Egyptian sculpture in the round had two entirely different objects, which were reached by different methods, and are seen in different examples. The first was purely monumental and decorative, and its purposes are served by the production of the colossal statues, monuments of royal pride and glory, and, not less, pieces of decoration in a great architectural scheme. These gigantic works are not to be viewed as portraiture in the strict sense, and that the Egyptians themselves did not so view them is manifest from the fact that a reigning Pharaoh seldom hesitated to appropriate to himself any convenient statues of one of his predecessors by the simple process of cutting his own cartouche on the figure, and obliterating that of the original owner. The question of likeness or unlikeness was a very small one; what was required was a figure which should convey the impression of power and dignity, linked with the name of a particular Pharaoh. In this respect, and as elements of an architectural whole, these statues unquestionably served their purpose; more was never expected of them, and to criticise them as lacking in expression, and in individuality, is to do them an injustice. They can only be judged as what they were designed to be, not as something radically different. [Illustration: 32. PTOLEMAIC RELIEF-WORK, KOM OMBOS.] The position is quite different with regard to the other object of Egyptian sculpture, which was definitely portraiture. Apart from his monumental work, which in a limited sense may be said to have ideal elements in it, the Egyptian sculptor, unlike his successor, the Greek, produced no ideal work. He was simply and solely, from first to last, a portrait sculptor, and in this respect he has seldom been excelled. The whole object of his work was to produce a tomb-statue, which should be the refuge of the _Ka_ of the dead man when his mummy had perished by lapse of time. Therefore the one condition of his art was that it should produce likenesses as absolute as the power of man could compass. The result of such an aim is manifest, both in the successes and in the limitations of Egyptian sculpture. In the one point to which he gave his whole strength, the sculptor scored, not always, of course, but in many instances, a most astonishing success. It is impossible to imagine anything more lifelike than the heads of some of the Old Kingdom statues--the Ti or the Ranefer of the Cairo Museum, or among royal statues, the Menkaura with the figures of the Nomes, or in later times the exquisite Berlin head of Queen Nefertiti, the astonishing ebony head of a royal princess of the same period, who may be Queen Tiy, or, to come down to still later days, the other head of Mentuemhat which Miss Benson and Miss Gourlay unearthed from the temple of Mut, or in the very latest days of Egyptian independence, the head of an unknown man in green schist which is now in the Berlin Museum. Until the rise of Roman portrait-sculpture, no ancient school