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Near Smile. About 1000 B.C., court artists tried to set the clock back to old King Khephren's time. The new sculptures went back only part way. "They never indeed recaptured the old robust vigor and naturalness," Drioton says. They had "a softness, almost a smile, which links them with the archaic Greek sculpture whose contemporaries they were." A seated scribe looking for all the world like a modern businessman on a holiday at the beach was one of the period's best products.
Alexander I the Great scotched Egyptian art by opening Egypt to the Greeks. Yet the tradition, which had lived so long, was also a long time dying. Under the Ptolemies, and even during the early years of Roman domination, the work of Egyptian sculptors "was still pharaonic art, made more interesting by a restrained exoticism." But, says Drioton sadly, the day came "when sculptors . . . tried to treat the drapery of the toga like the costume of the pharaohs . . . When Egyptian sculpture reached this point, it could only disappear."