10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.60, 



Greek art, and because the ideas do not seem, as yet, to have been 

 appHed to the object of our present study. 



1. The reahstic treatment of the details of the bird's beak and the 

 rendering of the wing plumage would appear to be an example of 

 what is observed in the history of art among many diverse peoples: 

 that is, primitive man and the earliest artists were close observers of 

 animal life, and they were often able to depict animal forms very 

 successfully, generally more so than they could the human. This is 

 well known and is exemplified in Egyptian, Chaldean, Babylonian, 

 Assyrian, Cretan, Greek, and even in Paleolithic art. It would ap- 

 pear that the early artist of the Tuxtla figure was no exception to 

 the rule. 



2. When we consider that this statuette is the earliest known dated 

 cultural work of a semicivilized people, and that it belongs to prob- 

 ably near the beginning of their historic period, the marked realism 

 and lively expression shown in the man's face are very striking — all 

 the more so when the extreme conventionalism of the later Mayan 

 sculpture is considered. One is inevitably reminded of the realism 

 and expression shown in the sculpture of the early d3masties of the 

 Ancient Empire of Egypt, of which Budge,*^ speaking of the tomb 

 reliefs of the Fourth Dynasty at Gizeh, says: "Their fidelity to 

 nature is surprising, and the skill with which they are executed, and 

 their delicacy of detail, mark them for all time as masterpieces of 

 art and sculpture, which the Eg3^tians under the later dynasties 

 rarely equaled and never surpassed." Examples in the round that 

 are well known to all are the Sheikh-el-Beled of the Bulaq Museum 

 and the Seated Scribe of the Louvre, In Egypt this early and very 

 successful realism disappeared in later times, and was replaced by 

 a conventional treatment of the human figure and face that was im- 

 posed on the artist by the powerful priesthood, except during a brief 

 period of freedom under Ahmenhetep IV. While one can not at- 

 tribute to the Tuxtla statuette the high artistic qualities of the sculp- 

 ture of the Fourth Egyptian Dynasty, yet in view of its artistic 

 merits and freedom from formalistic restraint one is tem.pted to see 

 a development in Mayan sculpture parallel to that in Egypt, both 

 having been brought about by analogous mfluences. 



3. The face of the Tuxtla figure, in its realistic rendering, differs 

 much from most of the faces of Mayan art, which are not only con- 

 ventionalized, but appear grotesque or caricaturelike to us. But 

 differences that seem to be much more fundamental and due to a 

 quite different cause are manifest; for example, in the breadth of 

 the face, the elongated eyes, the straight and platyrrhine nose, and 

 the peculiar, smilingly human expression of our figure, which are in 



15 E. A. ^Y. Budge, Short History of the Egyptian People, p. 43, 1914. 



