ter is always shown sitting or standing, and he could not
consistently be seen in any other attitude. The tomb is, in fact, the house
in which he rests after the labours of life, as once he used to rest in his
earthly home; and the scenes depicted upon the walls represent the work
which he was officially credited with performing. Here he superintends the
preliminary operations necessary to raise the food by which he is to be
nourished in the form of funerary offerings; namely, seed-sowing,
harvesting, stock-breeding, fishing, hunting, and the like. In short, "he
superintends all the labour which is done for the eternal dwelling." When
thus engaged, he is always standing upright, his head uplifted, his hands
pendent, or holding the staff and baton of command. Elsewhere, the diverse
offerings are brought to him one by one, and then he sits in a chair of
state. These are his two attitudes, whether as a bas-relief subject or a
statue. Standing, he receives the homage of his vassals; sitting, he
partakes of the family repast. The people of his household comport
themselves before him as becomes their business and station. His wife
either stands beside him, sits on the same chair or on a second chair by
his side, or squats beside his feet as during his lifetime. His son, if a
child at the time when the statue was ordered, is represented in the garb
of infancy; or with the bearing and equipment proper to his position, if a
man. The slaves bruise the corn, the cellarers tar the wine jars, the hired
mourners weep and tear their hair. His little social world followed the
Egyptian to his tomb, the duties of his attendants being prescribed for
them after death, just as they had been prescribed for them during life.
And the kind of influence which the religious conception of the soul
exercised over the art of the sculptor did not end here. From the moment
that the statue is regarded as the support of the Double, it becomes a
condition of primary importance that the statue shall reproduce, at least
in the abstract, the proportions and distinctive peculiarities of the
corporeal body; and this in order that the Double shall more easily adapt
himself to his new body of stone or wood.[43] The head is therefore always
a faithful portrait; but the body, on the contrary, is, as it were, a
medium kind of body, representing the original at his highest development,
and consequently able to exert the fulness of his physical powers when
admitted to