[Illustration: FIG. 219.--Portrait of Rameses II. while a child, actual size. Limestone. In the Louvre.]
[Illustration: FIG. 220.--Statue of Rameses II. Boulak.]
Some good bas-reliefs date from this reign. Among others we may name those prisoners of war bound together, which Champollion copied from the plinth of a royal statue in the Ramesseum (Fig. 221). The race characteristics are very well marked. The prognathous negro, with his thick lips, short nose, sloping brow, and woolly poll; the Asiatic, an Assyrian perhaps, with his regular, finely-chiselled profile and his knotted head-dress, are easily recognized. The movement of these two figures is also happy, its only defect is its want of variety. The same remarks may be applied to those sculptures on the external walls of the small temple at Abydos, which represent the soldiers belonging to the legion of the Chardanes or Sharuten, the supposed ancestors of the Sardinians. Their picturesque costume and singular arms have been described more than once. A metal stem and a ball between two crescent-shaped horns surmount their helmets; they are tall and slender, with small heads and short round noses.[240]
[240] CH. BLANC, _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, p. 74, pl. 31.
The finest statue of Rameses II. that has come down to our time is, perhaps, the one in the Turin Museum (Fig. 222). Its execution is most careful, and its state of preservation marvellous. The head is full of individuality and distinction. One of the king's sons is shown, on a very small scale, leaning against the foot of his father's seat.
[Illustration: FIG. 221.--Prisoners of war; Ramesseum. From Champollion, pl. 322.]
Boulak possesses the upper part of a broken statue of Rameses, which is not inferior to this in artistic merit. The contours are singularly pure and noble.
Most of those who are authorities on the subject agree that art fell into decay towards the end of Rameses the second's long reign of sixty-seven years. Carried away by his mania for building, the king thought more of working rapidly than well. In his impatience to see his undertakings finished, he must have begun by using up the excellent architects and decorative artists left to him by his father. He left them no time to instruct pupils or to form a school, and so in his old age he found himself compelled to employ mediocrities. "The steles, inscriptions, and other monuments of the last years of Rameses II. are to be recognized at a glance by their detestable style," says Mariette.[241] With the fine bas-relief at Abydos which is reproduced in our Plate III., Vol. I., Mariette contrasts another which is to be found in a neighbouring hall and represents Rameses II. in the same attitude. In the former, the figure of Seti is expressed in the most delicate low relief, in the latter the contours of Rameses are coarsely indicated by a deeply-cut outline.[242] So too M. Charles Blanc: "As we pass from the tomb of Seti I. to those of Seti II. and Rameses IV., the decadence of Egyptian art makes itself felt, partly in the character of the pictures, which no longer display the firmness, the delicacy, or the significance, of those which we admired in the tomb of the first-named monarch, partly in the exaggerated relief of the sculptures."[243]