heb, mother-in-law of Shishak, who besieged and took Jerusalem
three or four years after the death of Solomon, B.C. 980. It may be
described as a mosaic, or patchwork of prodigious size, made of
thousands of pieces of gazelles' skins, dyed, and neatly sewn together
with threads of colour to match, resembling the stitching of a glove,
the outer edges bound with a cord of twisted pink leather, sewn on
with stout pink thread (pl. 44). The colours are described as being
wonderfully preserved, when it is remembered that they are nearly as
old as the Trojan War; though perhaps their preservation is less
surprising than that the flowers wreathed about several royal mummies
of the same period should have shown their colours and forms when the
cases were first opened, so as to be recognized as blue larkspur,
yellow mimosa, and a red Abyssinian flower, massed closely together on
the foundation of a strong leaf cut in zigzags. Among the flowers lay
a dead wasp, whose worthless little form and identity were as
perfectly preserved as those of the mighty monarch on whose bosom it
had completed its short existence. The tent itself consists of a
centre or flat top, divided down the middle, and covered over one
half with pink and yellow rosettes on a blue ground; on the other half
are six large vultures, each surrounded with a hieroglyphic text which
is really an epitaph. The side flaps are adorned first with some
narrow bands of colour; then with a fringe pattern; then with a row of
broad panels, red, green, and yellow, with a device or picture and
inscription in the two other colours; on this border there are
kneeling gazelles, each with a pink Abyssinian lotus blossom hanging
to its collar. The rest of the side flaps and the whole of the front
and back flaps are composed of large squares, alternately pink and
green. This, for its antiquity, its style, its stitchery, materials,
and colours, is a most interesting work of early art, and an example
of the perfection to which it had attained. It is remarkable how much
variety of effect has been produced with only four colours, by the
artistic manner of placing and contrasting them. To our more advanced
taste, however, the whole effect of the contrasting colours is
inharmonious and gaudy, though certainly striking and typical.[345]

Another piece of Egyptian application, from the Museum at Turin, is a
pretty leaf pattern cut out in red stuff, laid on a white ground, and
worked down with a