art has left us nothing which, in purity of Hue and delicacy of modelling, surpasses the panels of the tomb of Hosi, with their seated or standing male figures and their vigorously cut hieroglyphs in the same relief as the picture.  Egypt possesses, however, but few trees of suitable fibre for sculptural purposes, and even those which were fitted for this use were too small and stunted to furnish blocks of any considerable size.  The sculptor, therefore, turned by preference to the soft white limestone of Turah.

[Illustration:  236.jpg ONE OF THE WOODEN PANELS OF HOSI, IN THE GIZEH MUSEUM]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.  The
     original is now in the Gizeh Museum.

He quickly detached the general form of his statue from the mass of stone, fixed the limits of its contour by means of dimension guides applied horizontally from top to bottom, and then cut away the angles projecting beyond the guides, and softened off the outline till he made his modelling correct.  This simple and regular method of procedure was not suited to hard stone:  the latter had to be first chiselled, but when by dint of patience the rough hewing had reached the desired stage, the work of completion was not entrusted to metal tools.  Stone hatchets were used for smoothing off the superficial roughnesses, and it was assiduously polished to efface the various tool-marks left upon its surface.  The statues did not present that variety of gesture, expression, and attitude which we aim at to-day.  They were, above all things, the accessories of a temple or tomb, and their appearance reflects the particular ideas entertained with regard to their nature.  The artists did not seek to embody in them the ideal type of male or female beauty:  they were representatives made to perpetuate the existence of the model.

[Illustration:  237.jpg A SCULPTOR’s STUDIO, AND EGYPTIAN PAINTERS AT WORK]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph by Prisse d’Avennes, Histoire de l’Art Egyptien.  The original is in the tomb of Rakhmiri, who lived at Thebes under the XVIIIth dynasty.  The methods which were used did not differ from those employed by the sculptors and painters of the Memphite period more than two thousand years previously.

The Egyptians wished the double to be able to adapt itself easily to its image, and in order to compass that end, it was imperative that the stone presentment should be at least an approximate likeness, and should reproduce the proportions and peculiarities of the living prototype for whom it was meant.  The head had to be the faithful portrait of the individual:  it was enough for the body to be, so to speak, an average one, showing him at his fullest development and in the complete enjoyment of his physical powers.  The men were always represented in their maturity, the women never lost the rounded breast and slight hips of their girlhood, but a dwarf always preserved his congenital ugliness, for his salvation in the other world demanded that it should be so.  Had he been given normal stature, the double, accustomed to the deformity of his members in this world, would have been unable to accommodate himself to an upright carriage, and would not have been in a fit condition to resume his course of life.