by a frieze. This frieze might be composed of uraei, or of bunches of
lotus; or of royal cartouches (fig. 106) supported on either side by divine
symbols; or of emblems borrowed from the local cult (by heads of Hathor,
for instance, in a temple dedicated to Hathor); or of a horizontal line of
dedicatory inscription engraved in large and deeply-cut hieroglyphs. The
wall space thus framed in contained sometimes a single scene and sometimes
two scenes, one above the other. The wall must be very lofty, if this
number is exceeded. Figures and inscriptions were widely spaced, and the
scenes succeeded one another with scarcely a break. The spectator had to
discover for himself where they began or ended. The head of the king was
always studied from the life, and the faces of the gods reproduced the
royal portrait as closely as possible. As Pharaoh was the son of the gods,
the surest way to obtain portraits of the gods was to model their faces
after the face of the king. The secondary figures were no less carefully
wrought; but when these were very numerous, they were arranged on two or
three levels, the total height of which never exceeded that of the
principal personages. The offerings, the sceptres, the jewels, the
vestments, the head-dresses, and all the accessories were treated with a
genuine feeling for elegance and truth. The colours, moreover, were so
combined as to produce in each tableau the effect of one general and
prevailing tone; so that in many temples there were chambers which can be
justly distinguished as the Blue Hall, the Red Hall, or the Golden Hall. So
much for the classical period of decoration.

[Illustration: Fig. 107.--Wall of a chamber at Denderah, to show the
arrangement of the tableaux.]

As we come down to later times, these tableaux are multiplied, and under
the Greeks and Romans they become so numerous that the smallest wall
contained not less than four (fig. 107), five, six, or even eight