Furthermore, the situation of the tomb is such that it must antedate the pyramid-temple of the sixth king of the dynasty.
This outer room was reached through a doorway from the court—the one which is furthermost in Fig. 1. The middle door from the court admitted to a room which served as a vestibule to the cult-room of Userkaf-ankh. There was no connection between this middle room and the cult-rooms of the wife to the north. It was, however, connected by a door with the southernmost room of the mud-brick structure. The use of this last room is not apparent. As the doorway connecting it with the next chamber and also the door on the court show evidence of having once been blocked, Professer Borchardt suggests that after the coffin of Userkaf-ankh had been lowered, the chamber may have been permanently closed, for the further security of the entrance passage. The most clever precautions were taken to make these entrance passages secure. The masonry closing that of Userkaf-ankh differed in no wise in appearance from the rest of the side of the mastaba. That the passage was difficult to find is evidenced by the fact that it was first discovered by the modern excavators working from the sarcophagus chamber. This chamber had been plundered, but the robbers had reached it by tunneling.
In point of development this tomb occupies an intermediate position. It ranks with the older mastabas in the form of its casing-stones, and in the position of the wife's stela, or "false-door" in the exterior wall of the stone structure. But it is connected with the later mastabas by the position of Userkaf-ankh's cult-chamber inside the main building. This interior chapel was without wall decorations. In the Second and Third Egyptian Rooms of this Museum may be seen the actual walls of two such cult-chambers decorated in relief. These are also of the Fifth Dynasty. The transparencies at the windows of the Second Room and a case of models within the room further illustrate the various stages in mastaba development which have been so briefly alluded to in this article.
C. L. R.
A PICTURE BY HIERONYMUS BOSCH
THE Adoration of the Kings by Hieronymus Bosch was bought at the auction of the Lippmann Collection in Berlin last November.[1] The picture is not named in the catalogues of the artist's works compiled by his historians, but is accepted by Friedländer and other German critics who have long been familiar with it. The condition of the panel is not all that could be desired. It has been cleaned since its purchase, however, and the preservation proves to be better than promised by its appearance beforehand. Besides the crack in the center, the damage of which is confined to a narrow space (about one sixteenth of an inch wide), the serious blemishes occur in the lower left-hand part of the composition, in Saint Joseph's robe and in the wall and ground back of him. Some of these were repainted in a more or less satisfactory manner many years ago and have been retained. The restorations of a recent date, however, on account of their unnecessary abundance have been eliminated, and the damages which they covered retouched with the result which now shows. The beauty of the workmanship and the artist's method are discernible. One can see that the panel was prepared with white, as was the custom, and that over a careful drawing the color was applied directly and very thinly, in places merely a scumble of paint. The thin pigment vitrified in the course of years allows the white ground to show through, so the effect is blond and translucent. There seems to have been but little retouching afterward or glazing. Its lightness of handling is a departure from the heavier methods of Bosch's contemporaries.
The expression of our picture is unusually gracious, more lyrical than that of the universally recognized works. The drawing, though extremely sensitive, is not so vigorous as in the well-known examples. Also it has none of the satire or the wild imaginings and but little of the
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