. Fir,. I.âHUNTING SCENE IN SENBI'S TOMB-CH.\PEL. from the artistic traditions and conventions of the Old Kingdom or Memphite school, and had developed a style of their own which is characterised by its re- markable freedom, especially in the treatment of the human form. It is not in the choice of subjects, but in the rendering of them, that the early Middle Kingdom art of Cuss differs from the traditional art of Memphis. The Cusite artists, indeed, still employed the same stock scenes as are to be found on the walls of the mas(abehs ^ of Sakkareh and Gizeh, but tl^ey imbued them with a new vi
. Fir,. I.âHUNTING SCENE IN SENBI'S TOMB-CH.\PEL. from the artistic traditions and conventions of the Old Kingdom or Memphite school, and had developed a style of their own which is characterised by its re- markable freedom, especially in the treatment of the human form. It is not in the choice of subjects, but in the rendering of them, that the early Middle Kingdom art of Cuss differs from the traditional art of Memphis. The Cusite artists, indeed, still employed the same stock scenes as are to be found on the walls of the mas(abehs ^ of Sakkareh and Gizeh, but tl^ey imbued them with a new vigour and carried them out with a freedom hitherto unknown. This break with old-established conventions, be it noted, is as a rule observable in the figures of persons of little social importance, such as herdsmen, fishermen, and the like, and in the repre- 1 The tomb-chapels of the Old Kingdom nobles are so designated because in shape-âthey are rectangular flat-topped masses of masonry with sloping sides-âthey closely resemble the stone bench, mastabeh, upon which the customers sit outside the open Arab shop. For an excellent representation of a group of mastabeh'tornbs see A. Erman, Life in Ancient -Ej'J'/'^ English translation by H. M. Tirard, London, 1894, p. 311. felt in a hunting scene in the tomb-chapel of Senbi (Fig. i). In the choice and general arrangement of the various figures of animals it closely resembles other Egj^tian hunting scenes, in particular that which once decorated one of the walls of the pyramid-temple of the Pharaoh Sahure' (Fifth Dynasty), and which is now preserved in the great Egyptian collection of the Berlin Museum. The Memphite sculptors of reliefs were distinctly more successful in depicting animals than in rendering the human form, and the animals in the last-mentioned scene give one a vivid impression of life and motion. But even in this respect the sculptors of Memphis have been sui"passed by those of Cusse. Neither in the Sahure' hun
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