522 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 31 



Both figure and hieroglyphs are in low relief, and the figures of the 

 king are marvels of art. Indeed, if we did not know that they 

 represent King Zoser, described only as recently as 1895 in Baedeker's 

 Handbook to Lower Egypt (p. 164) as " the mythical King Zoser," 

 and that they were carved by Egyptian artists of the Third Dynasty, 

 we should have little hesitation in ascribing them to a Greek artist 

 of the age of Pericles. The muscles of the arms and legs, like the 

 pose of the figures, are represented as they might have been by a 

 Greek sculptor of the classical epoch. I know of nothing compar- 

 able with them elsewhere in Egypt, just as I know of nothing com- 

 parable with the architecture of the buildings above them ; in archi- 

 tecture and in art alike Egypt would seem to have reached its climax 

 in the age of Zoser, and from that period onwards, instead of prog- 

 ress, there was more or less decline. A still more modern touch is 

 to be found in a side passage leading from one of the corridors of 

 which I have spoken, which terminates in a small chamber cut in 

 the rock and presenting a startling resemblance to a retiring cham- 

 ber of to-day. 



Architecture, art, and glazed tiles all testify to the long centuries 

 of development which must have preceded the period of perfection 

 to which they belong. And the impression made by them upon us 

 is heightened when we come to examine the hieroglyphic script. It 

 is already as complete and conventionalized by use as in the days of 

 Rameses or Darius. The alphabet is there by the side of the syllabary 

 and ideographs, and there are indications that the hieratic or cursive 

 hand was already employed. As for the smaller objects of daily 

 life — the furniture of the house, the jewelry and garments that were 

 worn, or the articles of toilet — the discoveries made by Doctor Reis- 

 ner in the tomb of the mother of Khcops, the builder of the Great 

 Pyramid of Giza, prove that at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty 

 the culture and art of Egypt were still at their highest level. The 

 bedstead and carrying chair of the queen, with their golden fittings, 

 might even now adorn a royal palace. It will be remembered that 

 Sir Flinders Petrie, when he was working at the Great Pyramid 

 many years ago, discovered that the huge granite blocks used in its 

 construction had been smoothed by means of tubular drills fitted 

 with hard-stone points. The world had to wait until the era of the 

 Mont Cenis tunnel before a similar instrument was employed again. 

 When we turn to Babylonia, here also the latest discoveries have 

 pushed back the highest development of its art yet known to us to 

 an undetermined but remote antiquity. Hitherto ancient Babylonia, 

 whether Sumerian or Semitic, has seemed artistically deficient and 

 inferior; its inhabitants were primarily men of business and trade, 

 the initiators of banking and international commerce but with little 

 artistic sense. The royal and other tombs found by Mr. Woolley 



