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So much for the illustrations: the portion of the text as yet published greatly increases their interest, and assures the work permanent value. It contains information as to the origin of the object, its migrations, its actual home to-day, its state of preservation and, at need, the restorations it has undergone: descriptions showing careful research, and extended bibliographies complete the suggestions made by the picture, and inform us of previous criticisms. The shortest of the notices fills two compact quarto columns, and are reinforced by numerous footnotes; many of them are veritable essays in which the subject is examined on every side and as exhaustively as is possible. Vignettes are inserted which exhibit the object in a different light from that of the plate, or show the reader some of the analogous motives referred to in the discussion.

Repetition of similar types has sometimes prevented Bissing from developing his views as a whole, and we are compelled to look under several rubrics before learning his full opinion. This is a serious drawback unless it is remedied in the introduction: we shall perhaps find all the observations brought together there into one system, with justificatory references to each of the notices in particular.

Bissing’s criticisms are always well justified: they testify to a mature taste or a sure tact, and there are very few with which experts would not willingly agree. Here and there, however, I must make some reservations, for example, with regard to the Chephrên of Gizeh. After discussing at length Borchardt’s reasons for attributing it to a Saïte school, and refuting them, Bissing declares that it is perhaps a late copy of a work contemporary with the Pharaoh. I recently had occasion to study it closely in order to determine the position in the Museum best suited to it, and to decide the height of the plinth on which it should be placed. I went over Borchardt’s arguments and Bissing’s hypotheses one after the other and came to the conclusion that the date assigned by Mariette at the moment of its discovery is the only admissible one. The archæological details belong to the Memphian age, and the peculiarities of style which Bissing points out, and which actually exist, are not sufficiently strongly marked to justify its attribution to a later epoch. I only see in them the divergences which, in every age, mark works coming from different and perhaps rival studios. The artists who cut the doubles in diorite destined for the pyramid of the Pharaoh, did not certainly have the same masters as those to whom we owe the Chephrên in alabaster and the royal statuettes of Mitrahineh: the difference of origin sufficiently explains why they do not resemble each other. I fear that in criticizing certain sculptures Borchardt and others were governed in spite of themselves by the ideas that long prevailed on the uniformity and monotony of Egyptian art. It seemed to them that at one and the same period the composition and inspiration must always remain identical, and wherever they did not harmonize, the fact was attributed solely to an interval in time. But we must accustom ourselves to think that things did not go differently with the Egyptians than with the moderns. In a city like Memphis there was more than one studio, and they all possessed their traditions, their affectations, their style, which distinguished them from each other, and which are found in their work like a trade-mark. Some errors of classification will be avoided in the future if we can be persuaded to recognize that many of the peculiarities that we begin to note on statues and bas-reliefs may be the mannerisms of the school to which they belong, and are not always indications of relative age.

The care that Bissing has taken to render what is due to each of the experts who discovered a piece or spoke of it, deserves the more praise since many Egyptologists of the present generation have adopted the attitude of ignoring what has been said or written before them. They seem to insinuate to their readers that archæology, religion, grammar, history, nothing indeed that they touch on, has ever been studied before, and that the bibliography of a subject begins with the first essay they have devoted to it. Although the past of Egyptology is so short, it is a difficult subject to know, and it is not surprising if Bissing has misrepresented some features or ignored others. For example, he attributes the merit of recognizing in the animal’s tail that the kings attach to their back, not a lion’s tail but a jackal’s4 to Wiedemann; I do not know if I was the first, but I think that I certainly stated this before Wiedemann.5 A little farther on, I regret that Bissing was not acquainted with my notice of the statue of Montouhotpou in the Musée Egyptien:6 I am curious to know if he accepts my explanation of the disproportion between the feet, legs, and bust. It seems to me that it was not intended to be on the same level as the spectator, but that it ought to be placed in a naos, on a fairly high platform which could be reached by a staircase in front: seen from below, foreshortened, the effect of the perspective would redeem the exaggeration of form and re-establish the balance between the parts. It seems also that Bissing was not acquainted with the part of the Musée in which this Montouhotpou is discussed, for he does not refer to it again with regard to the Amenemhaît III discovered by Flinders Petrie at Fayoum.7 Farther on again, it would have been in keeping to note that Legrain found the debris of a statuette in black granite in the mud of the favissa at Karnak, which so closely resembles the admirable Ramses II of Turin that it might almost be the replica or a sort of original rough model.8 Unfortunately the head is wanting, but we have been almost entirely successful in restoring the body: if it is not by the same sculptor who took such pleasure in modelling the Turin statue, it comes from the same royal studio. The few differences to be noted between them arise solely from the inequality of the stature: it was necessary to simplify certain details or to suppress them in the smallest of the statues.

These examples show that there is nothing very serious in the omissions and negligences: we are surprised not that there should be some, but that among such a mass of references there are not more. I might perhaps disagree with some of the theories or points of doctrine Bissing constantly advances, but I will wait to do so until he has elaborated into a system the elements so abundantly spread through the notices. But there is one criticism I will make now: he scarcely mentions the schools into which Egypt was divided, so that we are tempted to conclude that, like so many contemporary archæologists, he believes in the existence of one sole school, which worked in an almost uniform manner over the whole of Egypt at one time. It is, however, certain that there were always several schools on the banks of the Nile, each of which possessed its traditions, its designs, its method of interpreting the costume or the pose of individuals, the works of which have a sufficiently special physiognomy to admit of their being easily separated into their different groups. Here, again, it seems to me that sometimes varieties of execution which are the result of the teaching are taken to be signs of age, and that pieces which are contemporary within a few years, but which proceed from distinct schools, are spread over centuries. I have not discovered Bissing in such errors: his natural insight and his knowledge of the monuments preserved him from making them. I wish, however, that he had touched on the matter more definitely than he has, and, after letting it be seen in several places that he admits the existence of those schools, he should have defined their characteristics in accordance as the progress of his book brought their work before the reader. He has briefly touched on the matter in regard to the sphinxes of Tanis and the statue of Amenemhaît III, but he might, for example, have seized the opportunity of the Montouhotpou in order to demonstrate the tendencies of Theban art at its birth; he could have followed them in their evolution, and the Amenôthes I of Turin might perhaps have served to teach us how those tendencies were developed or modified between the beginning of the first Theban Empire and that of the second. A passage in the notice of the so-called Hyksôs sphinxes leads me to hope that he will do this for the Tanite school in regard to the celebrated Bearers of offerings: I greatly wish that I may not be disappointed in my hope.