The details with which they overloaded their figures, the elaboration of the beard and the hair, and the folds of the garments, are sometimes so minute that it is scarcely possible to distinguish them without a magnifying glass.

Precious as these documents are, they give a very insufficient idea of the ability and technical methods of the artists of ancient Egypt.

It is to the walls of their temples and tombs that we must turn, if we desire to study their principles of composition.
[Illustration: Figs.

164 and 165 .-- Scenes from the tomb of Khnumhotep at Beni Hasan, Twelfth Dynasty.] [Illustration: Fig.

166 .-- From a tomb-painting in the British Museum, Eighteenth Dynasty.] Their conventional system differed materially from our own.