[Illustration:  Fig. 160.—­Pestle and mortar for grinding colours.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 161.—­Comic sketch on ostrakon in New York Museum.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 162.—­Vignette from The Book of the Dead, Saite period]

[Illustration:  Fig. 163.—­Vignette from The Book of the Dead, from the papyrus of Hunefer.]

The few designs which have come down to us are drawn on pieces of limestone, and are for the most part in sufficiently bad preservation.  The British Museum possesses two or three subjects in red outline, which may perhaps have been used as copies by the decorators of some Theban tomb about the time of the Twentieth Dynasty.  A fragment in the Museum of Gizeh contains studies of ducks or geese in black ink; and at Turin may be seen a sketch of a half-nude female figure bending backwards, as about to turn a somersault.  The lines are flowing, the movement is graceful, the modelling delicate.  The draughtsman was not hampered then as now, by the rigidity of the instrument between his fingers.  The reed brush attacked the surface perpendicularly; broadened, diminished, or prolonged the line at will; and stopped or turned with the utmost readiness.  So supple a medium was admirably adapted to the rapid rendering of the humorous or ludicrous episodes of daily life.  The Egyptians, naturally laughter-loving and satirical, were caricaturists from an early period.  One of the Turin papyri chronicles the courtship of a shaven priest and a songstress of Amen in a series of spirited vignettes; while on the back of the same sheet are sketched various serio-comic scenes, in which animals parody the pursuits of civilised man.  An ass, a lion, a crocodile, and an ape are represented in the act of giving a vocal and instrumental concert; a lion and a gazelle play at draughts; the Pharaoh of all the rats, in a chariot drawn by dogs, gallops to the assault of a fortress garrisoned by cats; a cat of fashion, with a flower on her head, has come to blows with a goose, and the hapless fowl, powerless in so unequal a contest, topples over with terror.  Cats, by the way, were the favourite animals of Egyptian caricaturists.  An ostrakon in the New York Museum depicts a cat of rank en grande toilette, seated in an easy chair, and a miserable Tom, with piteous mien and tail between his legs, serving her with refreshments (fig. 161).  Our catalogue of comic sketches is brief; but the abundance of pen-drawings with which certain religious works were illustrated compensates for our poverty in secular subjects.  These works are The Book of the Dead and The Book of Knowing That which is in Hades, which were reproduced by hundreds, according to standard copies preserved in the temples, or handed down through families whose hereditary profession it was to conduct the services for the dead.  When making these illustrations, the artist had no occasion to draw upon his imagination.  He had but to imitate the copy as skilfully as he could.