The little figure which occupies the place of honour in this same saloon (Plate X.), though more famous, is hardly superior to the fragment just described. It was found by Mariette in the tomb of Sekhem-ka, during his excavation of the Serapeum. Other figures of the same kind were found with it, but are hardly equal to it in merit. They are believed to date from the fifth or sixth dynasty. This scribe is seated, cross-legged, in an attitude still familiar to those who have visited the East. The most superficial visitor to the Levant must have seen, in the audience-hall of the _cadi_ or _pacha_, the _kiatib_ crouching exactly in the same fashion before the chair or divan, registering sentences with his rapid _kalem_, or writing out despatches. Our scribe is listening; his thin and bony features are vibrating with intelligence; his black eye-balls positively sparkle; his mouth is only closed because respect keeps him silent. His shoulders are high and, square, his chest ample, his pectoral muscles very large. People who follow a very sedentary occupation generally put on much fat on the front of their bodies, and this scribe is no exception to the rule. His arms are free of his sides; their position is easy and natural. One hand holds a strip of papyrus upon which he writes with the other, his pen being a reed. The lower parts of the body and the thighs are covered with a pair of drawers, whose white colour contrasts with the brownish red of the carnations. The breadth and truth with which the knee-joints are indicated should be remarked. The only details that have, to a certain extent, been "scamped," are the feet. Trusting to their being half hidden by the folded legs, the sculptor has left them in a very rudimentary condition. [Illustration: THE SCRIBE (LOUVRE) Imp. Dufrenoy] [Illustration: FIG. 175.--Wooden panel from the Tomb of Hosi. Drawn by Bourgoin.] The eyes form the most striking feature in this figure. "They consist of an iris of rock crystal surrounding a metal pupil, and set in an eyeball of opaque white quartz. The whole is framed in continuous eyelids of bronze."[181] [181] DE ROUGÉ, _Notice sommaire des Monuments Égyptiens_, 1865, p. 68.