us fidelity: nothing is omitted, no detail of the
characteristics of the model is suppressed. Idealisation we must not
expect, but we have here an intelligent and sometimes too realistic
fidelity. Portraits have been conceived among other peoples and in other
periods in a different way: they have never been better executed.

[Illustration: 246.jpg PEASANT GOING TO MARKET]

* Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Bechard. The
original is at Gizeh.--Vth dynasty.

The decoration of the sepulchres provided employment for scores of
draughtsmen, sculptors, and painters, whose business it was to multiply
in these tombs scenes of everyday life which were indispensable to the
happiness or comfort of the double. The walls are sometimes decorated
with isolated pictures only, each one of which represents a distinct
operation; more frequently we find traced upon them a single subject
whose episodes are superimposed one upon the other from the ground to
the ceiling, and represent an Egyptian panorama from the Nile to the
desert. In the lower portion, boats pass to and fro, and collide with
each other, while the boatmen come to blows with their boat-hooks within
sight of hippopotami and crocodiles. In the upper portions we see a band
of slaves engaged in fowling among the thickets of the river-bank, or
in the making of small boats, the manufacture of ropes, the scraping and
salting of fish. Under the cornice, hunters and dogs drive the gazelle
across the undulating plains of the desert. Every row represents one of
the features of the country; but the artist, instead of arranging the
pictures in perspective, separated them and depicted them one above the
other.

[Illustration: 247.jpg KOFIR, THE DIRECTOR OF GRANARIES]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.
original is in the Gizeh Museum.--Vth dynasty.

The groups are repeated in one tomb after another; they are always
the same, but sometimes they are reduced to two or three individuals,
sometimes increased in number, spread out and crowded with figures and
inscriptions. Each chief draughtsman had his book of subjects and texts,
which he combined in various ways, at one time bringing them close
together, at another duplicating or extending them according to the
means put at his disposal or the space he had to cover. The same
men, the same animals, the same features of the landscape, the same
accessories, appear everywhere: it is industrial