correctly rendered, that the form of the back is quite right, and that the prominence of the chest—­thrown forward in proportion as the shoulders and arms are thrown back—­is drawn without any exaggeration.  The wrestlers of the Beni Hasan tombs, the dancers and servants of the Theban catacombs, attack, struggle, posture, and go about their work with perfect naturalness and ease (fig. 166).  These, however, are exceptions.  Tradition, as a rule, was stronger than nature, and to the end of the chapter, the Egyptian masters continued to deform the human figure.  Their men and women are actual monsters from the point of view of the anatomist; and yet, after all, they are neither so ugly nor so ridiculous as might be supposed by those who have seen only the wretched copies so often made by our modern artists.  The wrong parts are joined to the right parts with so much skill that they seem to have grown there.  The natural lines and the fictitious lines follow and complement each other so ingeniously, that the former appear to give rise of necessity to the latter.  The conventionalities of Egyptian art once accepted, we cannot sufficiently admire the technical skill displayed by the draughtsman.  His line was pure, firm, boldly begun, and as boldly prolonged.  Ten or twelve strokes of the brush sufficed to outline a figure the size of life.  The whole head, from the nape of the neck to the rise of the throat above the collar-bone, was executed at one sweep.  Two long undulating lines gave the external contour of the body from the armpits to the ends of the feet.  Two more determined the outlines of the legs, and two the arms.  The details of costume and ornaments, at first but summarily indicated, were afterwards taken up one by one, and minutely finished.  We may almost count the locks of the hair, the plaits of the linen, the inlayings of the girdles and bracelets.  This mixture of artless science and intentional awkwardness, of rapid execution and patient finish, excludes neither elegance of form, nor grace of attitude, nor truth of movement.  These personages are of strange aspect, but they live; and to those who will take the trouble to look at them without prejudice, their very strangeness has a charm about it which is often lacking to works more recent in date and more strictly true to nature.

[Illustration:  Fig. 167.—­Funerary repast, tomb of Horemheb, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 168.—­From a wall-painting, Thebes, Ramesside period.]

We admit, then, that the Egyptians could draw.  Were they, as it has been ofttimes asserted, ignorant of the art of composition?  We will take a scene at hazard from a Theban tomb—­that scene which represents the funerary repast offered to Prince Horemheb by the members of his family (fig. 167).  The subject is half ideal, half real.  The dead man, and those belonging to him who are no longer of this world, are depicted in the society of the living.  They are present, yet aloof.  They