Methods, materials, design, composition, all are borrowed from the elder school; the only new departure being in the proportions assigned to the human figure.

From the time of the Eleventh Dynasty, the legs become longer and slighter, the hips smaller, the body and the neck more slender.
Works of this period are not to be compared with the best productions of the earlier centuries.

The wall-paintings of Siut, of Bersheh, of Beni Hasan, and of Asuan, are not equal to those in the mastabas of Sakkarah and Gizeh; nor are the most carefully-executed contemporary statues worthy to take a place beside the "Sheikh el Beled" or the "Cross-legged Scribe." Portrait statues of private persons, especially those found at Thebes, are, so far as I have seen, decidedly bad, the execution being rude and the expression vulgar.

The royal statues of this period, which are nearly all in black or grey granite, have been for the most part usurped by kings of later date.

Usertesen III., whose head and feet are in the Louvre, was appropriated by Amenhotep III., as the sphinx of the Louvre and the colossi of Gizeh were appropriated by Rameses II.