It was the man himself that the sculptors desired to represent in the older Pharaohs, and however haughty may be the countenance which we admire in the Khephren, it is the human element which predominates in him.  The statues of Amenemhait I. and his successors appear, on the contrary, to represent a superior race:  at the time when these were produced, the Pharaoh had long been regarded as a god, and the divine nature in him had almost eliminated the human.  Whether intentionally or otherwise, the sculptors idealized their model, and made him more and more resemble the type of the divinities.  The head always appears to be a good likeness, but smoothed down and sometimes lacking in expression.

Not only are the marks of age rendered less apparent, and the features made to bear the stamp of perpetual youth, but the characteristics of the individual, such as the accentuation of the eyebrows, the protuberance of the cheek-bones, the projection of the under lip, are all softened down as if intentionally, and made to give way to a uniform expression of majestic tranquillity.  One king only, Amenemhait III., refused to go down to posterity thus effaced, and caused his portrait to be taken as he really was.  He has certainly the round full face of Amenemhait or of Usirtasen I., and there is an undeniable family likeness between him and his ancestors; but at the first glance we feel sure that the artist has not in any way flattered his model.  The forehead is low and slightly retreating, narrow across the temples; his nose is aquiline, pronounced in form, and large at the tip; the thick lips are slightly closed; his mouth has a disdainful curve, and its corners are turned down as if to repress the inevitable smile common to most Egyptian statues; the chin is full and heavy, and turns up in front in spite of the weight of the false beard dependent from it; he has small narrow eyes, with full lids; his cheekbones are accentuated and projecting, the cheeks hollow, and the muscles about the nose and mouth strongly defined.  The whole presents so strange an aspect, that for a long time statues of this type have been persistently looked upon as productions of an art which was only partially Egyptian.  It is, indeed, possible that the Tanis sphinxes were turned out of workshops where the principles and practice of the sculptor’s art had previously undergone some Asiatic influence; the bushy mane which surrounds the face, and the lion’s ears emerging from it, are exclusively characteristic of the latter.  The purely human statues in which we meet with the same type of countenance have no peculiarity of workmanship which could be attributed to the imitation of a foreign art.  If the nameless masters to whom we owe their existence desired to bring about a reaction against the conventional technique of their contemporaries, they at least introduced no foreign innovations; the monuments of the Memphite period furnished them with all the models they could possibly wish for.