The advanced painting of the early pyramid times is shown by the geese (fig. 68), stalking along in a meadow amid tufts of herbage. The air of grave self-sufficiency is admirably caught, and this small piece of a great wall-scene at Medum is deservedly admired. Of the Middle Kingdom there is no fine example remaining. [Illustration: EARLIEST PAINTING 65. First age of prehistoric painting 66. Second age 67. Ship on wall-painting 68. Geese of Medum] The great age of painting was the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties. The sculpturing of tombs was then abandoned in favour of the cheaper paint; and the taste of the age for graceful and light treatment found its best scope in the use of the brush. Here we have a group of pelicans (fig. 69) with an old herdsman and baskets of eggs. Next (fig. 70) is a harvest scene. Two men are carrying a load of the ears of corn in a net. Behind are the stalks of straw after the ears have been cut. Two girls who were gleaning have stopped to quarrel over the corn; one has seized a wrist of the other, and the two free hands have each taken a grip of the other one’s hair. To the right, under a sycamore fig-tree, one boy is asleep, while another plays on a long reed pipe, with a water-skin hung over his head. In the lower line a girl with a thorn in her foot is stretching it out to be examined by another girl. Further, a lad is stripping the heads of millet by dragging them through a fixed fork. The whole scene is full of incident, and the drawing of the figures in unusual action is excellent. The curious dress of the men is a linen waist-cloth, with a net of slit leather-work to take the wear, and a solid piece of leather left in the middle of it for sitting on, as in fig. 140. Such slit leather-work is dealt with in the last chapter. [Illustration: NEW KINGDOM PAINTING 69. Pelicans and keeper 70, 71. Harvest scenes] A third scene (fig. 71) is in the harvest field; the ears have been put into a net, and to press them down a stick is passed through a hole on one edge, while a man has hooked his arm over the stick, and jumped up so as to bring his weight with a jerk to press the stick down; with his other hand he holds the end of a cord tied to the net, so as to be ready to secure the stick when pressed down and prevent it springing up again. The spirit shown in this action is very good, and it is perhaps the only figure given in the act of jumping. On the left is a young woman, one of the daughters, behind the owner of the tomb; on the right is a gleaning girl, stopping in the tall corn to drink, with her basket set on the ground. On the next plate a portion of a ceiling pattern (fig. 72) shows how such designs were drawn. The rhombic lines were done first, then the dark groundwork, leaving white discs, and lastly these were filled up with the spirals. The whole was copied from _appliqué_ leather-work, with lines of stitching.