Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/347

 The Principal Conventions in Egyptian Sculpture. 317 to be given by artists to their figures. Such an assertion can hardly be brought into harmony with the facts observed. The often quoted words of Diodorus have been taken as a text : " The Egyptians claim as their disciples the oldest of the Greek sculptors, especially Telecles and Theodoros, both sons of Rhsecos, who executed the statue of the Pythian Apollo for the inhabitants of Samos. Half of this statue, it is said, was executed at Samos by Telecles, the other half at Ephesus by Theodoros, and the two parts so exactly fitted each other that the whole statue appeared to be the work of a single sculptor. After having arranged and blocked out their stone, the Egyptians executed the work in such fashion that all the parts adapted themselves one to another in the smallest details. To this end they divided the human figure into twenty-one parts and a quarter, upon which the whole symmetry of the work was regulated." ^ We may ask what authority should attach to the words of Diodorus, a contemporary of Augustus, in a matter referring to the Pharaonic period. But when the monuments began to be examined it was proclaimed that they confirmed his statements. Figures were found upon the tomb-walls which were divided into equal parts by lines cutting each other at right angles. These, of course, were the canonical standards mentioned by Plato and Diodorus. Great was the disappointment when these squares were counted. In one picture containing three individuals, two seated figures, one beside the other, are inscribed in fifteen of the squares ; a standing figure in front of them occupies sixteen. ^ Another figure is comprised in nineteen squares.-^ In another place we find twenty- two squares and a quarter between the sole of the foot and the crown of the head.^ In yet another, twenty-three. ^ As for the division given by Diodorus, it never occurs at all, and in fact it is hardly to be reconciled with the natural punctuation of the human body by its articulation and points of section. ^ Diodorus, i. 98, 5-7. - Lepsius, Denkmceler, part iii. plate 12. 3 Ibid, plate 78. It is in this division into nineteen parts that M. Blanc finds his proof that the medius of the extended hand was the canonical unit {Gram?tiaire, &c. p. 46.) Haute-Egypte, p. 232. Two figures upon the ceiling of a tomb at Assouan are similarly divided. ' Lepsius, Denkmaler, part iii. p. 282.
 * At Karnak, in the granite apartments. See Charles Blanc, Voyage de la