Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/202

 172 Egyptian Sculpture. The earliest works of Egyptian sculpture (Fig. 70) are remarkable for a freedom from restraint and a power of idealizing nature which is wanting in later productions; for they were executed before the hierarchy gained the upper hand in Egypt, and arrested all progress in art by condemning it to unchangeable laws, and by imposing models which artists were condemned to reproduce in monotonous repetition. The result of this was a same- ness in the works produced which would have rendered it extremely difficult to fix their dates, if it were not that the name of the reigning sovereign is constantly introduced. A striking proof of the superiority of early Egyptian sculpture was afforded in the Paris Exhibition of 1867. A wooden statue was there exhibited — lent by the late M. Mariette and now in the Museum at Boulac, near Cairo — of a certain Ra-em-Ke. Although much injured, this statue is even now a fine work of art : the body is well modelled, and the head lifelike and natural ; the lips are parted by a slight smile, and expression is given to the eyes by the insertion of rounded bits of rock-crystal to represent pupils, in eye-balls of quartz shaded by bronze lids. A bright nail beneath each crystal marks the visual point. The bas-reliefs of the tombs of Memphis, some of which are in the Berlin Museum, are among the earliest of Egyptian works of sculpture (Fig. 71). The figures are but slightly raised from the surface ; they still retain the vivid colours with which they were painted. The ignorance of the laws of perspective, which were unknown till the fifteenth century, betrayed in these groups, somewhat mars their beauty ; but they are finely carved, and have a great