des recall rather the style of the VIth and XIIth dynasties
than that of their Theban contemporaries. Their style, brought to
perfection by evident imitation of the old Memphite masters, pleases
us by its somewhat severe elegance, the taste shown in the choice of
detail, and the extraordinary skill displayed in the working of
the stone. The Memphites had by preference used limestone for their
sculpture, the Thebans red and grey granite or sandstone; but the
artists of the age of Psammetichus unhesitatingly attacked basalt,
breccia, or serpentine, and obtained marvellous effects from these
finely grained materials of regular and even texture. The artistic
renaissance which they brought to its height had been already
inaugurated under the Ethiopians, and many of the statues we possess
of the reign of Taharqa are examples of excellent workmanship. That of
Amenertas was over-praised at the time of its discovery; the face, half
buried by the wig which we usually associate with the statues of the
goddesses, has a dull and vacant expression in spite of its set smile,
and the modelling of the figure is rather weak, but nevertheless there
is something easy and refined in the gracefulness of the statue as a
whole.

[358.jpg Chieck Beled--Gizeh Museum]

A statuette of another "Divine Spouse," though mutilated and
unfinished, is pleasing from its greater breadth of style, although such
breadth is rarely found in the works of this school, which toned down,
elongated, and attenuated the figure till it often lost in vigour what
it gained in distinction. The one point in which the Saite artists made
a real advance, was in the treatment of the heads of their models.

[Illustration: 359.jpg MEMPHITE BAS-RELIEF OF THE SAITE EPOCH]

Drawn by Boudier, from a heliogravure in Mariette. The bas-
relief was worked into the masonry of a house in Memphis in
the Byzantine period, and it was in order to fit it to the
course below that the masons bevelled the lower part of it.

The expression is often refined and idealised as in the case of older
works, but occasionally the portraiture is exact even to coarseness. It
was not the idealised likeness of Montumihait which the artist wished
to portray, but Montumihait himself, with his low forehead, his small
close-set eyes, his thin cheeks, and the deep lines about his nose and
mouth. And besides this, the wrinkles, the crows' feet, the cranial
projections, the shape of ear and