Bock-engravings of Animals and the Human Figure. 403 



appearance — though it might be mistaken for a shield ; between his 

 legs a long tail is seen hanging down from his slender body. The 

 posture of this figure is bent forward, and all its movements are well 

 represented. Opposite to this curious individual is another one of 

 no less remarkable character, but of smaller proportions, entirely 

 human as far up as the shoulders, while the head is that of an 

 animal which reminds us of the Egyptian ibis without being 

 identical with it. The small pointed head is furnished with three 

 ears, or with a pair of ears and some other excrescence, and beyond 

 with a sort of hood, &c; over the fore part of the head is a round 

 line representing some ornament, or perhaps the basilisc. This 

 figure likewise has a bow in its right hand, but, as it would seem, 

 no arrow, while the left hand is turned away from the body. 

 Between these two half-human figures, which are in a hostile atti- 

 tude, is a bullock, small in proportion to the adjacent lineaments 

 of the human figure, but chiselled with the same care and the same 

 skilful hand, with the only exception that the feet are omitted, the 

 legs terminating in points — -a defect which I shall have occasion to 

 notice also in another sculpture. There is another peculiarity about 

 this figure — the upper part of the bull, by some accident, having been 

 hollowed out, while in general all the inner part between the deeply- 

 chiselled outlines of these sculptures is left in high relief. The 

 animal is turned with its back towards the figure on the right, 

 whose bow it seems about to break. The block on which it was 

 sculptured was about four feet in breadth and three in height. It 

 was lying loose on the top of the cliff." 



Barth, of course, proceeds to attribute to these sculptures an 

 Egyptian origin, but those acquainted with Bushman paintings 

 and the mythical subjects often represented by them, will see there 

 the delineation of a myth, one of the actors being the Ibex ; the 

 other personage may be perhaps "Heitsi-Eibit," the one-legged man, 

 a famous person in the mythology of the Khoi Khoin. This sugges- 

 tion is not so hazardous as it might at first appear. I give (Fig. 13) 

 a reproduction by a Bushman artist of two mythological personages 

 having a confabulation. The head and neck, which are painted 

 white, are those of the South African Eheebok, or perhaps of the 

 Duiker antelope ; the rest of the body is human and painted red. 

 In Barth's vignette the head is what is known to the Egyptologists 

 under the name of " Ibex," and is similar to that occurring on 

 pottery and other remains of the pre-dynastic Egyptian race.' 1 ' 



Of course it is not an Ibex, because the horns of that wild goat 



* Cf. earthenware box of the Predynastic Period figured in "Budge's Egypt 

 in the Neolithic and Archaic Period," vol. i., 1902, p. 98, Lond. 



