.
The balance is so frequently represented in false perspective by Egyptian artists, that Sir J. G. Wilkinson has given an account of it, which is quite unintelligible to those who have ever so moderate a knowledge of statics. Mr. Petrie’s description is the true one. “The beam was suspended by a loop or ring from a bracket projecting from the stand.... Then below the beam, a long tongue was attached, not above the beam as with us. To test the level of the beam, a plummet hung down the tongue, and it was this plummet which was observed to see if the tongue was vertical and the beam horizontal.”—A Season in Egypt, p. 42.
In Pl. [XXXVI], a few pictures will be found which give a more correct notion of the Egyptian balance than some of the absurd representations which defy a scientific explanation.
It is evident that if the tongue is fastened at a wrong angle, the beam will not really be horizontal when the tongue is shown by the plummet line to be vertical. This seems to be the fraud alluded to in the text.
The word
,