enlarged from the top downwards in a deftly adjusted gradation.  The dead-gold of the cartouche in the upper centre is set off below by the brightly variegated and slightly undulating band of colours of the sparrow-hawk, while the urseus and vulture, associated together with one pair of wings, envelope the upper portions in a half-circle of enamels, of which the shades pass from red through green to a dull blue, with a freedom of handling and a skill in the manipulation of colour which do honour to the artist.  It was not his fault if there is still an element of stiffness in the appearance of the pectoral as a whole, for the form which religious tradition had imposed upon the jewel was so rigid that no artifice could completely get over this defect.  It is a type which arose out of the same mental concepts as had given birth to Egyptian architecture and sculpture—­monumental in character, and appearing often as if designed for colossal rather than ordinary beings.  The dimensions, too overpowering for the decoration of normal men or women, would find an appropriate place only on the breasts of gigantic statues:  the enormous size of the stone figures to which alone they are adapted would relieve them, and show them in their proper proportions.  The artists of the second Theban empire tried all they could, however, to get rid of the square framework in which the sacred bird is enclosed, and we find examples among the pectorals in the Louvre of the sparrow-hawk only with curved wings, or of the ram-headed hawk with the wings extended; but in both of them there is displayed the same brilliancy, the same purity of line, as in the square-shaped jewels, while the design, freed from the trammels of the hampering enamelled frame, takes on a more graceful form, and becomes more suitable for personal decoration.

[Illustration:  347.jpg THE RAM-HEADED SPARROW-HAWK IN THE LOUVRE]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a jewel in the Louvre.

The ram’s head in the second case excels in the beauty of its workmanship anything to be found elsewhere in the museums of Europe or Egypt.  It is of the finest gold, but its value does not depend upon the precious material:  the ancient engraver knew how to model it with a bold and free hand, and he has managed to invest it with as much dignity as if he had been carving his subject in heroic size out of a block of granite or limestone.  It is not an example of pure industrial art, but of an art for which a designation is lacking.  Other examples, although more carefully executed and of more costly materials, do not approach it in value:  such, for instance, are the earrings of Ramses XII. at Gizeh, which are made up of an ostentatious combination of disks, filigree-work, chains, beads, and hanging figures of the urseus.