One feels that the artists must have recognised them as belonging to one common family.  They associated with their efforts after true and exact representation a certain caustic humour, which impelled them often to substitute for a portrait a more or less jocose caricature of their adversaries.  On the walls of the Pylons, and in places where the majesty of a god restrained them from departing too openly from their official gravity, they contented themselves with exaggerating from panel to panel the contortions and pitiable expressions of the captive chiefs as they followed behind the triumphal chariot of the Pharaoh on his return from his Syrian campaigns.*

* An illustration of this will be found in the line of prisoners, brought by Seti I. from his great Asiatic campaign, which is depicted on the outer face of the north wall of the hypostyle at Karnak.

Where religious scruples offered no obstacle they abandoned themselves to the inspiration of the moment, and gave themselves freely up to caricature.  It is an Amorite or Canaanite—­that thick-lipped, flat-nosed slave, with his brutal lower jaw and smooth conical skull—­who serves for the handle of a spoon in the museum of the Louvre.  The stupefied air with which he trudges under his burden is rendered in the most natural manner, and the flattening to which his forehead had been subjected in infancy is unfeelingly accentuated.  The model which served for this object must have been intentionally brutalised and disfigured in order to excite the laughter of Pharaoh’s subjects.*

* Dr. Regnault thinks that the head was artificially deformed in infancy:  the bandage necessary to effect it must have been applied very low on the forehead in front, and to the whole occiput behind.  If this is the case, the instance is not an isolated one, for a deformation of a similar character is found in the case of the numerous Semites represented on the tomb of Rakhmiri:  a similar practice still obtains in certain parts of modern Syria.

[Illustration:  220.jpg SYRIANS DRESSED IN THE LOIN-CLOTH AND DOUBLE SHAWL]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

The idea of uniformity with which we are impressed when examining the faces of these people is confirmed and extended when we come to study their costumes.  Men and women—­we may say all Syrians according to their condition of life—­had a choice between only two or three modes of dress, which, whatever the locality, or whatever the period, seemed never to change.  On closer examination slight shades of difference in cut and arrangement may, however, be detected, and it may be affirmed that fashion ran even in ancient Syria through as many capricious evolutions as with ourselves; but these variations, which were evident to the eyes of the people of the time, are not sufficiently striking to enable us to classify the people, or to fix their date.  The peasants