Having pointed out the leading points in the technic of sculpture, we take up its history, beginning naturally with the earliest forms as found in Egypt. The Egyptians, inhabiting a flat, uniform country, of pure and salubrious climate, working as sculptors before a written language was invented, carved their colossal sphinx almost entirely out of the living rock; an amazing example of symbolic sculptural representation, combining the human with the brute form of the lion. The date of this first great work is probably earlier than that of the earliest pyramids—that built by Chofo, King of Memphis, the Cheops of Herodotus, and the larger one by Nef Chofo, his son. M. Renan, speaking for M. Mariette, states that a tablet was found by him recording that Nef Chofo did certain repairs to the sphinx; so that since it required repairs, it must already have existed for a considerable time. All small barbaric or archaic work of the ancient Egyptians in sculpture has perished in the vast lapse of time. But this one monument, raised at least 4,000 years before the Christian era, stands to prove, with its companion pyramids, the wonderful power of conception, the energy and practical skill which characterized the early Egyptians. What they lacked in ideas of beauty, they made up for by the simple grandeur in the colossal size and perfection in execution. The intention of producing a monument to last forever was shown in an equally striking manner in the construction of the pyramids, and with an exercise of science and skill even more remarkable. Egyptian art, in the form of architecture, was, after the pyramids of Ghizeh, further developed about 1650 B. C., under Osirtesen I., who built the oldest of the temples at Thebes. Columns and obelisks were then invented, and the _cavi relievi_ were largely used. Statuary, however, did not advance until after the Phœnician Shepherd Kings—a body of wandering Arabs, so called, who conquered Upper Egypt for a time—were driven out by Amosis, King of Thebes, about 1450 B. C. Passing over Amunothph I. and his successor Thothmosis I., of whom there is a fine statue in the Turin Museum, we come to Thothmosis II., whose reign marks a period of vast development, as he married Nitocris, the last Queen of Memphis, capital of Lower Egypt, and thus united the two kingdoms, about 1340 B. C. The great avenue of sphinxes, leading to the temple of Karnak, was made in her reign, and there is a statue of Thothmosis II., a seated figure seven feet nine inches high, in good proportions, of about seven heads high, the fingers and toes straight, not showing the knuckles, and the legs sharply chiseled at the shins, not showing the small bone on the outside of the leg, as in the statues of the later time of Amunothph III. (about 1260 B. C.).