Amenemhait I. founded a great temple at Tanis in honour of the gods of Memphis:  the vestiges of the columns still scattered on all sides show that the main body of the building was of rose granite, and a statue of the same material has preserved for us a portrait of the king.  He is seated, and wears the tall head-dress of Osiris.  He has a large smiling face, thick lips, a short nose, and big staring eyes:  the expression is one of benevolence and gentleness, rather than of the energy and firmness which one would expect in the founder of a dynasty.  The kings who were his successors all considered it a privilege to embellish the temple and to place in it some memorial of their veneration for the god.  Usirtasen I., following the example of his father, set up a statue of himself in the form of Osiris:  he is sitting on his throne of grey granite, and his placid face unmistakably recalls that of Amenemhait I. Amenemhait II., Usirtasen II., and his wife Nofrit have also dedicated their images within the sanctuary.

Nofrit’s is of black granite:  her head is almost eclipsed by the heavy Hathor wig, consisting of two enormous tresses of hair which surround the cheeks, and lie with an outward curve upon the breast; her eyes, which were formerly inlaid, have fallen out, the bronze eyelids are lost, her arms have almost disappeared.  What remains of her, however, gives us none the less the impression of a young and graceful woman, with a lithe and well-proportioned body, whose outlines are delicately modelled under the tight-fitting smock worn by Egyptian women; the small and rounded breasts curve outward between the extremities of her curls and the embroidered hem of her garment; and a pectoral bearing the name of her husband lies flat upon her chest, just below the column of her throat.

[Illustration:  372.jpg THE STATUE OF NOFRIT]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.  In addition to the complete statue, the Museum at Gizeh possesses a torso from the same source.  I believe I can recognize another portrait of the same queen in a beautiful statue in black granite, which has been in the Museum at Marseilles since the beginning of the present century.

These various statues have all an evident artistic relationship to the beautiful granite figures of the Ancient Empire.  The sculptors who executed them belonged to the same school as those who carved Khephren out of the solid diorite:  there is the same facile use of the chisel, the same indifference to the difficulties presented by the material chosen, the same finish in the detail, the same knowledge of the human form.  One is almost tempted to believe that Egyptian art remained unchanged all through those long centuries, and yet as soon as a statue of the early period is placed side by side with one of the XIIth dynasty, we immediately perceive something in the one which is lacking in the other.  It is a difference in feeling, even if the technique remains unmodified.