The Nile traversing the entire length of Egypt formed a great avenue for trade, as it was an open and easy way for reaching all parts. Not only did the Nile give access to all parts about it, but also the canals going out from it and running parallel with it connected the various parts and gave ready ways on which domestic trade could go. The other nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea carried on important maritime trade with Egypt and, too, there was a great caravan trade with the interior of Africa and parts of Asia. From Ethiopia came gold, ivory, and slaves; from Arabia was obtained an incense necessary in the religious ceremonies; from India were received spices. "Syria took Egyptian chariots by hundreds; Tyre imported 'fine linen with broidered work'; Greece, large quantities of paper; India and Arabia, linen fabrics; Etruria, glass, porcelain, and alabaster; Assyria, perhaps, ivories. In the earlier times Egyptian manufactures must have been altogether unrivalled; and their glass, their pottery, their textile fabrics, their metal-work, must have circulated freely through the various countries bordering the Mediterranean and the Red Sea."[40] Among the important industries of Egypt were the works in sculpture, painting, and architecture. The men engaged in these occupations ranked high, along with the scribes. There were three kinds of sculpture in ancient Egypt. One kind was that of statuary, sculpture in the round, where the complete figure was shown; a second kind was relief, where the figure was raised from the flat surface by cutting away the stone about it; the third kind was intaglio, in which there was a cutting of the figure into the flat surface, sinking the figure below the surface, and in one form of this the cutting was done about the figure so as to leave it raised from the interior, almost up to the level of the surface of the stone. The old Egyptians reached a stage of progress in which the block of stone for the sculpture figure was cut away from the original rock and transported to the place where it was to stand. Yet the figure was rarely if ever cut entirely away from the stone and so did not stand forth separate, detached, a statute in and of itself. That which most kept Egyptian sculpture, perhaps, from reaching to the highest attainment was the conventionality in the displaying of figures. As the sculptures were used in the decoration of tombs and temples, religion, which is ever conservative, prescribed certain attitudes for the figures, so that there was not much left for the working out by the individual sculptor, and although there was an exactness of finish attained there was not that expression which comes through allowing freedom to the individual sculptor, and in consequence there is very much of a sameness in the products of the sculptors running through the twenty centuries of old Egypt.