220 RIGHTHANDEDNESS. 



clerk, he would as naturally draw the left profile as we slope our current 

 hand to the right." * In the pictorial hieroglyphies, reproduced in 

 Lord Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, as in other illustrations of 

 the Arts of Mexico and Central America, it is also apparent that the 

 battle-axe and other weapons and implements are most frequently held 

 in the right hand. But to this exceptions occur; and it is obvious 

 that the crude perspective of the artist influenced the disposition of the 

 tools, or weapons, according to the action designed to be represented, 

 and the direction in which the actor looked. 



If the difficulties of foreshortening and general perspective are over- 

 looked, and the decorative value of the hieroglyphics in Egyptian 

 architecture is left out of account, the evidence they afford in reference 

 to the right or left-handedness of their executors is of a conflicting 

 nature. The conclusion drawn by one observer from a study of the 

 extensive collection of the British Museum, as we have seen, is that the 

 prevailing direction of the profiles is as a left-handed draughtsman would 

 represent them. But the result of more extended observation shows 

 that the direction of the profiles, and of hieroglyphics generally, is due 

 to totally different causes, and depended on their relation to the general 

 architectural design, or to the principal figures to which they refer. 

 This is borne out by ample evidence to be found in Champollion's 

 Monuments de V Egypte et de la Nubie ; and is fully confirmed by 

 Maxime Du Camp's "Photographic Pictures of Egypt, Nubia, &c.;" 

 by Sir J. G-ardner Wilkinson's " Manners and Customs of the Ancient 

 Egyptians;" and by other 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 repre- 

 sented crowned by the ibis and hawk-headed deities, Thoth and Horus, 

 the hieroglyphics are cut on either side so as to look towards the central 

 figure. The same arrangement is repeated in another group at Ipsam- 

 boul, engraved by Champollion, Monuments de V Egypte, Tome prem. 

 pi. V. Still more, where figures are intermingled, looking in opposite 

 directions — as shown in a photograph of the elaborately sculptured 

 posterior fa9ade of the Great Temple of Denderah, — the accompanying 

 hieroglyphics, graven in columns, 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 charac- 



* Prehistoric Man, 2nd Ed. p. 380. 



