Art of ancient Egypt

The sycamore and acacia furnished them with a material of a delicate grain and soft texture, which they used to good advantage.

Egyptian art has left us nothing which, in purity of hue and delicacy of modeling, surpasses the panels of the tomb of Hosi, with their seated or standing male figures and their vigorously cut hieroglyphs in the same relief as the picture.

Egypt possesses, however, but few trees of suitable fiber for sculptural purposes, and even those which were fitted for this use were too small and stunted to furnish blocks of any considerable size.

The sculptor, therefore, turned by preference to the soft white limestone of Tura.

The sculptors who executed them belonged to the same school as those who carved Kephren out of the solid diorite.

There is the same facile use of the chisel, the same indifference to the difficulties presented by the material chosen, the same finish in the detail, the same knowledge of the human form.

One is almost tempted to believe that Egyptian art remained unchanged all through those long centuries, and yet as soon as a statue of the early period is placed side by side with one of the twelfth dynasty, we immediately perceive something in the one which is lacking in the other.

It is a difference in feeling, even if the technique remains unmodified.