Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/231

 Sculpture under the Ancient Empire. 20' importance, and the hieroglyphs cut in the same figure, are instances of this. That so few bronze statuettes have come down to us seems to show that the use of the metai by sculptors was quite exceptional. They used wood far more than bronze, and stone more than wood. Most of the sepulchral statues are cut in soft limestone (see Figs. 6, 49, 88, 89, 'ol. I., and Fig. 172, Vol. II.). Sometimes these statues are isolated, sometimes they form family groups, often consisting of father, mother, and children. Statues of men are the most numerous. Difterences between one and another are many and frequent, but they are. on the whole, less striking than the points of resemblance. Here we find a head bare, there enveloped in either a square or rounded wig. The bodies are never completely nude, and the garment which covers their middles is arranged in a variety of ways. Fashions, both for men and women, seem to have changed in Egypt as elsewhere. In the statues ascribed to the last dynasties of the Ancient Empire the national type seems more fixed and accentuated than in earlier works. These funerary statues are the portraits of vigorous and powerful men. with broad shoulders, well- developed pectoral muscles, thin flanks and muscular legs. Ra- nefer, priest of Ptah and Sokar, stands upright, his arms by his sides, and each hand grasping a roll of papyrus (Fig 181).^ A dagger is passed through the belt of his drawers. The person represented in Fig. 1S2 is distinguished from Ra-nefer by the fashion in which he wears his hair and by his costume. His loose skirt is arranged in front so as to form a kind of triangular apron. This peculiar fall of the garment was obtained by the use of starch and an instrument similar to our flat-iron. It is better seen in the statue of Ti, the great personage to whose gorgeous tomb we have so often referred.- The Albanians obtain the curious folds of their kilts in the same fashion.^ Ti wears a periwig of a difterent kind from that of ' A sketch of this statue also appears on page 10, Vol. I. Fig. 6 ; but as, accord- ing to Mariette, it is one of the best statues in the Boulak Museum, s-e have thought well to give it a second illustration, which, in spite of its smaller scale, shows the modelling better than the first. - y of ice d(s principaux ^fonume7lts du Musie de Boulak, No. 24. ' Wooden instruments have been found which were used for the pleating of linen stuffs. One of these, which is now in the museum of Florence, is figured in Wilkinson {Manfiers and Customs, vol. i. p. 1S5). The heavy and symmetrical