasty, however, the artist had broken away from the purely conventional representation of faces and was attempting true portraiture. The figure was still in the formal attitude of all standing statues, with one foot advanced and one arm hanging at the side. In the figure of Queen Amenardus (Pl. XLIII.) the proportions are well preserved; she was petite and slender, beyond girlhood but

still young, a woman of perhaps thirty. The actual modelling ‘*°

of the figure shows no real observation; the work having probably been done by the juniors and less-skilled sculptors, as seems to have often been the case. To realise this point the shoulders of the statue should be compared with those of the early figures (Pls. VII.; XI. 2). At the same time it must be remembered that the sculptor was at least attempting to represent shoulders, and was not shirking a difficulty like his immediate predecessors, even as far back as the latter part of the New Kingdom. The sculptors of that debased period saved all anatomical difficulties by covering a woman’s shoulders with a long wig, which fell round her like a little cape—to the breasts in front and to the shoulder-blades at the back. The hair of Queen Amenardus is so arranged as to show the whole shoulder, and though the sculptor was not sufficiently observant to render it correctly, he has at least made a gallant attempt, without any shirking. That he had some knowledge is shown by the way the muscles of the right