[Illustration:  041a.jpg YOUNG GIRL IN THE TURING MUSEUM]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Petrie.

[Illustration:  041b.jpg THE LADY NEHAI]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. de Mertens. 
     Enamelled eyes, according to a common custom, were inserted
     in the sockets, but have disappeared.

The funerary sculptors had acquired a perfect mastery of the kind of art needed for people of small means, and we find among the medley of commonplace objects which encumber the tomb they decorated, examples of artistic works of undoubted excellence, such as the ladies Nai and Tui now in the Louvre, the lady Nehai now at Berlin, and the naked child at Turin.  The lady Tui in her lifetime had been one of the singing-women of Amon.  She is clad in a tight-fitting robe, which accentuates the contour of the breasts and hips without coarseness:  her right arm falls gracefully alongside her body, while her left, bent across her chest, thrusts into her bosom a kind of magic whip, which was the sign of her profession.  The artist was not able to avoid a certain heaviness in the treatment of her hair, and the careful execution of the whole work was not without a degree of harshness, but by dint of scraping and polishing the wood he succeeded in softening the outline, and removing from the figure every sharp point.  The lady Nehai is smarter and more graceful, in her close-fitting garment and her mantle thrown over the left elbow; and the artist has given her a more alert pose and resolute air than we find in the stiff carriage of her contemporary Tui.  The little girl in the Turin Museum is a looser work, but where could one find a better example of the lithe delicacy of the young Egyptian maiden of eight or ten years old?  We may see her counterpart to-day among the young Nubian girls of the cataract, before they are obliged to wear clothes; there is the same thin chest, the same undeveloped hips, the same meagre thighs, and the same demeanour, at once innocent and audacious.  Other statuettes represent matrons, some in tight garments, and with their hair closely confined, others without any garment whatever.

[Illustration:  043a.jpg a soldier]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. de Mertens.

[Illustration:  043b.jpg STATUE IN THE TURIN MUSEUM]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Petrie.

The Turin example is that of a lady who seems proud of her large ear-rings, and brings one of them into prominence, either to show it off or to satisfy herself that the jewel becomes her:  her head is square-shaped, the shoulders narrow, the chest puny, the pose of the arm stiff and awkward, but the eyes have such a joyful openness, and her smile such a self-satisfied expression, that one readily over looks the other defects of the statue.  In this collection of miniature figures examples of men are not wanting, and there are instances