Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/215

Sculpture under the Ancient Empire. 189 ascribed by Mariette to no less remote a period. ^ The same eye for proportion, the same life-Hke expression, the same frankness and confidence of hand are to be found in those sculptured wooden panels of which the museum at Boulak possesses four fine examples. They were found at Sakkarah in the tomb of a personage called Hosi, where they were enframed in four blind doorways. They are on the average about 3 feet 10 inches high and I foot 8 inches wide. The drawings which we reproduce o-ive a good idea of the peculiarities of style and execution by which they are distinguished (Figs. 174-176).^ At first sight these carvings are a little embarrassing to the eye accustomed to works in stone. The type of figure presented is less thickset. The body, instead of being muscular, is nerv^ous and wiry. The arms and legs are thin and long. In the head especially do we find unaccustomed features ; the nose, instead of being round, is strongly aquiline ; the lips, instead of being thick and fleshy, as in almost all other Egyptian heads, are thin and compressed. The profile is strongly marked and rather severe. The general type is Semitic rather than Eg)'ptian. And yet the inscriptions which surround them prove that the originals were pure Egyptians of the highest class. One of them, he who is re- presented standing in two different attitudes, is Ra-hesi ; the other, who is sitting before a table of ofterinors, bears the name of Pekh- hesi. The decipherable part of the inscription tells us that he was a scribe, highly placed, and in great favour with the king. The tomb in which these panels were found was not built on the usual plan of the mastaba. IMariette alludes to certain pecu- liarities which are to be found in it, but he does not describe them in detail. The hieroglyphs are grouped in a peculiar fashion ; many of them are of a very uncommon form. The arrangement of the objects borne in the left hand of Ra-hesi is quite unique. Struck by these singularities, Mariette asserts that " the style of these panels is to Egyptian art what the style called archaic is to that of Greece."'^ This assertion seems to us inaccurate. Xot ^ " According to all appearance these panels date from before the reign of Cheops." Notices des principaiix Mo7mmetits, etc. Xos. 987-92. - There is a panel of the same kind in the Louvre {Salle Hisforique, Xo. i of Pierret's Catalogue), but it is neither so firm, nor in such good preser^-ation as those at Cairo. 3 Mariette, La Galerie de F Egypte Ancienne au Trocadero, 1878. p. 122.