Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/271

 Sculpture under the Second Theban Empire. 241 the nineteenth dynasty. The head is full of individuality and its execution excellent. In spite of their taste for these colossal figures, the Egyptian sculptors of this period rivalled their predecessors in the skill and sincerity with which they brought out their sitter's individuality. It was not, perhaps, their religious beliefs which imposed this effort upon them. The readiness which successive kings showed in appropriating the statues of their ancestors to themselves by simply placing their ovals upon them, proved that the ideas which were attached by the fathers of the Egyptian race to their graven images had lost their force. Effiories which were brought into the service of a new king by a mere change of inscription, were nothing more than monuments to his pride, destined to transmit his name and glory to future generations. The early taste, however, was not extinguished. When the sculptor was charged with the representation of one of those kincrs who had made Egypt great, or one of the queens who were often associated in the sovereign power, he took the same pains as those of the early Empire to make a faithful copy of his august model Among the monuments of faith- ful portraiture which this period has left us the statues of Thothmes III. are conspicuous. The features of this prince are to be recognized in a standing fiaure at Boulak (Fig. 214), but they are much more strongly marked in a head which was found at Karnak and is now in the British Museum (Fig. 215). It formerly belonged to a colossal statue erected by that prince in the part of the temple built by himself VOL. IL II Fig. 214.— Thothmes III. Boulak. Granite.