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As far as I can judge there were at least four large schools of sculpture in the valley of the Nile: at Memphis, Thebes, Hermopolis, and in the eastern part of the delta. I have attempted farther on to sketch the history and define the principal characteristics of the Theban school;9 I shall only refer to it as far as it is necessary to make clear in what it is distinguished from the three others.

And to begin with, it is probable that the first of those in date, the Memphian, is merely the prolongation and continuation of a previous Thinite school. If I compare the few objects of real art that have come to us from the Thinites with parallel works of which the necropolises of Gizeh, Saqqarah and the Fayoum have restored to us so many examples, I am struck by the resemblances in inspiration and technique that exist between the two. We have no statues originating from Thinis itself, but the stelæ, the amulets in alto-relievo, the fragments of minute furniture discovered in the tombs of Omm-el-Gaâb find their exact counterpart in similar pieces that come from the excavations of Abousîr-el-Malak or of Meîdoum and from the sub-structure of Memphian residences. I think I see that at the beginning there were mediocre workmen in the plain of the Pyramids capable, however, of sculpturing, ill or well, a statue of a man seated or standing: to those men I attribute the statue No. 1 in the Cairo Museum, the Matonou (Amten) of Berlin, the Sapouî (Sepa) of the Louvre, and a few other lesser ones. The same defects are to be seen in all: the head out of proportion to the body, the neck ungraceful, the shoulders high, the bust summarily rough-hewn and without regard to the dimensions of each part, the arms and legs heavy, thick, angular. Their roughness and awkwardness compared with the beautiful appearance of the two statues of Meîdoum, which are almost contemporary with them, would astonish us if we did not think that the latter, commissioned for relatives of Sanofraouî, proceed from the royal workshops. The transference of the capital to Memphis, or rather to the district stretching from the entrance into the Fayoum to the fork of the delta, necessarily resulted in impoverishing Thinis-Abydos; the stone-cutters, architects, statuaries, and masons accompanied the court, and planted the traditions and teaching of their respective fatherlands in their new homes. According to what is seen in the tombs of Meîdoum, the latest Thinite style, or rather the transition style of the IIIrd Dynasty, presents exactly the same characteristics as the perfect style of the IVth, Vth, and VIth Dynasties, but with a less stiff manner. The pose of the persons and the silhouettes of the animals are already schematized and encircled in the lines which will enclose them almost to the end of Egyptian civilization, but the detail is freer, and keeps very close to reality. The tendency is perceived only in the roundness and suppleness that prevails from the time of Cheops and Chephrên. The Memphites sought to idealize their models rather than to make a faithful copy of them, and while respecting the general resemblance, desired to give the spectator an impression of calm majesty or of gentleness. Their manner was adopted at Thinis by a counter-shock, and it may be said that from the IVth to the XXVIth Dynasty Abydos remained almost a branch of the Memphian school, which, however, grew out of it. The productions only differ from those of the Memphites in subordinate points, except during the XIXth Dynasty, when Setouî I and Ramses II summoned Theban sculptors there, and for some years it became, artistically, a fief of Thebes.