1-632-185 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The famous wooden statue called the Shekh-el-Beled, Cairo, Egypt', 1905.' Statue held by the National Museum of Egypt. 'These portrait statues were intended to be more durable bodies, false bodies, which should take the place of the real bodies when the latter should have perished. The statue would then still serve the deceased as his old body had done, connecting him, as he thought, with the world of real and substantial existence. Thus it was that while the sculptor knew that his work was to be buried forever, he was obliged by the person whose portrait he executed from life, to make an exact reproduction of his model's person.' Stereoscopic card. Detail. From a series called Egypt Through the Stereoscope, text by James H Breasted.