Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/292

262 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. consists, namely sandstone, is much less rebellious than granite, the features, which have a family resemblance to those of Menephtah, are executed in a much more summary fashion than in the Boulak statue, and yet the execution is that of a man who knew" his business. The modelling of the muscular arms is especially vigorous.^ There are hardly any royal statues left to us which we can ascribe with certainty to the twentieth dynasty, but at Medinet- Abou, both on the walls of the temple and in the Royal Pavilion there are bas-reliefs which show that the sculpture of Rameses III., the last of the great Theban Pharaohs, knew how to hold its own among the other glories of the reign. We have given a few examples of the pictures in which the king is shown as a warrior and as a high priest (Figs. 172 and 173 Vol. I.); other groups should not be forgotten in which he is exhibited during his hours of relaxation in his harem, amonpf his wives and daughters. Under the last of the Rameses the Egyptians lost their mili- tary spirit and, with it, their foreign possessions in the South and East. Inclosed within Its own frontiers, between the cataracts in the South and the Mediterranean in the North, and enfeebled by the domination of the priests and scribes, the country became divided into two kingdoms, that of Thebes, under a theocratic dynasty, and that of Tanis in which the royal names betray a strong Semitic influence. That worship of Asiatic divinities which, though never men- tioned in official monuments, Is so often alluded to in the steles, must then have taken hold of the people of Lower Egypt. Among these were Resheb, the Syrian Apollo ; Kadesh, who bore the name of a famous Syrian fortress, and was but one form of the great Babylonian goddess Anahit, the Anaitis of the Greeks. Kadesh is sometimes represented standing upon a lion passant (Fig. 225). Exhausted by its internal conflicts, Egypt produced few monu- mental works for several centuries. Many kings, however, of this barren period, and especially Sheshonk, have left at Karnak records of their military victories and of their efforts to re-establish the national unity. After the twenty-fourth dynasty Egypt became the vassal of that Ethiopian kingdom whose civilization was no more than a plagiarism from her own. During the halt ' Louvre. Ground-floor gallery, No. 24.