against the uprights of the inner door of his first pylon at Karnak, the bas-reliefs on the walls of his speos at Silsilis, his own portrait and that of one of the ladies of his family now in the museum of Gizeh, are, so to say, spotless and faultless.  The queen’s face (fig. 199) is animated and intelligent; the eyes are large and prominent; the mouth is wide, but well shaped.  This head is carved in hard limestone of a creamy tint which seems to soften the somewhat satirical expression of her eyes and smile.  The king (fig. 200) is in black granite; and the sombre hue of the stone at once produces a mournful impression upon the spectator.  His youthful face is pervaded by an air of melancholy, such as we rarely see depicted in portraits of Pharaohs of the great period.  The nose is straight and delicate, the eyes are long, the lips are large, full, somewhat contracted at the corners, and strongly defined at the edges.  The chin is overweighted by the traditional false beard.  Every detail is treated with as much skill as if the sculptor were dealing with a soft stone instead of with a material which resisted the chisel.  Such, indeed, is the mastery of the execution, that one forgets the difficulties of the task in the excellence of the results.

[Illustration:  Fig. 200.—­Head of Horemheb.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 201.—­Colossal statue of Rameses II., Luxor.]

It is unfortunate that Egyptian artists never signed their works; for the sculptor of this portrait of Horemheb deserves to be remembered.  Like the Eighteenth Dynasty, the Nineteenth Dynasty delighted in colossi.  Those of Rameses II. at Luxor measured from eighteen to twenty feet in height (fig. 201); the colossal Rameses of the Ramesseum sat sixty feet high; and that of Tanis about seventy.[49] The colossi of Abu Simbel, without being of quite such formidable proportions, face the river in imposing array.  To say that the decline of Egyptian art began with Rameses II. is a commonplace of contemporary criticism; yet nothing is less true than an axiom of this kind.  Many statues and bas-reliefs executed during his reign are no doubt inconceivably rude and ugly; but these are chiefly found in provincial towns where the schools were indifferent, and where the artists had no fine examples before them.  At Thebes, at Memphis, at Abydos, at Tanis, in those towns of the Delta where the court habitually resided, and even at Abu Simbel and Beit el Wally, the sculptors of Rameses II. yield nothing in point of excellence to those of Seti I. and Horemheb.  The decadence did not begin till after the reign of Merenptah.  When civil war and foreign invasion brought Egypt to the brink of destruction, the arts, like all else, suffered and rapidly declined.  It is sad to follow their downward progress under the later Ramessides, whether in the wall-subjects of the royal tombs, or in the bas-reliefs of the temple of Khonsu, or on the columns of the hypostyle hall at Karnak.  Wood carving maintained its level during a somewhat longer period.  The admirable statuettes of priests and children at Turin date from the Twentieth Dynasty.  The advent of Sheshonk and the internecine strife of the provinces at length completed the ruin of Thebes, and the school which had produced so many masterpieces perished miserably.