[Illustration:  238.jpg CELLARER COATING A JAR WITH PITCH]

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

The particular pose of the statue was dependent on the social position of the person.  The king, the nobleman, and the master are always standing or sitting:  it was in these postures they received the homage of their vassals or relatives.  The wife shares her husband’s seat, stands upright beside him, or crouches at his feet as in daily life.  The son, if his statue was ordered while he was a child, wears the dress of childhood; if he had arrived to manhood, he is represented in the dress and with the attitude suited to his calling.  Slaves grind the grain, cellarers coat their amphorae with pitch, bakers knead their dough, mourners make lamentation and tear their hair.  The exigencies of rank clung to the Egyptians in temple and tomb, wherever their statues were placed, and left the sculptor who represented them scarcely any liberty.  He might be allowed to vary the details and arrange the accessories to his taste; he might alter nothing in the attitude or the general likeness without compromising the end and aim of his work.  The statues of the Memphite period may be counted at the present day by hundreds.

[Illustration:  239.jpg BAKER KNEADING HIS DOUGH]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Bechard.  The original
     is now in the Gizeh Museum.

Some are in the heavy and barbaric style which has caused them to be mistaken for primaeval monuments:  as, for instance, the statues of Sapi and his wife, now in the Louvre, which are attributed to the beginning of the IIIrd dynasty or even earlier.  Groups exactly resembling these in appearance are often found in the tombs of the Vth and VIth dynasties, which according to this reckoning would be still older than that of Sapi:  they were productions of an inferior studio, and their supposed archaism is merely the want of skill of an ignorant sculptor.  The majority of the remaining statues are not characterized either by glaring faults or by striking merits:  they constitute an array of honest good-natured folk, without much individuality of character and no originality.  They may be easily divided into five or six groups, each having a style in common, and all apparently having been executed on the lines of a few chosen models; the sculptors who worked for the mastaba contractors were distributed among a very few studios, in which a traditional routine was observed for centuries.  They did not always wait for orders, but, like our modern tombstone-makers, kept by them a tolerable assortment of half-finished statues, from which the purchaser could choose according to his taste.  The hands, feet, and bust lacked only the colouring and final polish, but the head was merely rough-hewn, and there were no indications of dress; when the future occupant of the tomb or his family had made their