Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/420

 584 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. or inscriptions are engraved. Some have this merely upon a flattened or thickened part of the ring, which, again, is some- times double (Fig. 318). Ear-rings of many different forms have been found ; they are ornamented with little figures in relief (Figs. 319 and 320). Some writers have spoken of the cloisonne enamels of Egypt. This expression is inaccurate, as Mariette has observed.^ There are certainly cloisons in many of the jewels above described — such as the pectoral and the two hawks — cloisons made up of thin ribs of silver or gold, but these compartments are not combined by firing with the material used to fill them. Where the Chinese place enamel the Egyptians inserted fragments of coloured glass or of such stones as the amethyst, cornelion, lapis-lazuli, turquoise, jasper, &c. The work was not passed through an oven after the insertion of these colouring substances ; it was therefore rather a mosaic than an enamel in the proper sense of the term. By an analagous process bronze was damascened with gold and silver, threads of these two metals being inserted in prepared grooves and hammered Into place. Mariette has called attention to several bronzes at Boulak thus Inlaid with gold,^ and In the Louvre there is a graceful little sphinx marked with the cartouche of Smendes, which is damascened with silver. The Egyptians were also workers in ivory, which was obtained in large quantities from Ethiopia. Sometimes they were content with carving It (Fig. 322), sometimes they engraved upon it with the point and then filled in the design with black, giving it a forcible relief (Fig. 323). The ivory plaque from Sakkarah reproduced in Fig. 321, deserves to be studied for its technical method, although it dates from the Greek period. The blacks shown in our woodcut are produced in the original by filling up with mastic the hollows made with the point. Famous sculptors were especially fond of working In Ivory. Irltesen speaks as follows upon a stele translated by M. Mas- pero : — " Ah I there is no one who excels at this work except myself and the eldest of my legitimate sons. God decided that he should excel, and I have seen the perfection of his handiwork 1 Mariette, Notice du Musee de Boulak, No. 388. Galerie dc VEgypte Ancienne an Trocadero, pp. 114, 115. - Marie'itk, Notice du Muscc, Xos. 107, 108, 131.