HAND AND LEFT-HANDEDNESS. 15 
photographic and pictorial evidence. In a group, for example, photographed by Du 
Camp, from the exterior of the sanctuary of the palace of Karnak, where the Pharaoh is 
represented crowned by the ibis and hawk-headed deities, Thoth and Horus, the hierogly- 
phies are cut on either side so as to look towards the central figure. The same arrange- 
ment is repeated in another group at Ipsamboul, engraved by Champollion “ Monuments 
de l'Egypte,” (Vol. I. Pl. 5) Still more, where figures are intermingled. looking in 
opposite directions—as shown in a photograph of the elaborately sculptured posterior 
facade of the Great Temple of Denderah,—the accompanying hieroglyphics, graven in 
column, vary in direction in accordance with that of the figure to which they refer. 
Columns of hieroglyphics repeatedly occur, separating the seated deity and a worshipper 
standing before him, and only divided by a perpendicular line, where the characters are 
turned in opposite directions corresponding to those of the immediately adjacent figures. 
When, as in the Judgment scene at El Medineh and elsewhere, Osiris is seated looking 
to the right, Thoth faces him holding in the off-hand—as more extended, by reason of 
the simple perspective,—the papyrus or tablet ; while the pen or style is held in the near 
or left hand. To have placed the pen and tablet in the opposite hands, would have required 
a complex perspective and foreshortening, or would have left the whole action obscure 
and unsuited for monumental effect. Nevertheless, the difficulty is overcome in repeated 
examples: as in a repetition of the same scene engraved in Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s 
“ Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians” (Pl. 88), and on a beautifully executed 
papyrus, part of “The Book of the Dead,” now in the Louvre, and reproduced in facsimile 
in Sylvestre’s “ Universal Palæography ” (Vol. I. Pl. 46), in both of which Thoth holds 
the pen or style in the right hand. The latter also includes a shearer holding the sickle 
in his right hand, and a female sower, with the seed-basket on her left arm, scattering 
the seed with her right hand. Examples of scribes, stewards, and others engaged in 
writing, are no less common in the scenes of ordinary life; and though when looking to 
the left, they are, at times, represented holding the style or pen in the left hand, yet the 
preponderance of evidence suffices to refer this to the exigencies of primitive perspective. 
The steward in a sculptured scene from a tomb at Elethya (Monuments de l'Esypt, 
Pl. 142), receives and writes down a report of the cattle from the field servants, holding 
the style in his right hand, and the tablet in his left. So is it with the registrar and the 
scribes (Wilkinson, figs. 85, 86), the steward who takes account of the grain delivered 
(fig. 387), and the notary and scribes (figs. 73, 78)—all from Thebes, where they superin- 
tend the weighing at the public scales, and enumerate a group of negro slaves. 
In the colossal sculptures on the facades of the great temples, where complex 
perspective and foreshortening would interfere with the architectural effect, the hand in 
which the mace or weapon is held appears to be mainly determined by the direction to 
which the figure looks. At Ipsamboul, as shown in “Monuments de l'Egypt,” PI 11, 
Rameses grasps with his right hand, by the hair of the head, a group of captives of various 
races, negroes included, while he smites them with a scimiter or pole-axe, wielded in his 
left hand; but an onlooker, turned in the opposite direction, holds the sword in his right 
hand. This transposition is more markedly shown in two scenes from the same temple 
(Pl. 28). In the one Rameses, looking to the right, wields the pole-axe in the near or 
right hand, as he smites a kneeling Asiatic ; in the other, where he looks to the left, he 
holds his weapon again in the near, but now the left hand, as he smites a kneeling negro. 
