After the heads were finished they were dipped in a kind of thin plaster, and then buried in a manure heap, where they remained for a time. The price asked was £1 each, and I eventually bought them for 3s. each.
No. 2 shows a bottle of steatite. This was made in two halves, one of which broke. The fragments were embedded in a soft cement and moulded to correspond with the other side, and then coloured. This is a favourite way of faking various bowls or bottles. I have had small granite bowls offered to me, one part of which was whole, but the remainder was composed of small fragments embedded in a coloured wax, so soft that you could indent it with your nail. In addition to this it had the smell of wax.
[Plate VI], No. 4 represents a ushebti figure, bearing the cartouche of Thothmes III, and a passage from the Book of the Dead. It is composed of ordinary Nile mud, and made in a mould. It was then taken out and left to dry, and later on blackened over a charcoal fire. In many of the houses in the vicinity of Gurna and Deir-el-Bahari, in a little hole above the door, or in some other convenient place, these statues may be seen, lying in their roughened condition, just as they have been taken out of the mould.
The price paid for this was one piastre, or twopence halfpenny. Many hundreds of these figures are sold all over Egypt during the season, and many a museum, no doubt, considers itself enriched by the possession of what is nothing more than a very crude modern model of a funerary figure.
No. 5 represents a woman with a wig. She should not have been represented carrying cylinders in her hands. The maker has mixed two periods, the predominating one being probably the twelfth dynasty.
No. 6 is composed of serpentine, and represents the work of about the twelfth dynasty, and possesses the dolichocephalic features of the skull which, according to Elliot Smith, are characteristic of the ancient Egyptian race. This, however, is not apparent in the illustration. Generally speaking, the artist has not quite conformed to the Egyptian style. The ancient sculpture at all periods acquired its distinctive features from being produced in conformity with a canon. As everything was done by rule, there was an absolute certainty that each article of the period would have the distinguishing marks of this rule upon it, and that no stroke of the chisel, however rough or hastily applied, would be tentative. The effect would be produced rapidly and surely, and the amount of labour expended upon these statues would have produced a greater amount of detailed modelling.
PLATE V.
WOODEN ARTICLES.
Representing objects found in the tombs.
1 & 4. Paint boxes. 2. A model of a plough. 3. A dove.
[Plate VI], No. 7, is a copy of a ushebti of the nineteenth dynasty, made of soluble composition, probably plaster of Paris, with a weight inside, and representing basalt. The materials are very fine, and hold tightly together. It was roughly modelled first, then trimmed and cut. The maker has observed ancient modelling sufficiently to make the ears large, but he has not carried his observation to the point of studying by what conventional strokes of the chisel the details of the ears and the features of the face were produced. All Egyptian features were produced by conventional means with hardly any variety. The tools were held and the strokes made in the same manner, or the same effect could not be arrived at.