of the human body are reduced and elongated, and the limbs lose in vigour what they gain in elegance.  A noteworthy change in the choice of attitudes will also be remarked.  Orientals find repose in postures which would be inexpressibly fatiguing to ourselves.  For hours together they will kneel; or sit tailor-wise, with the legs crossed and laid down flat to the ground; or squat, sitting upon their heels, with no other support than is afforded by that part of the sole of the foot which rests upon the ground; or they will sit upon the floor with their legs close together, and their arms crossed upon their knees.  These four attitudes were customary among the people from the time of the ancient empire.

[Illustration:  Fig. 204.—­Hathor-cow in green basalt.  Saite work.]

This we know from the bas-reliefs.  But the Memphite sculptors, deeming the two last ungraceful, excluded them from the domain of art, and rarely, if ever, reproduced them.  The “Cross-legged Scribe” of the Louvre and the “Kneeling Scribe” of Gizeh show with what success they could employ the two first.  The third was neglected (doubtless for the same reason) by the Theban sculptors.  The fourth began to be currently adopted about the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

[Illustration:  Fig. 205.—­Squatting statue of Pedishashi.  Saite work.]

It may be that this position was not in fashion among the moneyed classes, which alone could afford to order statues; or it may be that the artists themselves objected to an attitude which caused their sitters to look like square parcels with a human head on the top.  The sculptors of the Saite period did not inherit that repugnance.  They have at all events combined the action of the limbs in such wise as may least offend the eye, and the position almost ceases to be ungraceful.  The heads also are modelled to such perfection that they make up for many shortcomings.  That of Pedishashi (fig. 205) has an expression of youth and intelligent gentleness such as we seldom meet with from an Egyptian hand.  Other heads, on the contrary, are remarkable for their almost brutal frankness of treatment.  In the small head of a scribe (fig. 206), lately purchased for the Louvre, and in another belonging to Prince Ibrahim at Cairo, the wrinkled brow, the crow’s-feet at the corners of the eyes, the hard lines about the mouth, and the knobs upon the skull, are brought out with scrupulous fidelity.  The Saite school was, in fact, divided into two parties.  One sought inspiration in the past, and, by a return to the methods of the old Memphite school, endeavoured to put fresh life into the effeminate style of the day.  This it accomplished, and so successfully, that its works are sometimes mistaken for the best productions of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties.  The other, without too openly departing from established tradition, preferred to study from the life, and thus drew nearer to nature than in any previous age.  This school would, perhaps, have prevailed, had Egyptian art not been directed into a new channel by the Macedonian conquest, and by centuries of intercourse with the Greeks.