Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/330

 300 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. There are many facts which support this hypothesis. Among the countless images of Rameses II. for instance there are some which according to their inscriptions must have been executed when he was at least eighty years old ; and yet they show him as a young man. Almost the same thing takes place in our own times. In monarchical states the sovereign appears upon the coinage as he was at his accession. His features and the delicacy of his skin are unaffected by the years, for the die made in his youth has to serve for his old age. We may almost say the same of the statues and busts in which the royal features are repeated in the public buildings and public places of the capital. A single portrait which has once been moderately faithful is repeated to infinity. We find it everywhere, upon paper, and canvas, and plaster, and marble, multiplied by every process that science has given to art. It keeps its official and accepted authenticity long after age, care, and disease, have made its original un- recocrnizahle.^ There is one convention peculiar to Egyptian art which is not to be accounted for so easily as the last named. So far as we know, no reason has ever yet been given for the almost invariable habit of making such figures as are supposed to be walking thrust their left legs forward. Almost the only exceptions are in the cases of those figures in the bas-reliefs which are turned to the spectator's left. The right leg is then thrust for- ward (Figs. 1 8, 24, &c.. Vol. I.). Among works in the round there is hardly an exception to the ordinary rule. Are we to look upon it as the effects of caprice ? of accident confirmed into a habit ? Or was it a result of a superstition analogous, or, rather, contrary to that of the Romans ? The latter always took care to cross a threshold with the right foot foremost ; in Egypt they may have attached the same ideas to the left foot. Egyptolo- gists should be able to tell us whether there is anything in the texts to suggest the existence of such a superstition. Apart from its ethnic characteristics, the work of the Egyptian sculptor is endowed with a peculiar physiognomy by a certain stiffness and rigidity which it hardly ever succeeds In shaking ^ M. liMU-E Soi-Di (La Sculpture Egyptieune) tells us that during the reign of Napoleon III. such representations of the Emperor as were not taken from the portrait by Winterhalter were forbidden to be recognized officially.