abors, and which they were obliged to adhere to
rigidly. The following are the canons of three distinct epochs: 1. The
canon of the time of the pyramids, the height was reckoned at six feet
from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, and subdivisions
obtained by one-half or one-third of a foot. 2. The canon from the
twelfth to the twenty-second dynasty is only an extension of the
first. The whole figure was contained in a number of squares of half a
foot, and the whole height divided into eighteen parts. In these two
canons the height above the sixth foot is not reckoned. 3. The canon
of the age of Psammetici, which is mentioned by Diodorus, reckoning
the entire height at twenty-one and one-fourth feet from the sole to
the crown of the head, taken to the upper part. The proportions are
different, but without any introduction of the Greek canon. The canon
and the leading lines were originally traced in red, subsequently
corrected by the principal artist in black, and the design then
executed. In Egypt, almost every object of sculpture and architecture
was painted. The colossal Egyptian statues are generally of granite,
basalt, porphyry, or sandstone. The two colossi on the plain of Thebes
are, of course, hard gritstone. The Egyptians also worked in dark and
red granites, breccias, serpentines, arragonite, limestones, jaspers,
feldspar, cornelian, glass, gold, silver, bronze, lead, iron, the hard
woods, fir or cedar, sycamore, ebony, acacia, porcelain and ivory, and
terra cotta. All objects, from the most gigantic obelisk to the minute
articles of private life, are found decorated with hieroglyphics.

Egyptian sculptors were also remarkable for the correct and excellent
representation of animals. They may, indeed, be noticed in their
representation a freedom of hand, a choice and variety of forms, a
truthfulness, and even what deserves to be called imitation, which
contrast with the uniformity, the rigidity, the absence of nature and
life, which human figures present. Plato mentions a law which forbade
the artists to depart, in the slightest degree, in the execution of
statues of the human form from the type consecrated by priestly
authority. The artist, therefore, not being restricted in his study of
the animal form, could thus give to his image greater variety of
motion, and by imitating animals in nature, indemnify himself for the
constraint he experienced when he represented Kings and priests. The
two colossal