[254] The Boulak Museum possesses a very fine scarab which shows Nechao between Isis and Neith, one of whom hands him a mace and the other a small figure of Mentou-Ra, the God of Battles. Two chained prisoners are prostrate at the base of the scarab. MARIETTE, _Notice_, No. 556. We shall not dwell upon the figure in green basalt which stands in the middle of the _Salle Historique_ in the Louvre. We know from the inscription upon its girdle that it represents the king Psemethek II. The execution is careful, but the work has suffered great mutilation, the head and parts of the limbs being modern restorations.[255] On the other hand, the two little bronze sphinxes which stand upon the chimney-piece in the same room are in excellent condition. According to De Rougé their heads reproduce the features of Ouaphra, the Apries of the Greeks (Fig. 227).[256] In the ground-floor gallery there are several sphinxes which, according to their inscriptions, should include portraits of some of those princes who between 527 and 332 B.C. temporarily freed Egypt from the Persian yoke; Nepherites, Achoris, Nectanebo, &c. None of them, however, show enough individuality in their features to suggest that they were copied from nature. Their heads are all clothed indiscriminately in the same elegance of contour, and in looking at them we find ourselves far indeed from the admirable portraits of the early empire, or even from that statue of Ameneritis which closes the series of royal effigies. [255] PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, No. 269. [256] DE ROUGÉ, _Notice Sommaire_, p. 59. [Illustration: FIG. 227.--Bronze Sphinx. Louvre. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]