Egyptian sculpture

CHAPTER VIEL PTOLEMAIC PERIOD

THE statues of the Ptolemaic period show the continuous degradation of the art, though there seems to have been an unsuccessful attempt at the beginning of the period to approximate to the Greek. This attempt soon failed, and the sculpture reached a lower level than at any other period. Many of the conventions were retained, and in the degradation of art the faults of those conventions are increasingly marked. The exceedingly long, narrow figure, with the exaggeratedly long neck, is the direct descendant of the statues of the XXVIth dynasty, and should be compared with the sturdy figure of the Sheikh el Beled or other statues of the Old Kingdom. The modelling is simply represented as rounded masses without any construction whatsoever. In many of the figures, especially those of women, the navel is over-emphasised ; under the skirt the knees are represented merely by transverse cuts. The hands are without any kind of modelling, the fingers being very coarsely represented; the modelling of the arms as well as of the body is much inferior to any of the Egyptian work, even of the Late Period. In the face, however, the Ptolemaic artist occasionally produced some good effects. Although the face is always represented as extremely fat, with fat round cheeks and a round chin, the features themselves are often well sculptured. The mouth has curved lips, highly modelled like the Greek mouth. The eyes, however, are entirely different from those

of the Greek statues; they are always wide open, the angle 176