Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/261

Sculpture u^der the First Tiiebax E.mi'ire. ^33 it (Fi<^s, 2IO and 211), and borrow the fullowing description from Mariette.^ " Hiioe full-bottomed wigs, arranged into thick tresses, cover the heads of the two figures. Their hard and strongly-marked features (unfortunately much broken) bear a great resemblance to those of the lion-maned sphinxes. The upper lips are shaven but the cheeks and chins are covered with long wavy beards. Each of them sustains on his outstretched arms an ingenious arrange- ment of fishes, aquatic birds, and lotus tiowers. " No monument can be referred with greater certainty than this to the disturbed period when the Shepherds were masters of Egypt. It is difficult to decide upon its exact meaning. In spite of the mutilation which prevents us from ascertaining whether they bore the urcrns upon their foreheads, it cannot be doubted that the originals of the two statues were kings. In after years Psousennes put his cartouche upon the group, which assuredly he would never have done if he believed it to repre- sent two private individuals. But who could the two kings have been who were thus associated in one act and must therefore have been contemporaries ? " This explanation seems to carry with it certain grave objec- tions. It is not, in the first place, so necessary as Mariette seems to think that we should believe them to be kines. Similar objects — fishes, and aquatic flowers and birds — are grouped in the same fashion upon works which, to our certain knowledge, neither come from Tanisn or date from the Shepherd supremacy. Their appearance indicates an oftering to the Nile, and we can readily understand how Psousennes claimed the merit of the offering by inscribing his name upon it, even although he were not the real donor. Mariette does not hesitate to ascribe to the same series a figure discovered in the Faycum, upon the site of the city ' Notici du Musie dc Boitlak. Xo. i . VOL. IL II H Fu . 2C9. — Head nnd .-boulders of a Tanite Sphinx in black granite. Brawn by G, Benedite.