n: AMENOTHES III. AT LUXOR]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gayet.

They were surrounded by a whole host of lesser
functionaries--bricklayers, masons, labourers, exorcists, scribes (who
wrote out pious formulae for poor people, or copied the "Books of the
going forth by day" for the mummies), weavers, cabinet-makers, and
goldsmiths. The sculptors and the painters were grouped into guilds;*
many of them spent their days in the tombs they were decorating, while
others had their workshops above-ground, probably very like those of our
modern monumental masons.

* We gather this from the inscriptions which give us the
various titles of the sculptors, draughtsmen, or workmen,
but I have been unable to make out the respective positions
held by these different persons.

They kept at the disposal of their needy customers an assortment of
ready-made statues and stelae, votive tablets to Osiris, Anubis, and
other Theban gods and goddesses, singly or combined. The name of the
deceased and the enumeration of the members of his family were left
blank, and were inserted after purchase in the spaces reserved for the
purpose.*

* I succeeded in collecting at the Boulak Museum a
considerable number of these unfinished statues and stelae,
coming from the workshops of the necropolis.

These artisans made the greater part of their livelihood by means of
these epitaphs, and the majority thought only of selling as many of them
as they could; some few, however, devoted themselves to work of a higher
kind. Sculpture had reached a high degree of development under the
Thutmoses and the Ramses, and the art of depicting scenes in bas-relief
had been brought to a perfection hitherto unknown. This will be easily
seen by comparing the pictures in the old mastabas, such as those of Ti
or Phtahhotpu, with the finest parts of the temples of Qurneh, Abydos,
Karnak, Deir el-Bahari, or with the scenes in the tombs of Seti I. and
Ramses II., or those of private individuals such as Hui. The modelling
is firm and refined, showing a skill in the use of the chisel and an
elegance of outline which have never been surpassed: the Amenothes III.
of Luxor and the Khamhait of Sheikh Abd el-Qurneh might serve for models
in our own schools of the highest types which Egyptian art could produce
at its best in this particular branch. The drawing is freer than in
earlier examples, the action is more natural, the composi