assist at the banquet, but they do not actually take part in it.  Horemheb sits on a folding stool to the left of the spectator.  He dandles on his knee a little princess, daughter of Amenhotep III., whose foster-father he was, and who died before him.  His mother, Suit, sits at his right hand a little way behind, enthroned in a large chair.  She holds his arm with her left hand, and with the right she offers him a lotus blossom and bud.  A tiny gazelle which was probably buried with her, like the pet gazelle discovered beside Queen Isiemkheb in the hiding-place at Deir el Bahari, is tied to one of the legs of the chair.  This ghostly group is of heroic size, the rule being that gods are bigger than men, kings bigger than their subjects, and the dead bigger than the living.  Horemheb, his mother, and the women standing before them, occupy the front level, or foreground.  The relations and friends are ranged in line facing their deceased ancestors, and appear to be talking one with another.  The feast has begun.  The jars of wine and beer, placed in rows upon wooden stands, are already unsealed.  Two young slaves rub the hands and necks of the living guests with perfumes taken from an alabaster vase.  Two women dressed in robes of ceremony present offerings to the group of dead, consisting of vases filled with flowers, perfumes, and grain.  These they place in turn upon a square table.  Three others dance, sing, and play upon the lute, by way of accompaniment to those acts of homage.  In the picture, as in fact, the tomb is the place of entertainment.  There is no other background to the scene than the wall covered with hieroglyphs, along which the guests were seated during the ceremony.  Elsewhere, the scene of action, if in the open country, is distinctly indicated by trees and tufts of grass; by red sand, if in the desert; and by a maze of reeds and lotus plants, if in the marshes.  A lady of quality comes in from a walk (fig. 168).  One of her daughters, being athirst, takes a long draught from a “gullah”; two little naked children with shaven heads, a boy and a girl, who ran to meet their mother at the gate, are made happy with toys brought home and handed to them by a servant.  A trellised enclosure covered with vines, and trees laden with fruit, are shown above; yonder, therefore, is the garden, but the lady and her daughters have passed through it without stopping, and are now indoors.  The front of the house is half put in and half left out, so that we may observe what is going on inside.  We accordingly see three attendants hastening to serve their mistresses with refreshments.  The picture is not badly composed, and it would need but little alteration if transferred to a modern canvas.  The same old awkwardness, or rather the same old obstinate custom, which compelled the Egyptian artist to put a profile head upon a full-face bust, has, however, prevented him from placing his middle distance and background behind his foreground.  He has, therefore, been reduced to adopt certain more or less ingenious contrivances, in order to make up for an almost complete absence of perspective.