THE NEW INSTALLATION OF FIGURES OF EGYPTIAN GODS Part II. Brief Notes on Iconography The study of Egyptian iconography and the sources of its inspiration has scarcely been begun. A collection of late gods' figures, such as this one, permits a few observations, although a thoroughgoing consideration of the subject would take one to the earlier wall-decorations and statues, as well as to the literary evidence, and would exceed by far the limits of a Bulletin paper. In the present lot of figures the dress of the goddesses is the simple long, narrow, sleeveless garment worn by Egyptian women at an early period. Once taken over for the female divinities, it was seldom abandoned, however frivolous the apparel of human kind became. Only Maat1 seems to wear something different, perhaps a mantle enveloping her figure, and the cat-headed Bast has on a patterned gown of peculiar cut,2 with fringe at the bottom, not identified as ever the dress of Egyptian women, and perhaps of foreign origin. The gods usually wear a short, close-fitting, pleated kilt (Fig. i), which was first a royal dress and later was assumed by other mortals than the king. But not a few gods' figures are closely shrouded, with only their heads and sometimes their hands free from the enveloping garment or wrappings (Fig. 2). With respect to gods associated with the dead, the conclusion that they were given the form of mummies is an obvious one; the occasional further representation on these figures of bead shrouds3 and other accessories of mummies supports the interpretation. But Khons and Ptah (Fig. 2), although similarly enveloped, are not funerary gods. For Khons and also for Osiris, ruler of the dead, the explanation has been offered4 that the garment is a piece of royal apparel adopted to mark the one god as a prince, the other as a king. The archaic royal garment did not, however, envelop the feet and the shrouding of the feet in these late figures may be due to an assimilation to the 1 Quarterly Bulletin, Vol. Ill, p. 46, Fig. 5. 2 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 47, Fig. 4. 3 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 80, Fig. 8. 4 Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. Ill, (1916), p. 247, note 3.