You must not gather, from what I have just said, that the Lady Nophret is in the slightest degree as vulgar or as commonplace as an ordinary waxwork figure or modern portrait. Though its vitality cannot be denied,[68] there are artistic qualities in the simple moulding of the figure which place it very much higher than the realistic work either of ancient Greece or of modern Europe. It is only beside the statue of King Khephrën that it appears so weak; and, as it is almost a contemporary of this magnificent person, the manner in which it has been presented to us by the artist seems to be a problem. The first lesson it teaches you is this--that whatever you may think about the conventionalism of King Khephrën, such conventionalism has nothing whatever to do with archaic clumsiness, inability to see Nature, or incompetence. It is clear that the Egyptians were greater masters in rendering nature realistically than any people before or after them.[69] If they had not been, they could never have produced the portrait-statues of the architect Ti; the two portrait-statues of Ranofir, priest of Ptah of Memphis, and that of the Scribe and of the Cheikh-el-Beled[70]--all in the museum at Cairo. When they are not realistic, then, it is because they do not wish to be; it is because they deliberately desire to rise above nature, to transfigure it, simplify it, and arrange it--in fact, to be artists. What, then, was the object of these realistic portrait-statues about which I have chosen to speak collectively in my references to the Lady Nophret? They were never intended by the artist who made them to be seen by the eye of man. They were never intended to be works of Ruler-art, set up to emphasize and underline the values of a people. They had a definite purpose, of course, but this purpose was quite foreign to that of Art as I defined it in my last lecture. What was this purpose? It was related to Death.[71] No realistic sculptural work was associated with Life by the ancient Egyptians. As men who were still able to believe in a Man-God, and were still convinced of the power of man-wrought miracles, how could they associate realism or that principle of manufacture whereby a man deliberately suppresses his will to art and makes himself subservient to nature--how could they associate this with Life,--Life which to these dwellers on the Nile was inextricably bound up with the hand, the thought, the will, and the power of man? No--these realistic sculptures which throw all our puerile Police Art into the shade were associated not with Life, but with the opposite of Life--with Death, with underground tombs and sarcophagi, with mummies and musty mastabas, and with the hope of conquering Eternal Sleep.