Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/350

320 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. equal in number to those upon the original, but the resulting squares larger if the copy is to be larger, smaller if it is to be smaller, than that original. Egyptian decorators often made use of this process for the transference of sketches upon papyrus, stone, or wood, to the wall. Of this practice we give two examples. The first is an elaborate composition in which several modifications and corrections of lines and attitudes may be traced (Fig. 258) ; the second is an isolated figure (Fig. 259). In each case the figures extend vertically over nineteen squares. The first dates from the eighteenth, the second from the nineteenth dynasty. ^ Fig. 258. — Design transferred by squaring. From Frisse. The same device is sometimes made use of to transfer heads, and even animals, from a small sketch to the wall. In the tomb of Amenophis III., in the Bab-el-Molouk, there is a fine portrait of a prince thus squared j^ at Beni-Hassan we find a cow and an antelope treated in the same fashion.^ Traces of another and yet more simple process are to be found. Before drawing the figures in his bas-reliefs the artist sometimes marked in red on the walls the vertical and horizontal lines which would give the poise of the body, the height of the shoulders and armpits, and of the lower edge of the drawers. The positions of secondary anatomical points were marked upon ^ Prisse, Histoire de f Art Ei^vptien. - Lepsius, Denkmcckr, joart iii. pi. 70. ^ Ibid, plate 152.