beneath the mask or symbol belonged to the Mysteries, and was not
to be publicly declared.

But when he came to portraying men, especially great kings, he
used a different method. The king's statue was to remain through
long ages, when the king himself was dead and Osirified. The
artist knew--it was the tradition of his school--what the
Osirified dead looked like. Not an individual sculptor, but a
traditional wisdom, was to find expression. What sculptor's name
is known? Who wrought the Vocal Memnon?--Not any man; but the
Soul and wisdom and genius of Egypt. The last things bothered
about were realism and personality. There were a very few
conventional poses; the object was not to make a portrait, but
to declare the Universal Human Soul;--it was hardly artistic, in
any modern acceptation of the word; but rather religious.
Artistic it was, in the highest and truest sense: to create, in
the medium of stone, the likeness or impression of the Human Soul
in its grandeur and majesty; to make hard granite or syenite
proclaim the eternal peace and aloofness of the Soul.--Plato
speaks of those glimpses of "the other side of the sky" which the
soul catches before it comes into the flesh;--the Egyptian artist
was preoccupied with the other side of the sky. How wonderfully
he succeeded, you have only to drop into the British Museum to
see. There is a colossal head there, hung high on the wall
facing the stairs at the end of the Egyptian Gallery; you may
view it from the ground, or from any point on the stairs; but
from whatever place you look at it, if you have any quality of
the Soul in you, you go away having caught large glimpses of the
other side of the sky. You are convinced, perhaps unconsciously,
of the grandeur and reality of the Soul. Having watched