Apart from these and one or two other mannerisms, nothing can be more natural than the drawing, or more spirited than the action, of all these men and animals. The most difficult and transitory movements are expressed with masterly certitude. The donkey kicks up his heels and brays--the crocodile plunges--the wild duck rises on the wing; and the fleeting action is caught in each instance with a truthfulness that no landseer could distance. The forms, which have none of the conventional stiffness of later Egyptian work, are modeled roundly and boldly yet finished with exquisite precision and delicacy. The coloring, however, is purely decorative; and, being laid on in single tints, with no attempt at gradation or shading, conceals rather than enhances the beauty of the sculptures. These, indeed, are best seen where the color is entirely rubbed off. The tints are yet quite brilliant in parts of the larger chamber; but in the passage and court-yard, which have been excavated only a few years and are with difficulty kept clear from day to day, there is not a vestige of color left. This is the work of the sand--that patient laborer whose office it is not only to preserve but to destroy. The sand secretes and preserves the work of the sculptor, but it effaces the work of the painter. In sheltered places where it accumulates passively like a snow-drift, it brings away only the surface detail, leaving the under colors rubbed and dim. But nothing, as I had occasion constantly to remark in the course of the journey, removes color so effectually as sand which is exposed to the shifting action of the wind. [Illustration: HEAD OF TI.] This tomb, as we have seen, consists of a portico, a court-yard, two chambers, and a sepulchral vault; but it also contains a secret passage of the kind known as a “serdab.” These “serdabs,” which are constructed in the thickness of the walls and have no entrances, seem to be peculiar to tombs of the ancient empire (_i.e._ the period of the pyramid kings); and they contain statues of the deceased of all sizes, in wood, lime-stone, and granite. Twenty statues of Ti were here found immured in the “serdab” of his tomb, all broken save one--a spirited figure in lime-stone, standing about seven feet high, and now in the museum at Boulak. This statue represents a fine young man in a white tunic, and is evidently a portrait. The features are regular; the expression is good-natured; the whole tournure of the head is more Greek than Egyptian. The flesh is painted of a yellowish brick tint, and the figure stands in the usual hieratic attitude, with the left leg advanced, the hands clenched, and the arms straightened close to the sides. One seems to know Ti so well after seeing the wonderful pictures in his tomb, that this charming statue interests one like the portrait of a familiar friend.[15]