[Illustration: 70.—R.C. lvii.] [Illustration: Fig. 71.] [Illustration: Fig. 72.] In Egyptian use this border is seldom found. A box in the Louvre had a line of long links; and a scroll edge appears to the standard of Ramessu II. But more usually the scroll is associated with the lotus, as in these— [Illustration: 73.—P. 89.] [Illustration: 74.—P. 89.] The innumerable adaptations of this in Greek and later designs are familiar enough to us. The influence of weaving has been very great upon these wave borders. As I have before noticed, the woven borders, reducing the pattern to a fret, are shown on the pre-Persian statuary at Athens, and precede the most common and oft-repeated use of the fret or key pattern borders in Greece, and thence in all classical, mediæval, and modern times. [Illustration: 75.—R.C. cxxi.] [Illustration: 76.—R.C. lxi.] [Illustration: 77.—P. 103.] Another type of border, which may be connected with this, is found in the Ramesside age. As it occurs as stitching on leather, and is well adapted to quilting or sewing bands together, it may well have been derived from that; but it is also found on metal work, with which it does not seem to be connected by origin. [Illustration: 78.—P. and C. xiii.] The source of chequer patterns is unmistakably in plaiting and weaving. On the oldest monuments the basket sign, _neb_, is chequered in different colours; so are also the baskets of farm produce carried by the servants, as shown in the tombs. The modern Nubian basket-work is well known for the many patterns which it bears like the ancient Egyptian. The chequer pattern is found in every period in Egypt, and is perhaps most common in the latest forms on the sides of thrones in the Ptolemaic age. In the Old Kingdom many varieties were in use. The plain chequers of red or black with white, the squares filled with black and red crosses on a green and yellow chequer; or diagonal square patterns developed by lines of chequers, which are often not square but elongated, thus forming general and wide-spread patterns which attract the eye on large surfaces. These are best seen in the tomb of Ptah-hotep (P. and C. xiii.) and in that of Peheniuka (L.D. I. 41), both of the Vth dynasty, Sakkara. [Illustration: 79.—P. and C. xiii.] [Illustration: 80.—L.D. I. 41.] [Illustration: 81.—L.D. II. 130.] In the Middle Kingdom we find chequers covered with bars of colour, red and green, at Benihasan. [Illustration: 82.—P. 81.] Under the empire chequers are less common owing to the greater development of more elaborate decoration. A pleasing variety was formed by lengthening the squares, a change doubtless copied from weaving, where oblong squares serve to break the monotony of the pattern. [Illustration: 83.—L.D. iv. 77.]