There is in the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum a wall painting taken from a tomb at Thebes. The painting is supposed to have been executed during the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty, and in it are depicted two dancing girls facing in opposite directions. There is plenty of action and agility depicted in these figures. In one the hands are raised high above the head; in the other they are lowered. One female not dancing is represented playing a double pipe, and others are clapping their hands. The accompanists are dressed, but the dancers wear only a gauze tunic. All Egyptian professional dancers are represented either nude or very slightly dressed and the performances were given by the people of highest respectability. All Egyptologues are of the opinion that the outline of the transparent robe worn by these dancing girls may, in certain instances, have become effaced; but others say that it is certain they danced naked, as their successors, the Almeiis, do. The view of Sir Gardner Wilkinson that the Egyptians forbade the higher classes to learn dancing as an amusement or profession, because they dreaded the excitement resulting from such an occupation, the excess of which ruffled and discomposed the mind, contradicts the opinions of other scholars on the same subject. We read in the Bible that after the Israelites had safely accomplished the passage across the Red Sea, Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, herself a prophetess, took a tambourine in her hand, and danced with other women to celebrate the overthrow of their late task-masters. There are other instances in the Bible which tend to show that among the Jews, who were reared on Egyptian civilization, it was customary for people of the most exalted rank to dance. There is a reproduction of Amenophis II. from one of the oldest tombs of Thebes that goes to show that Egyptians of all classes were highly proficient in the art of dancing. Four upper class women are represented as playing and dancing at the same time, but their instruments are for the most part obliterated. A fifth figure is resting on one knee, with her hands crossed before her breast. The posing of the heads in these figures is masterful. In another painting from Beni Hassan, executed about three thousand five hundred years ago, a dancer is represented in the act of performing a _pirouette_ in the extended fourth position. The arms are fully outstretched, and the general attitude of the figure is precisely what it might be in executing a similar movement at the present day. It is also noticeable that the angle formed by the upper part of the foot and fore part of the leg is obtuse, which is quite in accordance with modern choreographic rules, while the natural inclination of an inexperienced and untrained dancer when holding the limb in such a position would be to bend the foot towards the shin, or at least to keep it in its normal position at right angles.