[336] PRISSE, _Histoire_, etc. text, p. 291. The Egyptians produced easel pictures as well as wall paintings. In one of the Beni-Hassan tombs two artists are represented painting animals upon a panel.[337] Herodotus tells us that Amasis presented his portrait to the people of Cyrene.[338] Supposing it to be the work of a native artist, we may form some idea of its character from the Egyptian portraits, dating from the Roman epoch, which are now in the Louvre. Doubtless the portrait of Amasis was very different in style from these productions of the decadence; but it is probable that, like them, it was painted upon a cedar panel. [337] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. ii. p. 294. [338] HERODOTUS, ii. 182. We have no reason to believe that the Egyptians ever succeeded in crossing the line which separates illumination from painting. The convention which saw only single flat tones on every surface being once adopted, it was sometimes pushed to extraordinary lengths. Not content with ignoring the varieties of tone and tint which nature everywhere presents, the Egyptian artists sometimes adopted arbitrary hues which did not, even faintly, recall the actual colours of the objects upon which they were used. As a rule they represented the female skin as a light-yellow, and the male as a reddish-brown. This distinction may be understood. Besides its convenience as indicative of sex to a distant observer, it answers to a difference which social habits have established in every civilized society. More completely covered than men and less in the open air, the women, at least those of the upper classes, are less exposed to the effects of sun and wind than men. Their skins are usually fairer. In northern climates they are whiter, in southern less brown. We are surprised therefore to find that in the small temple at Ipsamboul the carnations of male and female, whether they be kings and queens or gods and goddesses, are all alike of a vivid yellow, not far removed from chrome.[339] Those divinities who have the limbs and features of man, such as Amen, Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, should, we might think, be subject to the same rule as the images of men and women, and in most cases it is so. But, on the other hand, the painter often endows them with skins of the most fanciful and arbitrary hue. At Ipsamboul there is an Amen with a blue skin,[340] and, again, an Amen and an Osiris which are both green.[341] At Philæ we find numerous examples of the same singularity.[342] At Kalabché, in Nubia, there are royal figures coloured in the same fashion.[343] [339] There are other exceptions to the ordinary rule. In a fine bas-relief in the Louvre, representing Seti I. before Hathor, the carnations of the goddess are similar to those of the Pharaoh; they are in each case dark red (basement room, B, 7).