The faces in the Senmut fresco are not so well portrayed as those in the
Rekhmara fresco. There it is evident that the first three ambassadors
are faithfully depicted, as the portraits are marked. The procession
advances from left to right. The first man, "the Great Chief of the
Kefti and the Isles of the Green Sea," is young, and has a remarkably
small mouth with an amiable expression. His complexion is fair rather
than dark, but his hair is dark brown. His lieutenant, the next in
order, is of a different type,--elderly, with a most forbidding visage,
Roman nose, and nutcracker jaws. Most of the others are very much
alike,--young, dark in complexion, and with long black hair hanging
below their waists and twisted up into fantastic knots and curls on the
tops of their heads. One, carrying on his shoulder a great silver vase
with curving handles and in one hand a dagger of early European Bronze
Age type, is looking back to hear some remark of his next companion.
Any one of these gift-bearers might have sat for the portrait of
the Knossian Cupbearer, the fresco discovered by Mr. Evans in the
palace-temple of Minos; he has the same ruddy brown complexion, the same
long black hair dressed in the same fashion, the same parti-coloured
kilt, and he bears his vase in much the same way. We have only to allow
for the difference of Egyptian and Mycenaean ways of drawing.
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