rshes, their bodies being covered by the
potter with pen-and-ink sketches of reeds and lotus plants, amid which
hover birds and butterflies (fig. 229). This was his naive way of depicting
the animal amid his natural surroundings. The blue is splendid, and we must
overleap twenty centuries before we again find so pure a colour among the
funerary statuettes of Deir el Bahari. Green reappears under the Saite
dynasties, but paler than that of more ancient times, and it prevailed in
the north of Egypt, at Memphis, Bubastis, and Sais, without entirely
banishing the blue. The other colours before mentioned were in current use
for not more than four or five centuries; that is to say, from the time of
Ahmes I. to the time of the Ramessides. It was then, and only then, that
_ushabtiu_ of white or red glaze, rosettes and lotus flowers in yellow,
red, and violet, and parti-coloured kohl-pots abounded. The potters of the
time of Amenhotep III. affected greys and violets. The olive-shaped amulets
which are inscribed with the names of this Pharaoh and the princesses of
his family are decorated with pale blue hieroglyphs upon a delicate mauve
ground. The vase of Queen Tii in the Gizeh collection is of grey and blue,
with ornaments in two colours round the neck. The fabrication of many-
coloured enamels seems to have attained its greatest development under
Khuenaten; at all events, it was at Tell el Amarna that I found the
brightest and most delicately fashioned specimens, such as yellow, green,
and violet rings, blue and white fleurettes, fish, lutes, figs, and bunches
of grapes.[64] One little statuette of Horus has a red face and a blue
body; a ring bezel bears the name of a king in violet upon a ground of
light blue. However restricted the space, the various colours are laid in
with so sure a hand that they never run one into the other, but stand out
separately and vividly. A vase to contain antimony powder, chased and
mounted on a pierced stand, is glazed with reddish brown (fig. 230).
Another, in the shape of a mitred hawk, is blue picked out with black
spots. It belonged of old to Ahmes I. A third, hollowed out of the body of
an energetic little hedgehog, is of a changeable green (fig. 231). A
Pharaoh's head in dead blue wears a _klaft_[65] with dark-blue stripes.

[Illustration: Fig. 232.]

Fine as these pieces are, the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the series is a statuette
of one Ptahmes, first Prophet of Amen, now in the Gizeh Museum. Th