Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/163

 Egyptians had leisure neither to invent nor to improve. They copied, as well as they could, the monuments of the twenty-sixth dynasty. Art became a mere collection of technical precepts, kept together and transmitted in the intercourse of the studio, by instruction and practice; it became a mere matter of routine

Fig. 51. — Ouah-ab-ra, 26th dynasty. Louvre. Grey granite, height 37 inches.

implying, perhaps, great technical skill, but displaying no sincere and personal feeling Nature was no longer studied or cared for. Artists knew that the human figure should be divided into so many parts. They knew that in the representation of this or that god a certain attitude or attribute was necessary; and they carved the