Amenhotep III. was not content with statues of twenty-five or thirty feet in height, such as were in favour among his ancestors.  Those which he erected in advance of his memorial chapel on the left bank of the Nile in Western Thebes, one of which is the Vocal Memnon of the classic writers, sit fifty feet high.  Each was carved from a single block of sandstone, and they are as elaborately finished as though they were of ordinary size.  The avenues of sphinxes which this Pharaoh marshalled before the temples of Luxor and Karnak do not come to an end at fifty or a hundred yards from the gateway, but are prolonged for great distances.  In one avenue, they have the human head upon the lion’s body; in another, they are fashioned in the semblance of kneeling rams.  Khuenaten, the revolutionary successor of Amenhotep III., far from discouraging this movement, did what he could to promote it.  Never, perhaps, were Egyptian sculptors more unrestricted than by him at Tell el Amarna.  Military reviews, chariot-driving, popular festivals, state receptions, the distribution of honours and rewards by the king in person, representations of palaces, villas, and gardens, were among the subjects which they were permitted to treat; and these subjects differed in so many respects from traditional routine that they could give free play to their fancy and to their natural genius.  The spirit and gusto with which they took advantage of their opportunities would scarcely be believed by one who had not seen their works at Tell el Amarna.  Some of their bas-reliefs are designed in almost correct perspective; and in all, the life and stir of large crowds are rendered with irreproachable truth.  The political and religious reaction which followed this reign arrested the evolution of art, and condemned sculptors and painters to return to the observance of traditional rules.  Their personal influence and their teaching continued, however, to make themselves felt under Horemheb, under Seti I., and even under Rameses II.  If, during more than a century, Egyptian art remained free, graceful, and refined, that improvement was due to the school of Tell el Amarna.  In no instance perhaps did it produce work more perfect than the bas-reliefs of the temple of Abydos, or those of the tomb of Seti I. The head of the conqueror (fig. 197), always studied con amore, is a marvel of reserved and sensitive grace.  Rameses II. charging the enemy at Abu Simbel is as fine as the portraits of Seti I., though in another style.  The action of the arm which brandishes the lance is somewhat angular, but the expression of strength and triumph which animates the whole person of the warrior king, and the despairing resignation of the vanquished, compensate for this one defect.  The group of Horemheb and the god Amen (fig. 198), in the Museum of Turin, is a little dry in treatment.  The faces of both god and king lack expression, and their bodies are heavy and ill-balanced.  The fine colossi in red granite which Horemheb placed