Volume II Part 20 (1/2)

[221] _Description de l'egypte, Antiquites_, vol ii p 182

There were at least as h the four southern pylons at Karnak, the same explorers found twelve colossal reatly mutilated, and the forround They were able to reckon up eighteen altogether on this south side of the building[222]

[222] _Description, Antiquites_, vol ii p 105

Siious or political capitals of Egypt--Abydos, Meest of all, however, are the colossi at Ipsah Aht from Syene or elsewhere, the best known are those of Ah without the pedestal But the statue of Rameses II, which stood in the second court of the Rah, as we reatly [223]

[223] CH BLANC, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, p 208 It has been calculated that this colossus weighed about 1220 tons

These statues were generally seated in the attitude which we have already described in speaking of Chephren and Sebek-hotep Soure of Rameses which stood before the Teure, which is about forty-four feet high, is cut frole block of very fine and hard limestone It lies face doards and surrounded by pale of Mitrahineh In this position it is covered by the annual inundation The English, to whos, have hitherto failed to take possession of it owing to the difficulty of transport, and yet it is one of the most careful productions of the nineteenth dynasty The head is full of individuality and its execution excellent

[Illustration: THE QUEEN TAIA

BOULAK MUSEUM

J Bourgon del Imp Ch Chardon Raures, the Egyptian sculptors of this period rivalled their predecessors in the skill and sincerity hich they brought out their sitter's individuality It was not, perhaps, their religious beliefs which imposed this effort upon thes showed in appropriating the statues of their ancestors to the their ovals upon them, proved that the ideas which were attached by the fathers of the Egyptian race to their graven iht into the service of a new king by amore than lory to future generations The early taste, however, was not extinguished

When the sculptor was charged with the representation of one of those kings who had reat, or one of the queens ere often associated in the sovereign power, he took the same pains as those of the early Eust model

[Illustration: FIG 214--Thoth the monuments of faithful portraiture which this period has left us the statues of Thothmes III are conspicuous The features of this prince are to be recognized in a standing figure at Boulak (Fig 214), but they are ly marked in a head which was found at Karnak and is now in the British Museued to a colossal statue erected by that prince in the part of the teyptian

The form of the nose, the upturned corners of the eyes, the curves of the lips, and the general contours of the face are all suggestive of Arro descent In the first-named statue these characteristics are less conspicuous because its execution as a whole is less careful and no to the Boulak collection[225]

[224] GABRIEL CHARMES, _La Reorganisation du Musee de Boulak_

[225] MARIETTE, _Notices du Musee_, Nos 3 and 4

There is a strong contrast between the features of Thothmes and those of Ae by a head, as well preserved as that of Thothmes, which was found behind one of the statues of Amenophis at Gournah It also is in the British Museueneral appearance which we should call _distinguished_; the nose is long and thin; the chin well chiselled and bold in outline[226]

[226] The head of Anized in the bas-relief reproduced in our Fig 33, Vol I The fine profile and large well-opened eye strongly reseed to draw the line soure, but in Plate XI we give a female head, discovered by Mariette at Karnak, and believed to be that of Taia, the queen of Ahtly nayptian sculpture[227]

[227] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol ii p 31

Mariette enu Taia to have been neither of royal nor even of Egyptian blood She ht have been Asiatic; the empire of her husband extended as far as Mesopotamia The point has little importance, but as M Charmes says, ”e stop in admiration before the head of Taia, at Boulak, we feel ourselves unconsciously driven by her chare a whole history, an historical romatic personality is the centre and inspiration, and to fancy her the chief author of these religious tragedies which disturbed her epoch and left a burning trace which has not yet disappeared”[228]

[228] G CHARMES, _De la Reorganisation du Musee de Boulak_

M Chares which Aion when he attees of Amen, and to replace them with those of a solar God, as represented by a sy 2) If Mariette's hypotheses remain uncontradicted by later discoveries, we may admit Taia to be the mother of Amenophis IV, and to her influence in all probability would her son's denial and persecution of the great Theban deity be due Our present interest, however, is with the features of Amenophis They have been faithfully handed down to us by the artists employed at Tell-el-Amarna[229] By the help of these bas-reliefs a statuette in yellow steatite, now in the Louvre (Fig 216), has been recognized as a portrait of this Pharaoh Its workmanshi+p is very fine

[229] _Denkliness of this king is most clearly shown in plate 109

[Illustration: FIG 215--Thothranite

Drawn by Saint-Elht that in these bas-reliefs, and in the Louvre statuette, the ”facial characteristics and the peculiar shapes of breast and abdouished, are to be found”[230] On the other hand, we know that while still very young Amenophis IV hters by her ”It is probable, therefore, that if thethe aged by Aro races of the south” In any case, A procession of princes whose portraits have come down to us, from the early dynasties of the Ancient Empire to the Roraphy of the Egyptian kings, and a that can be compared to the almost fantastic personality of Amenophis, with his low, unintellectual forehead, his pendulous cheeks, his feloo features are reproduced is extraordinary, and can only be accounted for by the existence of a tradition so well established that no one thought of breaking through it, even when the portrait of a semi-divine monarch was in question