The annexed head, (1) that of a reaper, is one of a great number executed in bas-relief in the celebrated tombs of Eilethyas, which possess a greater interest and value in ethnography on account of their venerable antiquity; for they date with and before the eighteenth dynasty, and consequently are at least three thousand six hundred years old.[[68]] The great French work, (Déscription de l’Egypte,) contains an extended series of illustrations from the same remarkable tombs in which a similar cast of features is almost every where apparent.[[69]]
The same style of face is not less decidedly expressed in another head (2) from Rosellini,[[70]] of which the original painting is preserved in the Royal Gallery at Florence. It represents an artisan. How admirably do the features conform to the Grecian type!
I repeat the remark, and yet more emphatically, in reference to the admirable battle scene at Abousimbel, of the age of Rameses the Third, wherein eighty soldiers are depicted in a single group, each one bearing a shield and spear.[[71]] Are they mercenaries from one of the Hellenic tribes? I select the two subjoined examples; (3) for a close resemblance pervades them all. Here again every line is Grecian; and yet when these paintings were executed, the wandering Pelasgi had hardly begun to associate themselves in civilized communities, and the arts of Greece were unknown.
Paintings of a similar ethnographic character are seen in profusion at Beni-Hassan, whence is derived the annexed outline, representing one of the leather-dressers of that group. The straight line for the nose and forehead is strictly Pelasgic, and conforms in most respects to the other facial traits. (4)
The same general physiognomy is often much more rudely expressed, as in the tomb of Imai, at Gizeh, which is of the age of Shufo, of the fourth dynasty, and consequently the period of disputed chronology. Rude as these figures are, and identified with an humble sphere of life, they have the Caucasian form, and partake of the same ethnographic lineaments with the more elaborately finished
outlines delineated above. It may be observed, with respect to Egyptian art, that while the bas-reliefs are for the most part executed with remarkable beauty and precision, the paintings, owing to the use of a single colour, and the absence of perspective or shading, are often coarse and defective; and the two annexed drawings will serve to illustrate this negligent style of art.
