[286] P. PIERRET, _Une Pierre Gravée au Nom du Roi d'Égypte Thoutmès II._ (_Gazette Archéologique_, 1878, p. 41). This stone is placed in Case P of the _Salle Historique_ in the Louvre. M. Lenormant has kindly placed at our disposal the _clichés_ of the double engraving which was made for M. Pierret's article. [Illustration: FIG. 245.--Seal of Armais. Louvre. Actual size.] Sometimes the ring is all of one material, characters and figures being cut in the metal of which it consists. It is so in the case of the most conspicuous object among the Egyptian jewels in the Louvre (Fig. 245), an object which can never have been intended for the finger; it is too large: it must have been made for use only as a seal. It is thus described by M. Pierret: "Seal formed of a ring and movable bezel, both of gold. Upon one face of the bezel the oval of King Armais, the last prince of the eighteenth dynasty, is engraved. Upon the other a lion _passant_, the emblem of royal power; it is surmounted by the words _Nepkhopesch_, lord of valour. Upon the third and fourth sides are a scorpion and a crocodile respectively. The execution of this little work is admirable; the design and action of the lion are especially fine."[287] [287] PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique_, No. 481. The ring given by Pharaoh to Joseph as a sign of the authority delegated to him, may have been such as this.[288] The cheapest rings had bezels of faience or schist covered with enamel. The scarabs were cut as a rule from soft stone. [288] Genesis xli. 42. In gem-cutting the Egyptians made use both of the intaglio process and of relief, but the greater fitness of the former for the work to be done by a signet made it their especial favourite. They were ignorant of the process we call cameo, in which the differently coloured layers of the sardonyx are taken advantage of to produce contrast of tint between the relief and its bed. A few Egyptian cylinders, in earthenware or soft stone enamelled, are known. They bear royal ovals; the British Museum has one which seems to date from the twelfth dynasty. Their employment seems never to have become very general.[289] [289] BIRCH, _History of Ancient Pottery_, p. 72. PIERRET, _Catalogue de la Salle Historique du Louvre_, Nos. 499, 500, 505. § 9. _The Principal Conventions in Egyptian Sculpture._ Whether it were employed upon wood, upon limestone, or upon the harder rocks, whether it were cutting colossi in the flanks of the sandstone hills, or carving the minute images of its gods and kings in the stone of a signet ring, the art of Egypt never shook itself free from those intellectual conceptions which were impressed upon its first creations; it remained true to the tendencies of its infancy; it preserved the same fundamental qualities and defects; it looked upon nature with the same eyes, and interpreted her in the same fashion, from the first moment to the last.