Egyptian sculpture

162 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

therefore possible to see how entirely devoid of modelling is the figure; the only attempt at representing the human torm is in the rounded ball-like breasts and the marked navel. The face is again of the same narrow type, with the mouth slightly curved upwards in a smile, but without any real expression. The head-dress is the long wig, here represented without detail; the uraeus is on the brow. It is to be noted that it is only in the Late Period that the uraeus is represented on the heads of divinities, in early periods it belongs to the king and queen only. Isis wears as her headdress the circular crown from which rise the horns and disk of the goddess Hathor. The want of appreciation of artistic work is shown by the fact that the stone has not been cut away between the horns; in an earlier period this would never have been allowed, the design would have been altered rather than permit such an inartistic effect. Many of the statues of this period, however, are more the work of the stone-cutter than of the artist.

The figure of the cow-goddess Hathor protecting the priest (Pl. XLV. 3) is a type of statue which is first introduced in the New Kingdom; the great cow-statue of Deir el Bahri is one of the first examples. Here the figure of the priest is considerably better than the figures of Osiris and Isis. The face, although conventionalised, has a certain amount of character and an attempt at portraiture, though the attitude and the whole conception of the group are entirely conventional. Again we see the stone left between the horns of the cow, as it is left in the case of the horns of the goddess Isis. These three statues are in basalt, polished highly to a mirror-like surface in the usual style of the XXVIth dynasty.

Figures of the child-god Harpocrates are found from the end of the New Kingdom till the introduction of