826 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



line of the nose is more or less perfectly the prolongation of the 

 line of the forehead. The hollow at the root of the nose is almost 

 effaced, and the prominence of the nose is softened. The absolute 

 Grecian profile would therefore be represented in a drawing by a 

 single continuous line for the forehead and nose. Yet another 

 condition is essential for obtaining the fine Grecian profile. The 

 forehead should not be receding. This marks the distinction be- 

 tween the Grecian and the Egyptian profile. The artists who 

 lived under the Theban dynasties represented the human profile 

 by a single line for the forehead and nose ; but the line was oblique, 

 making the nose prominent and the forehead retreating. They 

 simply exaggerated a race characteristic — as may be shown by 

 examining the mummies or the fellahs of the present time. 



Several theories have been offered to account for the Grecian 

 type of profile. Its existence in the Hellenic race has been denied. 

 The few Grecian skulls in our possession present it very rarely, but 

 some of them incontestably approach it. It may have been more 

 common in the aristocratic caste. We must certainly acknowl- 

 edge that it was not common, but it does not follow that it did 

 not exist. It may still be found, though not very often, at Aries 

 and Marseilles ; and I have perceived it in some profile photo- 

 graphs of Greeks of Asia Minor in the collection of the Socieie 

 de Geographie of Paris. It has been suggested that the Grecian 

 profile was hieratic, borrowed from the Egyptians, improved upon 

 and transformed. It is true that the archaic Grecian sculptures, 

 as at Mycenae, display a profile with salient nose and retreating 

 forehead, and that the type was persistent on many funeral 

 vases. Grecian art may have imitated Egyptian in its begin- 

 nings, although it is believed now that the imitation did not play 

 a very preponderant part in the matter. But when, at a later 

 period, the artists created the special profile of their statues, they 

 could not have been guided by reasoning alone. This would be 

 opposed to all the observations on the subject made by other peo- 

 ple. They may have designed it, but to do so they had to start 

 from visual perceptions. A third supposition is that the artists 

 exaggerated a type which they had opportunities of observing 

 among their countrymen, especially in the aristocratic and liter- 

 ary classes. An examination of the ancient statues will throw 

 light on this point. In studying the pictures of the great men of 

 Greece reproduced in the Iconographie Grecque of Visconti, it 

 will be remarked that a large number of them resemble the ideal 

 type copied in the statues of the gods. In order to proceed with 

 mathematical exactness we have measured the angle, the apex of 

 which is the root of the nose and the sides a line drawn from that 

 point tangent to the forehead (disregarding the projection of the 

 sinus) and the prolongation of the line of the nose. We have ap- 



