Egyptian sculpture

26 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

A vertical line taken down the middle of the body goes through the middle of the ear, cuts the forward leg in the middle of the calf, and passes through the front of the instep of the back foot. The greatest width of the body is below the waist, emphasising the abdominal and pelvic regions. This is entirely different from the conventions of the earlier art, where the body always narrows to the hips, the greatest width being at the shoulders. In the case of the Tell el Amarna figures, the pendulous abdomen is a very marked feature, not only in the King, but in his Queen, in all his children, and in most of his subjects, especially the courtiers. Though it is quite possible that such a condition might be induced by want of exercise, it was not admired either in the earlier or in the later art, and is only represented in extreme detail at Tell el Amarna.

Late period

The canon of nine heads as the height of the figure continues down to Ptolemaic times as the proportion for a king (cp. the figure of Alexander the Great, also the Ptolemaic sculpture). But for less important persons the proportion altered in the XXth dynasty, and from then till the XXVIth dynasty, eight heads is the height; this gives a different effect to the figures, especially as the width of the shoulders remains in the same proportion as in the nine-head figure, while the waist is narrower.

Edgar (Rec. des Trav., XXVII. 146) points out that in the XXVIth dynasty the canon changed from eighteen squares to twenty-one squares and a varying fraction, the head occupying a little over two squares, and thus being smaller in proportion to the rest of the body. The division of the squares in this proportion is borne out by the remark