By careful selection from the sepulchral bas-reliefs, we might, if we chose, present to our readers reproductions of the whole fauna of Ancient Egypt, the lion, hyena, leopard, jackal, fox, wolf, ibex, gazelle, the hare, the porcupine, the crocodile, the hippopotamus, the different fishes in the Nile, the birds in the marshes, the flamingo, the ibis, duck, stork, crane, and goose, the dog and the cat, the goat and the pig. Everywhere we find the same aptitude for summarizing the distinctive characteristics of a species. This accuracy of observation has been recognized by every connoisseur who has treated the subject. "In the Boulak Museum," says M. Gabriel Charmes, "there is a row of Nile geese painted with such precision, that I have seen a naturalist stand amazed at their truth to nature and the fidelity with which they reproduce the features of the race. Their colours, too, are as bright and uninjured as upon the day when they were last touched by the brush of the artist."[204] [204] GABRIEL CHARMES, _La Réorganisation du Musée de Boulak_ (_Revue des Deux Mondes_, September 1, 1880). He is speaking of the fragment which is numbered 988 in the _Notice du Musée_. According to Mariette it dates from a period anterior to Cheops. It was found near the statues of Ra-hotep and Nefert. [Illustration: FIG. 203.--Sepulchral bas-relief, Boulak.] [Illustration: FIG. 204.--Bas-relief from the Tomb of Ra-ka-pou, Boulak.] The figures of men and animals to which our attention has been given all belong to the domain of portraiture. The artist imitates the forms of those who sit to him and of the animals of the country; he copies the incidents of the daily life about him, but his ambition goes no farther. All art is a translation, an interpretation, and, of course, the sculptors of the mastabas had their own individual ways of looking at their models. But they made no conscious effort to add anything to them, they did not attempt to select, to give one feature predominance over another, or to combine various features in different proportions from those found in ordinary life, and by such means to produce something better than mere repetitions of their accidental models. They tried neither to invent nor to create.