t is because iron differs from
bronze, inasmuch as it is not protected from destruction by its oxide. Rust
speedily devours it, and it needs a rare combination of favourable
circumstances to preserve it intact. If, however, it is quite certain that
the Egyptians were acquainted with, and made use of, iron, it is no less
certain that they were wholly unacquainted with steel. This being the case,
one asks how they can possibly have dealt at will upon the hardest rocks,
even upon such as we ourselves hesitate to attack, namely, diorite, basalt,
and the granite of Syene. The manufacturers of antiquities who sculpture
granite for the benefit of tourists, have found a simple solution of this
problem. They work with some twenty common iron chisels at hand, which
after a very few turns are good for nothing. When one is blunted, they take
up another, and so on till the stock is exhausted. Then they go to the
forge, and put their tools into working order again. The process is neither
so long nor so difficult as might be supposed. In the Gizeh Museum is a
life-size head, produced from a block of black and red granite in less than
a fortnight by one of the best forgers in Luxor. I have no doubt that the
ancient Egyptians worked in precisely the same way, and mastered the
hardest stones by the use of iron. Practice soon taught them methods by
which their labour might be lightened, and their tools made to yield
results as delicate and subtle as those which we achieve with our own. As
soon as the learner knew how to manage the point and the mallet, his master
set him to copy a series of graduated models representing an animal in
various stages of completion, or a part of the human body, or the whole
human body, from the first rough sketch to the finished design (fig. 182).
Every year, these models are found in sufficient number to establish
examples of progressive series. Apart from isolated specimens which are
picked up everywhere, the Gizeh collection contains a set of fifteen from
Sakkarah, forty-one from Tanis, and a dozen from Thebes and Medinet Habu.
They were intended partly for the study of bas-reliefs, partly for the
study of sculpture proper; and they reveal the method in use for both.[37]

[Illustration: Fig. 182.--Sculptor's trial-piece, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

The Egyptians treated bas-relief in three ways: either as a simple
engraving executed by means of incised lines; or by cutting away the
surface of the stone round the