WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
"Her cheeks are formed of an anemone divided into two corollas; they have the purple tinge of wine, and her nose is straighter and more delicate than the finest sword-blade."
"Her lips are coloured agate and coral; her tongue secretes eloquence; her saliva is more desirable than the juice of grapes."
"But her bosom, blessed be the Creator, is a living seduction. It bears twin breasts of the purest ivory, rounded, and that may be held within the five fingers of one hand."
Lane refers to the delightful moulding of the Egyptian woman's body, and says that fine forms are commoner than entirely beautiful faces. Many of the Nubian girls are extremely lovely, and willowy in figure. "Blacker is her hair than the darkness of night, blacker than the berries of the blackberry bush," runs an Egyptian inscription in the Louvre.
The older ideal of a graceful woman in Egypt was slenderness in form, resembling Psyche, or the figure of a boy. On the ancient pointings of the walls, and in statuary, it is often difficult to distinguish the men from the women. There is a strong facial likeness in the sexes even at this day.
In the time of the Ptolemys, the standard of female beauty seems to have changed, and we find in the statues a tendency to represent women as stouter in
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