same dynasty we
still have styles of unconventional naivete, such as the famous Statue
"No. 1" of the Cairo Museum, bearing the names of Kings Hetepahaui,
Neb-ra, and Neneter. But with the IVth Dynasty we no longer look for
unconventionality. Prof. Petrie discovered at Abydos a small ivory
statuette of Khufu or Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The portrait is a good one and carefully executed. It was not till
the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, indeed, that the Egyptians ceased
to portray their kings as they really were, and gave them a purely
conventional type of face. This convention, against which the heretical
King Amenhetep IV (Akhunaten) rebelled, in order to have himself
portrayed in all his real ungainliness and ugliness, did not exist till
long after the time of the IVth and Vth Dynasties.

[Illustration: 100.jpg STATUE NO. 1 OF THE CAIRO MUSEUM, About 3900
B.C.]

The kings of the XIIth Dynasty especially were most careful that their
statues should be accurate portraits; indeed, the portraits of Usertsen
(Senusret) III vary from a young face to an old one, showing that the
king was faithfully depicted at different periods of his life.

But the general conventions of dress and deportment were finally fixed
under the Vth Dynasty. After this time we no longer have such absolutely
faithful and original presentments as the other little ivory statuette
found by Prof. Petrie at Abydos (now in the British Museum), which shows
us an aged monarch of the Ist Dynasty. It is obvious that the features
are absolutely true to life, and the figure wears an unconventionally
party-coloured and bordered robe of a kind which kings of a later day
may have worn in actual life, but which they would assuredly never be
depicted as wearing by the artists of their day. To the end of Egyptian
history, the kings, even the Roman emperors, were represented on the
monuments clothed in the official costume of their ancestors of the IVth
and Vth Dynasties, in the same manner as we see Khufu wearing his robe
in the little figure from Abydos, and Ne-user-Ra on the great
relief from Abusir. There are one or two exceptions, such as the
representations of the original genius Akhunaten at Tell el-Amarna and
the beautiful statue of Ramses II at Turin, in which we see these kings
wearing the real costume of their time, but such exceptions are very
rare.

The art of Abusir is therefore of great interest, since it marks the end
of the d