Page:The Pharaohs and their people; scenes of old Egyptian life and history (IA pharaohstheirpeo00berkiala).pdf/54

 In another of these tombs were discovered the wonderful statues of Ra-hotep and his beautiful wife Nefert, which are now in the museum at Boulak. Ra-hotep was a prince, very likely a son of Senefru, who died young; he was a captain in the army, and chief priest of Ra, at On. These, the most ancient known statues in the world, are 'marvels of life-like reality.' The Egyptians always excelled in portrait sculpture; the figures may be stiff and ill-drawn, but the faces are beyond doubt truthful and characteristic likenesses. Men of learning were held in honour at the court of these early Pharaohs, as well as architects and sculptors. But the literature of those days may be said to have perished. Portions of it, enshrined in the sacred writings, have survived, and there is, besides, one venerable manuscript of the time of the fifth dynasty, which has come down to us. It is called the Maxims of Ptah-hotep and is the oldest manuscript known. The writer was a prince by birth, and a governor; he lived to be more than a hundred years old, and after a long and varied experience of life, when the infirmities of old age had come upon