Crio-sphin res al a second variety of sphinxes (p1. 2, fig. 4) the head of a rain is joined to the lion's body. Sphinxes of this cha racter were found on either side of the famous avenue of sphinxes which joins the Temple of Luxor with that of Karnak. The ancient Egyptians appropriately called them " guardians.'' Another name for them was " the light-producer," which suggests sonic connection with the god Bouts, or Harmachis; in fact, we find a third variety of sphinx, bearing the head of a hawk, which was sacred to this divinity.
Bronzy' Staiticaes.—In Figure 5 we have represented a bronze statuette of a royal person at prayer. The use of bronze in Egypt antedates the pyramids. It was used for statuettes as early as the Ancient Empire, some bronzes of this period being still in existence. At a later period the gods were frequently represented in finely-cast figurines of this material.
qf last example (fig. 6) is a bas-relief of Ma, the goddess of truth and justice. She wears the ostrich-feather on her head and in her hand carries the symbol of life. Her chief occupation was in the lower regions, where the dead, after their judgment, bore her emblem and were admitted into the region of the blessed. A small image of this
goddess was also worn by the chief judge in adjudicating civil cases, and possibly the breastplate bearing the figures of Ra and Ma was the artistic prototype of the Urim and Thnimnim worn by the high priest of the Jews.
Summary. —In all the later sculpture of the Egyptians we are impressed with the conventionalized, mechanical methods by which the same subjects are again and again reproduced in precisely the same way. Closely associated with architecture, sculpture in Egypt was mainly decorative in character and does not reach an independent sculptural value. In the bas-reliefs which covered the walls of tombs and temples, even the idea of decoration is not the controlling power: they are rather the enlarged and permanent hieroglyphics of the scribe and the historian, preserving for its the scenes and conquests of daily and political life. It is only in the works of the Ancient Empire that sculpture showed signs of developing into a fine art; but this growth was arrested, and sculpture in Egypt remained an industrial art ever afterward.