One would say, indeed, that the sculptors had purposely endeavoured to turn them all out after the one smiling and commonplace pattern. Great is the contrast when we turn from these giant dolls to the black granite sphinxes discovered by Mariette at Tanis in 1861, and by him ascribed to the Hyksos period. Here energy, at all events, is not lacking. Wiry and compact, the lion body is shorter than in sphinxes of the usual type. The head, instead of wearing the customary "klaft," or head-gear of folded linen, is clothed with an ample mane, which also surrounds the face. The eyes are small; the nose is aquiline and depressed at the tip; the cheekbones are prominent; the lower lip slightly protrudes. The general effect of the face is, in short, so unlike the types we are accustomed to find in Egypt, that it has been accepted in proof of an Asiatic origin (fig. 196). These sphinxes are unquestionably anterior to the Eighteenth Dynasty, because one of the kings of Avaris, named Apepi, has cut his name upon the shoulder of each. Arguing from this fact, it was, however, too hastily concluded that they are works of the time of that prince. On a closer examination, we see that they had already been dedicated to some Pharaoh of a yet earlier period, and that Apepi had merely usurped them; and M. Golenischeff has shown that they were made for Amenemhat III., of the Twelfth Dynasty, and with his features. Those so-called Hyksos monuments may be the products of a local school, the origin of which may have been independent, and its traditions quite different from the traditions of the Memphite workshops. But except at Abydos, El Kab, Asûan, and some two or three other places, the provincial art of ancient Egypt is so little known to us that I dare not lay too much stress upon this hypothesis. Whatever the origin of the Tanite School, it continued to exist long after the expulsion of the Hyksos invaders, since one of its best examples, a group representing the Nile of the North and the Nile of the South, bearing trays laden with flowers and fish, was consecrated by Pisebkhanû of the Twenty-first Dynasty. [Illustration: Fig. 197.--Bas-relief head of Seti I.] [Illustration: Fig. 198.--The god Amen, and Horemheb.] [Illustration: Fig. 199.--Head of a Queen, Eighteenth Dynasty.]