Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/602

sequently to the prevalence of the worship of household gods." But who were the makers of either does not appear.

 

How it would naturally happen that while, in the first stages, the priest was the actual carver of images, he became, in later stages, the director of those who carved them, will be easily understood on remembering that a kindred relation between the artist and his subordinate exists now among ourselves. The modern sculptor does not undertake the entire labor of executing his work, but gives the rough idea to a skilled assistant who, from time to time instructed in the needful alterations, produces a clay model to which his master gives the finished form: the reproduction of the model in marble by another subordinate being similarly dealt with by the sculptor. Evidently it was in something like this sense that priests throughout the East were sculptors in early days, as some are in our own days. Writing of the Singhalese, Tennent says:—

"Like the priesthood of Egypt, those of Ceylon regulated the mode of delineating the effigies of their divine teacher, by a rigid formulary, with which they combined corresponding directions for the drawing of the human figure in connection with sacred subjects."

From Egypt, here referred to, may be brought not only evidence that the sculptured forms of those to be worshiped were prescribed by the priests in conformity with the traditions they preserved, but also evidence that in some cases they were the actual executants. Mentu-hotep, a priest of the 12th dynasty, yields an example.

"Very skilled in artistic work, with his own hand he carried out his designs as they ought to be carried out." He "besides was invested with religious functions" and "was the alter ego of the king." His inscription says:—"I it was who arranged the work for the building of the temple."

An inscription of the 18th dynasty refers to one Bek, architect of Amenhotep IV, who being described as "the follower of the divine benefactor" was apparently a priest, and who was both an executant and a supervisor of other's work. He is referred to as—

"overseer of the works at the red mountain, an artist and teacher of the king himself, an overseer of the sculptors from life at the grand monuments of the king for the temple of the sun's disk."

A further fact is given. Bek says of himself—"My lord promoted me to be chief architect. I immortalized the name of the king. . . [I caused] to be made two portrait-statues of noble hard stone in this his great building. It is like heaven. . . . Thus I executed these works of art, his statues."

What evidence Greek records yield, though not extensive, is to the point. Curtius, who, referring to actions of the singers