Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/251

Sculpture under the Ancient Empire. 22, out boldly on each side of the face, and hangs down in two pleated lappets upon the chest. The king's chin is not shaved like those of his subjects. It is adorned like that of a god with the long and narrow tuft of hair which we call the Osiride beard. At the back of Chephren's head, which is invisible in our illustration, there is a hawk, the symbol of protection. His trunk and legs are bare ; his only garment is, in fact, the .fr//r;/// about his middle. His left hand lies upon his knee, his right hand holds a rod of some kind. The details of the chair are interestino^. The arms end in lions' heads, and the feet are paws of the same animal. Upon the sides are figured in high relief the two plants which symbolize the upper and lower country respectively ; they are arranged around the hieroglyph saiu, signifying union. The other statue, which now consists of little more than the head and trunk, differs from the first only in a few details. The chair is without a back, and. curiously enough, the head is that of a much older man than the Chephren of the diorite statue. This difference makes it pretty certain that both heads were modelled directly from nature. These royal statues are, then, portraits like the rest, but when in their presence we feel that they are more than portraits, that there is something in their individuality which could not have been rendered by photography or by casts from nature, had such processes been understood by their authors. In spite of the unkindly material the execution is as free as that of the stone figures. The face, the shoulders, the pectoral muscles, and especially the knees, betray a hand no less firm and confident than those which carved the softer rocks. The diorite Chephren excels ordinary* statues in size — for it is larger than nature — in the richness of its throne, in the arrangement of the linen hood which gives such dignity to the head, in the existence of the beard which gives length and importance to the face.-- The artist has never lost siofht of nature : he has never forgotten that it was his business to portray Chephren and not Cheops or Snefrou ; and yet he has succeeded in o-ivino; to his work the sio'nificance of a type. He has made it the embodiment of the Egyptian belief in the semi-divine nature of their Pharaohs. By its size. its pose, its expression and^rrarigemervTHeTias given it a certain ideality. We may see In these two statues, for similar qualities are to be found in the basalt figure, the first eftbrt made bv the orenius