The objects are in wonderful preservation. A lid is lost, a lotus branch is broken behind the girl who is gathering flowers, one of the feet of the bearer of offerings is missing. Otherwise they are intact, and might have just come from the hands of the craftsman. The wood is of a very fine grain, marvellously adapted to the needs of the chisel. It has never been painted, but has become darkened with time. The original colour must have been the golden yellow seen in the cracks of some pieces of thin wood found in the tombs. None of the ladles show any signs of wear: they seem to have been deposited new in the tomb near the dead person, who preserved them new until our day. Like the rest of the funerary equipment, they were intended for use in the other world. The lists of offerings mention antimony powder and green paint among the things sent to the _double_ on festival days: the perfume ladles and boxes were as necessary in the tomb as they had been on earth. I do not think that any survive which we can with certainty attribute to the time of the Pyramids: but the bas-reliefs of the Memphian tombs show us the joiners at work, and do not allow us to doubt that the trade in small wooden objects was very flourishing at that period. Under the great Theban Dynasties, Egypt exported them by thousands; imitated in Phœnicia, or even transported directly by the Phœnicians to the Mediterranean coasts, they transmitted the forms of Oriental art to the West. It is probable that Theban production--the only one known to us by dated monuments found in the tombs--entirely ceased, or at least became almost insignificant, when the greatness of Thebes declined from the tenth century _B.C._ They were still manufactured at Memphis and in the important cities of the Delta until the Ptolemies and the Cæsars. Recent specimens are somewhat rare, and present considerable differences from those of Theban manufacture. As it was exactly this Memphian art that almost exclusively supplied the Phœnician market from the time of Sheshonq, it is vexing that examples are not more abundant: as we do not possess sufficient, we cannot accurately judge what their influence was on the arts of the Mediterranean. The five objects I have been discussing come from the Salt collection. The Theban tombs where they were found were exploited and emptied at the beginning of the nineteenth century by collectors and dealers; it is difficult to find any like them in Egypt now, and those that are discovered are very inferior to these in delicacy and quality. [Illustration: PERFUME LADLE. The Louvre.] XXII SOME GREEN BASALT STATUETTES OF THE SAÏTE PERIOD These statuettes were cut in greenish basalt of fine grain, loved by the artists of the New Empire and the Saïte Period above all other stones. They formed part of the Salt collection, and are now exhibited in the Louvre.