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The book River God, written by Wilber Smith, takes place in Ancient Egypt about two thousand years before Christ. Egypt is separated by Northern and Southern differences and is constantly having civil wars. Northern Egypt is ruled by usurpers and Southern Egypt is being thrown into poverty due to this power separation and the South's very extravagant Pharaoh. Taita is one of the main characters. He is a eunuch slave to Lostris. The book is written through the eyes of Taita.

The bulk of the story takes place on the eve of the festival of Osiris. Taita was also an artist and an architect. He painted murals on the walls of Lostris's room when she stayed in the harem. He also painted murals on the walls of Lostris's tomb when she died. Architecture was another skill of Taitis and he designed a palace for Memnon at Thebes. For being a slave he was very skilled.

In different sections of the book Smith writes about statues that were made of the God Osiris, Hapi and also Pharaoh. Statues of all three were built on a grand scale. They were taller than people were and often decorated with wreaths of flowers. The statue of Hapi was referred to as "gigantic". As a side note, Smith also writes about the Kassites that live beyond the Tigris and Euphrates River. The Kassites have a statue of a triple headed God that they make sacrifices to. I bring this up simply for the reason that other people than the Egyptians were making statues at this time.

On the road to the temple of Osiris the avenue is lined with statues of lions that are made out of granite. Granite was one of the main types of stone used for making statues, limestone was another.

While walking through the city, Taita comes across the sculptor's hall, where the sculptors were crafting various items for Pharaoh, some of which would be for his tomb. "There products were wonders to contemplate statues of the Gods and Pharaoh himself that seemed to vibrate with life. There were life-sized images of Pharaoh seated on his throne or walking abroad, alive and dead, in his god form or in the shape of a mortal man"(1). Both the referrals to the seated statue and walking statue of Pharaoh was covered in our book of Egyptian Art, by Cyril Aldred.

The statue of Chephren gives us a good example of what the Pharaoh sitting on his throne would look like. During this period in Egypt sculptors really only copied one another and slowly through time did advances come into their work. Also, in the sculptors

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