Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/293

Sculpture under the Second Tiieban Empire. 263 century that this vassalage endured, the southern conquerors gave full employment to such artists as Egypt had preserved. The latter were set to reproduce the features of the Ethiopian kings, but the works which resulted are very unequal in merit. Sabaco caused the sides of the great door in the pylon of Rameses at Karnak to be repaired. The execution of the figures is by no means satisfactory. " The relief is too bold ; the mus- cular development of the heroes represented is exaggerated to a meaningless degree ; coarse vigour has taken the place of o'raceful strenofth." ^ But although these bas-reliefs, the only ones of the period which have been encountered, are evidently inspired by the decadence, the Egyptian sculp- tors seem to have still preserved much of their skill in por- traiture. Mariette believes that a royal head in the Museum at Cairo represents Tahraka, the third of the Ethiopian sovereigns. It is disfigured by the loss of the nose. The remaining features are coarse and strongly marked and the general type is foreign rather than Egyptian. - However this may be, it cannot be denied that in the alabaster statue of Ameneritis, which was found at Karnak by ^^lariette, we have a monument of this phase in Egyptian art remarkable both for taste and knowledge (Fig. 226).^ During the Ethiopian occupation Queen Ameneritis played ^ Ch Blan'C, Voyage dans la Haute-Egypte, p. 153. - Mariette, Notice, No. 20. 3 Mariette, Notice, No. 866. There is a cast of this statue in the Louvre, but. like that of the statue of Chephren, which forms a pendant to it, it has been coloured to the hue of fresh butter and the result is most disagreeable. Even when placed upon a cast from an alabaster figure this colour is bad enough, but when the cast is one from a statue in diorite, like that of Chephren, it is quite inexcusable. It would have been better either to have left the natural surface of the plaster or to have given to each cast a colour which should in some degree recall that of the originals and mark the difference between them. Fig. 225.— The Goddess Kadesh ; fror Wilkinson, Fig. 55.