387), and the notary and scribes (Figs. 73, 78)--all from Thebes, where they superintend the weighing at the public scales, and enumerate a group of negro slaves. In the colossal sculptures on the facades of the great temples, where complex perspective and foreshortening would interfere with the architectural effect, the hand in which the mace or weapon is held appears to be mainly determined by the direction to which the figure looks. At Ipsamboul, as shown in _Monuments de l’Egypte_, Pl. 11, Rameses grasps with his right hand, by the hair of the head, a group of captives of various races, negroes included, while he smites them with a scimitar or pole-axe, wielded in his left hand; but an onlooker, turned in the opposite direction, holds the sword in his right hand. This transposition is more markedly shown in two scenes from the same temple (Pl. 28). In the one Rameses, looking to the right, wields the pole-axe in the near or right hand, as he smites a kneeling Asiatic; in the other, where he looks to the left, he holds his weapon again in the near, but now the left hand, as he smites a kneeling negro. On the same temple soldiers are represented holding spears in the near hand, right or left, according to the direction they are looking (Pl. 22); and swords and shields are transposed in like manner (Pl. 28). The same is seen in the siege scenes and military reviews of Rameses the Great, on the walls of Thebes and elsewhere. The evidence is misleading if the primary aim of architectural decoration is not kept in view. In an example from Karnac--appealed to in proof that the Egyptians were a left-handed people,--where Thotmes III. hold his offering in the extended left hand, his right side is stated to be towards the observer. Nor are similar examples rare. Thoth and other deities, sculptured in colossal proportions, on the Grand Temple of Isis, at Philæ, as shown by Du Camp, in like manner have their right sides towards the observer, and hold each the mace or sceptre in the extended left hand. But on turning to the photographs of the Great Temple of Denderah, where another colossal series of deities is represented in precisely the same attitude, but looking in the opposite direction, the official symbols are reversed, and each holds the sceptre in the extended right hand. Numerous similar instances are given by Wilkinson; as in the dedication of the pylon of a temple to Amun by Rameses III., Thebes (No. 470); the Goddesses of the West and East, looking in corresponding directions (No. 461), etc.