Egyptian sculpture

OLD KINGDOM 51

sented as a row of straight curls; in the statue of the Sheikh * el Beled’s wife (Pl. XII. 2) the wig comes down so low that her own hair cannot be seen. The fillet, when worn with this coiffure, was a plain band, though for wealthy women, the band appears to have been decorated with stitchery. The women were always barefooted; occasionally the men are represented wearing sandals.

STATUES

The ivory statuette of Khufu shows the king enthroned and grasping the emblems of sovereignty. Though the attitude is conventional, the dynamic personality of this great monarch has been seized by the artist and so vividly rendered that, in spite of its small size, the statuette is as impressive as a colossus. The “‘terrible energy” of the great Pyramidbuilder is visible throughout the figure as well as in the stern, determined face, and the statuette remains to us as an unsurpassed study of character and as a lifelike portrait of one of the greatest of the Pharaohs.

The seated statues of Ra-hotep and his wife Nefert, found by Mariette at Meydum in 1871, are perhaps the best-known pieces of sculpture in the whole of ancient Egypt (PI. VII.). Although a pair, they are quite distinct from one another. The figure of the man does not lend itself so well to photography on account of the colour (dark red) with which it has been painted, and the photograph therefore does not show the modelling so well. In looking at these figures, especially that of the man, one should note the brilliant rendering of the anatomical details of the shoulders and upper part of the body. The line of the shoulders from the neck to arm shows the muscular construction in a way which no later sculptor ever succeeded in portraying. The small point of the acromion process is just indicated where it comes to