222 RIGHTHANDEDNESS. 



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 handj 

 to- have placed the pen and tablet in the opposite hand, would have 

 required a complex perspective and foreshortening, or would have left 

 the whole action obscure and unsuited for monumental effect. Never- 

 theless, the difficulty is overcome in repeated examples : as in a repeti- 

 tion of the same scene engraved in Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's 

 "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians" (pi. 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 

 Palseography (vol. i. pi. 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, and 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 great 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 V Egypte, pi. 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, \^gs. 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 fagades of the great temples, where 

 complex perspective and foreshortening would interfere with the archi- 

 tectural 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 V Egypte, 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 is still 

 more markedly shown in two scenes from the same temple (pi. 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 



