. Discovery. Science. Fig. 4.—fight BETWEEN TWO BOAT-CREWS. strength, for that he possesses in abundance, and is only too proud and pleased to display it. The famous Italian sculptor Zanelli waxed en- thusiastic over the Meir reliefs, and in particular, I think, over that depicting the fight between two boat- crews (Fig. 4). He delightedly drew my attention to the man who has fallen down, and whom one of the crew of the rival boat is jabbing in the throat with a pimt-pole. The artist, Zanelli pointed out, has most brilUantly caught off the poor fellow's attitude at the ven,' moment after he ha
. Discovery. Science. Fig. 4.—fight BETWEEN TWO BOAT-CREWS. strength, for that he possesses in abundance, and is only too proud and pleased to display it. The famous Italian sculptor Zanelli waxed en- thusiastic over the Meir reliefs, and in particular, I think, over that depicting the fight between two boat- crews (Fig. 4). He delightedly drew my attention to the man who has fallen down, and whom one of the crew of the rival boat is jabbing in the throat with a pimt-pole. The artist, Zanelli pointed out, has most brilUantly caught off the poor fellow's attitude at the ven,' moment after he had tumbled into that unenviable position, for the muscles and sinews of the right leg and foot are still strained in the vain effort to recover the lost balance. But perhaps the most outstanding example of the realism of the Cusite artists is the representation of the Bishari herdsman (Fig. 5). He is leading along three oxen and for a staff holds the branch of a tree off which the twigs have been roughly lopped. About his loins hangs what looks like a piece of gazelle's skin, his sole gai-ment. The body is shown in actual profile, not turned round full-face upon profile legs. He is the typical Hamite, and the sculptor has most cleverly reproduced all the facial and bodily characteristics of an old man of that race—a long nose, scanty tuft-beard and ahnost hairless upper lip, a scraggy neck, bony chest and shoulders and sinewy arms and legs. His head is crowned with a mass of tangled hair, in which respect he presents a marked contrast to the Egyptian, whose head was clean shaven or else closely cropped. That what has been said about the realism of the Cusite artists is not an exaggeration is clearly shown by a comparison of tliis relief with the adjacent photograph of a painting of a modem Bishari (Fig. 6), made by my friend, Mr. F. F. Ogilvie, at Aswan, in 1914. This Bishari of Aswan might be our old friend at Meir come to life again, the chief difference being that the one
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