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fHREE ROYAL SCULPTURES

It was acąuired by Charles Edwin Wilbour at Sak kara lale in the last century. Il is of poor workmanship.

Tojudge by the evidence just quoted, presumably complete for the period under survey, it is out of the question for the Frecr head to havc bcen produced in Dynasties V or VI and we are thus left with later Dynasty IV as the probable time of its production. Until evidence to the contrary appears, we must assume that royal sculpture of the later Old Kingdom fell far bclow the levcl of similar sculpture of Dynasties III and IV. Just why this happened is not entirely elear, but it is at least consistent with the striking decline in both size and construction of royal pyramids of Dynasties V and VI. It seems to be gcncrally accepted that the absolute power of the Dynasty IV kings was never again equalled in the Old Kingdom Apparently the later kings did not command the resources essential to the production of major mastcrpicccs.

The royal studios of this time did, however. follow the tradition of the earlier Old Kingdom in favoring thecxclusive use of hard Stones for royal portraits. It is surprising that they did not succumb to the temptation to use the soft medium of limestone.

To summarize, I suggest that the alabaster head in Boston previously idenlified as Shcpseskaf(?) be dcscribed from now on as Mycerinus, probably, as Rcisncr suggested, an early portrait of that king. As for the Washington head, I am so convinced that it was madę for Shepseskaf that I feel we can apply that name to it without using the cautions question mark or at least we may use this attribution until evidence to the contrary comes to light.

B. The. New Kingdom Head

A few years ago the well-known New York collector, Norbert Schimmel, acquired a royal head of grcal individuality. It is madę from a relatively hard crystalline limestone and stands 13-1/2 inches (34,3 cm) high or substantially over life size (pl. 5, B). It is preserved only from just above the forehead to the rool of the beard. In short, virlually only the face is preserved. According to the vendor, a reliable individual, the sculpture came from Hermopolis Magna over twenty years ago. Obviously there is no tracę of an inscription and so we are again faccd with a problem of identification. Fortunatcly cnough of the uraeus is prescrved to establish that this is the head of a king. My feeling is that we now have a sufficient knowledge of the trend of royal sculptures in Egypt to undertake the identification of some of the numerous anonymous sculptures found in our museums and collections.

It requires no great knowledge of Egyptian art to declare that the Schimmel head is closely allied to the Amarna Period at the end of Dynasty XVIII. This is in part established by the dreamy, sensitive, and introspective expression of the face, an element almost never lacking in fine portraiture of this period. But Amarna influence is most particu-