560* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sequently to the prevalence of the worship of household gods." 

 But who were the makers of either does not appear. 



How it would naturally happen that while, in the first stages, 

 the priest was the actual carver of images, he became, in later 

 stages, the director of those who carved them, will be easily 

 understood on remembering that a kindred relation between the 

 artist and his subordinate exists now among ourselves^ The 

 modern sculptor does not undertake the entire labor of executing 

 his work, but gives the rough idea to a skilled assistant who, 

 from time to time instructed in the needful alterations, produces 

 a clay model to which his master gives the finished form: the 

 reproduction of the model in marble by another subordinate 

 being similarly dealt with by the sculptor. Evidently it was in 

 something like this sense that priests throughout the East were 

 sculptors in early days, as some are in our own days. Writing of 

 the Singhalese, Tennent says : 



" Like the priesthood of Egypt, those of Ceylon regulated the mode of 

 delineating the effigies of their divine teacher, by a rigid formulary, with 

 which they combined corresponding directions for the drawing of the 

 human figure in connection with sacred subjects." 



From Egypt, here referred to, may be brought not only evidence 

 that the sculptured forms of those to be worshiped were pre- 

 scribed by the priests in conformity with the traditions they pre- 

 served, but also evidence that in some cases they were the actual 

 executants. Mentu-hotep, a priest of the 12th dynasty, yields an 

 example. 



" Very skilled in artistic work, with his own hand he carried out his 

 designs as they ought to be carried out." He "besides was invested with 

 religious functions" and "was the alter ego of the king." His inscrip- 

 tion says : " I it was who arranged the work for the building of the 

 temple." 



An inscription of the 18th dynasty refers to one Bek, architect 

 of Amenhotep IV, who being described as " the follower of the 

 divine benefactor " was apparently a priest, and who was both 

 an executant and a supervisor of other's work. He is referred 

 to as 



" overseer of the works at the red mountain, an artist and teacher of the 

 king himself, an overseer of the sculptors from life at the grand monu- 

 ments of the king for the temple of the sun's disk." 

 A further fact is given. Bek says of himself "My lord pro- 

 moted me to be chief architect. I immortalized the name of the 

 king ... [I caused] to be made two portrait-statues of noble 

 hard stone in this his great building. It is like heaven. . . . 

 Thus I executed these works of art, his statues." 



What evidence Greek records yield, though not extensive, is 

 to the point. Curtius, who, referring to actions of the singers 



