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DESCRIPTION OF AN EGYPTIAN STATUE. 
[Nature and Art, January 1, 1867. 
a ten years’ average, substituted. Few metals used 
in tlie arts have a wider range of usefulness than 
that now under consideration. The cannon which 
thunders forth a nation’s triumph, the bells which 
ring out the wedding peal so joyously, or with solemn 
note peal the last requiem of the departed, are in- 
debted to tin for their sonorous quality. The 
penny you cast to the crossing-sweeper, and the 
half-pint measure containing the porter he probably 
buys with it, have tin in their composition, as have 
the pipes through which it passed, the engine by 
whose mechanism it was raised, and the tap which 
governed its flow ; the tea-kettle, too, as it sings 
cozily on the hearth, as if from sheer self-satisfaction 
at the brightness of its own burnished jacket, owes 
the privileged position enjoyed in the snug warm 
corner to tin, as do many human tea-kettles who 
have cause to sing as contentedly as he. 
DESCRIPTION OF AN EGYPTIAN STATUE LATELY ADDED TO 
THE COLLECTION IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 
T HE statue is in gritstone, and represents a young 
man standing, a son of Rameses II. It is 
50 inches high on a base of 6 inches. He has no 
clothing except the apron round his waist. The 
left leg is forward. Both arms and the fingers hang 
straight down, and they press to his sides two poles 
or standards as tall as himself. The head of one is 
a cylinder ornamented witli two asps ; the head of 
the other is a group of three small 
standing figures now broken, a 
goddess with two gods. On each 
standard is the name of Rameses 
II. (See fig. 1.) The square pillar 
which supports his back had been 
mended in two places, probably by 
the original sculptor. On this and 
on the base are several lines of hieroglyphics stating 
that he is the king’s son. The stone is hard, and on 
the figure highly polished, but disfigured in two 
or three places by coarse pebbles. 
His hair is a crop, without the large lock peculiar 
to the king’s sons, shown in the bas-reliefs : the 
beard short, and now broken away. The muscles are 
remarkably well marked ; better so, perhaps, than 
on any other statue of that age. The face, nose, 
and all the limbs are delicate and youthful ; the 
chest wide, the waist slender, the stomach rising 
with a swell ; the knee good, showing the division 
between the patella and the tibia. The ankle is 
less good. The nails are scarcely marked on either 
fingers or toes ; the left thumb is too short. The 
right leg is badly formed, from the difficulty of 
reaching it with the chisel, as it is withdrawn into 
the recess between the standard and the wall which 
joms the left leg to the supporting pillar. The 
statue is quite perfect — except for the loss of the 
beard, of the three figures on the top of one of the 
standards, and of one of the two square pieces with 
which the pillar behind had been repaired, and for 
a hole broken through the wall which joins the 
right-hand standard to the supporting pillar. 
The delicate youthful face is clearly meant for a 
portrait, but perhaps without close approach to a 
likeness, as the manly beard which once adorned 
the chin proves that some departure from exact- 
ness was allowed to the sculptor. But, neverthe- 
less, the face, and indeed the whole figure, has less 
of the conventional stiffness than is usiial in the 
Egyptian statues. The shoulders, the arched instep, 
the swell of the stomach, show more knowledge of 
anatomy than is to be seen in any of the earlier 
statues in the Museum • while if it is compared, 
particularly in respect to the legs, with the sitting 
statue of Oimenepthah II., which is close beside it 
in the Museum, we shall see that, in the very next 
generation, art was declining and the sculptors were 
falling into bad taste. 
The name of the young prince is 
spelt with three characters. (See fig. 2.) 
The first is probably an anvil, in the 
form of two half- spheres, with the force 
ofMES; the second is an owl, with the 
force of MO ; and the third is a sceptre 
having an animal’s head on the top, 
with an uncertain force, perhaps INE, a hook, as 
it is the crook usually held in the hand of the 
Egyptian gods and priests ; it is still the camel- 
liook of the Arabs of Mount Sinai, and it seems to 
be the letter N in the names of the towns Mendes 
and Hermonthis. Hence the name of the young 
prince may perhaps be Mesmoine. But, as the 
first of these characters has had other and various 
forces given to it by various scholars, it may be 
as well to show why I think it had the force of 
MES. This can be done by showing that it will 
bear that force, and no other 
that we know of, in the chief 
places in which it is met with. 
Thus, it is the first, and only 
disputed character, in the name 
of Meshophra Thothmosis (see 
fig. 3), which Manetho reads 
as Misaphris, and in that of 
his successor, which Manetho 
reads as Misphragmuthosis. 
Then it forms one out of a pair 
of titles which often precede a king’s two names. 
(See fig. 4.) Champollion guessed that 
it might be a diadem, and translated 
the title “Lord of Diadems,” because 1 3 3 
that title is met with in Hermapion’s ^ 
Greek translation from an obelisk. 
But the hieroglypliical character there meant is 
certainly an asp, of which we see a golden image tied 
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Fig. I- 
Fig. 3. 
