As already mentioned, there is a way of detecting these forgeries. In addition to the smell of the new wood there is the sour odour of the size with which the artist covers them before sprinkling them artistically with various dusts. In the case of the boxes, they are too short and the sticks are wrong; they should have been rushes or very thin reeds teased out at one end and made into a brush. It was owing to the use of these rush or reed brushes that the letters of the ancient writings were usually made in the same way.
No. 3 of the same plate shows a reproduction of a dove, in wood, the colouring copied from an original.
CHAPTER V
STONE FIGURES
One day an up-river man offered for sale some small stone figures, and told me that he had others. I appointed a day to see them at Ibrahim’s shop. The man, accompanied by a friend, came in before I arrived there, and showed them to Ibrahim, to whom he swore by Allah that they were genuine antiquities, and well worth buying. Failing in his attempt to get Ibrahim to buy them, he asked his help to persuade me to do so, offering him a commission out of what I should pay for them. Ibrahim, in order to lead him on, said he would do his best.
When I arrived, a few poor specimens of worthless antiquities were taken out of the many receptacles which these men have about their clothes. These were put aside in silence, as unworthy of consideration. Then there was a pause.
“What else have you?” I asked.
One by one the things were brought out, until all the objects shown on [Plate VI] were lying before us.
The stone head (No. 1) is composed of green basalt. It is supposed to represent a royal personage, possibly Akhnaton. It is peculiar in that the eyes show a distinct oriental tilt. The sculpture is poor, the ears badly made, the uræus—the sign of royalty—is cut in, instead of being raised, as in all the old examples of sculpture, and the sculptor has not placed the centre of the uræus in a line with the nose. These are mistakes of which the ancient sculptor would hardly have been guilty.
The second head (No. 3) shows a different tilt of the eyes. The work is by the same man, is also in green basalt, and is no better done.