body of stone or wood.[43] The head is therefore always a faithful portrait; but the body, on the contrary, is, as it were, a medium kind of body, representing the original at his highest development, and consequently able to exert the fulness of his physical powers when admitted to the society of the gods.  Hence men are always sculptured in the prime of life, and women with the delicate proportions of early womanhood.  This conventional idea was never departed from, unless in cases of very marked deformity.  The statue of a dwarf reproduced all the ugly peculiarities of the dwarf’s own body; and it was important that it should so reproduce them.  If a statue of the ordinary type had been placed in the tomb of the dead man, his “Ka,” accustomed during life to the deformity of his limbs, would not be able to adapt itself to an upright and shapely figure, and would therefore be deprived of the conditions necessary to his future well-being.  The artist was free to vary the details and arrange the accessories according to his fancy; but without missing the point of his work, he could not change the attitude, or depart from the general style of the conventional portrait statue.  This persistent monotony of pose and subject produces a depressing effect upon the spectator,—­an effect which is augmented by the obtrusive character given to the supports.  These statues are mostly backed by a kind of rectangular pediment, which is either squared off just at the base of the skull, or carried up in a point and lost in the head-dress, or rounded at the top and showing above the head of the figure.  The arms are seldom separated from the body, but are generally in one piece with the sides and hips.  The whole length of the leg which is placed in advance of the other is very often connected with the pediment by a band of stone.  It has been conjectured that this course was imposed upon the sculptor by reason of the imperfection of his tools, and the consequent danger of fracturing the statue when cutting away the superfluous material—­an explanation which may be correct as regards the earliest schools, but which does not hold good for the time of the Fourth Dynasty.  We could point to more than one piece of sculpture of that period, even in granite, in which all the limbs are free, having been cut away by means of either the chisel or the drill.  If pediment supports were persisted in to the end, their use must have been due, not to helplessness, but to routine, or to an exaggerated respect for ancient method.

[Illustration:  Fig. 185.—­The Cross-legged Scribe at the Louvre, Old Empire.]