Art of ancient Egypt

9/15/2017 Art of ancient Egypt - Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ancient Egyptian art is the painting, sculpture,

architecture and other arts produced by the civilization of
ancient Egypt in the lower Nile Valley from about 3000
BC to 30 AD. Ancient Egyptian art reached a high level in
painting and sculpture, and was both highly stylized and
symbolic. It was famously conservative, and Egyptian
styles changed remarkably little over more than three
thousand years. Much of the surviving art comes from
tombs and monuments and thus there is an emphasis on
life after death and the preservation of knowledge of the
past.

Ancient Egyptian art included paintings, sculpture in

wood (now rarely surviving), stone and ceramics,
drawings on papyrus, faience, jewelry, ivories, and other
art media. It displays an extraordinarily vivid
representation of the ancient Egyptian's socioeconomic
status and belief systems.

Contents Wood Gilded Statue of Lady Tiye, mother of

Akhenaten, Egypt ca. 1390-1352 B.C.E. Amarna
1 Periods Period
2 Overview
3 Painting
4 Sculpture
5 Faience, pottery, and glass
6 Papyrus
7 Amarna period
8 Ptolemaic period
9 Architecture
10 Hieroglyphs
11 Notes
12 References Tomb of Sarenput II.
13 Further reading
14 External links

Periods
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Prehistoric (before 5000 3100 BC)

Early Dynastic (c. 3100 BC2680 BC)
Old Kingdom (2680 BCc. 2200 BC)
First Intermediate Period (c. 2200 BC2055 BC)
Middle Kingdom (2055 BC1650 BC)
Second Intermediate Period (1650 BC1550 BC)
New Kingdom (1550 BC1069 BC), including the Amarna
Period (1353 BC1336 BC)
Third Intermediate Period (1069 BC664 BC)
Late Period (664 BC332 BC)
Ptolemaic Kingdom (33230 BC)
Roman Egypt (30 BC to Christianization in the 4th century AD)

Overview Queen Tiye (?), ca. 1352-1336

B.C.E. Sandstone. Brooklyn
Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour
Egyptian art is famous for its distinctive figure convention, used for Fund, 33.55
the main figures in both relief and painting, with parted legs (where
not seated) and head shown as seen from the side, but the torso
seen as from the front, and a standard set of proportions making up
the figure, using 18 "fists" to go from the ground to the hair-line on
the forehead.[1] This appears as early as the Narmer Palette from
Dynasty I, but there as elsewhere the convention is not used for
minor figures shown engaged in some activity, such as the captives
and corpses.[2] Other conventions make statues of males darker
than females ones. Very conventionalized portrait statues appear
from as early as Dynasty II, before 2,780 BC,[3] and with the
exception of the art of the Amarna period of Ahkenaten,[4] and
some other periods such as Dynasty XII, the idealized features of
rulers, like other Egyptian artistic conventions, changed little until
after the Greek conquest.[5]

Egyptian art uses hierarchical proportion, where the size of figures

indicates their relative importance. The gods or the divine pharaoh
are usually larger than other figures and the figures of high officials
or the tomb owner are usually smaller, and at the smallest scale any
servants and entertainers, animals, trees, and architectural details.[6]

Symbolism can be observed throughout Egyptian art and played an important role in establishing a
sense of order. The pharaoh's regalia, for example, represented his power to maintain order. Animals
were also highly symbolic figures in Egyptian art. Some colors were expressive: blue or gold indicated
divinity because of its unnatural appearance and association with precious materials, and the use of
black for royal figures expressed the fertility of the Nile from which Egypt was born.[7]

Painting
Not all Egyptian reliefs were painted,
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Not all Egyptian reliefs were painted, and less prestigious works in
tombs, temples and palaces were merely painted on a flat surface.
Stone surfaces were prepared by whitewash, or if rough, a layer of
coarse mud plaster, with a smoother gesso
layer above; some finer
limestones could take paint directly. Pigments were mostly mineral,
chosen to withstand strong sunlight without fading. The binding
medium used in painting remains unclear: egg tempera and various
gums and resins have been suggested. It is clear that true fresco,
painted into a thin layer of wet plaster, was not used. Instead the
paint was applied to dried plaster, in what is called "fresco a secco"
The Egyptian figure convention,
in Italian. After painting, a varnish or resin was usually applied as a
with the torso shown frontally, the
protective coating, and many paintings with some exposure to the
head and legs from the side;
elements have survived remarkably well, although those on fully
fragment from the Tomb of
exposed walls rarely have.[8] Small objects including wooden Amenemhet and His Wife Hemet
statuettes were often painted using similar techniques.

Many ancient Egyptian paintings have survived

in tombs, and sometimes temples, due to
Egypt's extremely dry climate. The paintings
were often made with the intent of making a
pleasant afterlife for the deceased. The themes
included journey through the afterworld or
protective deities introducing the deceased to
the gods of the underworld (such as Osiris).
Some tomb paintings show activities that the
deceased were involved in when they were alive
and wished to carry on doing for eternity.

In the New Kingdom and later, the Book of the Depiction of craftworkers in ancient Egypt
Dead was buried with the entombed person. It
was considered important for an introduction to
the afterlife.

Egyptian paintings are painted in such a way to show a profile view and a
side view of the animal or person at the same time. For example, the
painting to the right shows the head from a profile view and the body from
a frontal view. Their main colors were red, blue, green, gold, black and
yellow.

Paintings showing scenes of hunting and fishing can have lively close-up
landscape backgrounds of reeds and water, but in general Egyptian
painting did not develop a sense of depth, and neither landscapes nor a
sense of visual perspective are found, the figures rather varying in size with
their importance rather than their location.

Sculpture Wall painting of Nefertari

The monumental sculpture of ancient Egypt's temples and tombs is world-famous,[9] but refined and
delicate small works exist in much greater numbers. The Egyptians used the distinctive technique of
sunk relief, which is well suited to very bright sunlight. The distinctive pose of standing statues facing

forward with one foot in front of the

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forward with one foot in front of the other was helpful for the
balance and strength of the piece. It was adopted very early and
remained unchanged until the arrival of the Greeks. Seated statues
were also very common.

Egyptian pharaohs were always regarded as gods, but other deities

are much less common in large statues, except when they represent
the pharaoh as
another deity; however the other deities are
frequently shown in paintings and reliefs. The famous row of four
colossal statues outside the main temple at Abu Simbel each show
Rameses II, a typical scheme, though here exceptionally large.[10]
Most larger sculptures survive from Egyptian temples or tombs;
massive statues were built to represent gods and pharaohs and
their queens, usually for open areas in or outside temples. The very
early colossal Great Sphinx of Giza was never repeated, but avenues
lined with very large statues including sphinxes and other animals
formed part of many temple complexes. The most sacred cult image Facsimile of the Narmer Palette, c.
of a god in a temple, usually held in the naos, was in the form of a 3100 BC, which already shows the
relatively small boat or barque holding an image of the god, and canonical Egyptian profile view and
apparently usually in precious metal none have survived. proportions of the figure.

By Dynasty IV (26802565 BC) at the latest the idea of the Ka

statue was firmly established. These were put in tombs as a resting
place for the ka
portion of the soul, and so we have a good number
of less conventionalized statues of well-off administrators and their
wives, many in wood as Egypt is one of the few places in the world
where the climate allows wood to survive over millennia, and many
block statues. The so-called reserve heads, plain hairless heads, are
especially naturalistic, though the extent to which there was real
portraiture in ancient Egypt is still debated.

Early tombs also contained small models of the slaves, animals,

buildings and objects such as boats necessary for the deceased to
continue his lifestyle in the afterworld, and later Ushabti
figures.[11]
However the great majority of wooden sculpture has been lost to
decay, or probably used as fuel. Small figures of deities, or their
animal personifications, are very common, and found in popular
materials such as pottery. There were also large numbers of small
carved objects, from figures of the gods to toys and carved utensils.
Alabaster was often used for expensive versions of these; painted
wood was the most common material, and normal for the small Menkaura (Mycerinus) and queen,
models of animals, slaves and possessions placed in tombs to Old Kingdom, Dynasty 4, 2490
provide for the afterlife. 2472 BC. The formality of the pose
is reduced by the queen's arm
Very strict conventions were followed while crafting statues and round her husband.
specific rules governed appearance of every Egyptian god. For
example, the sky god (Horus) was essentially to be represented with
a falcon's head, the god of funeral rites (Anubis) was to be always shown with a jackal's head. Artistic
works were ranked according to their compliance with these conventions, and the conventions were
followed so strictly that, over three thousand years, the appearance of statues changed very little.
These conventions were intended to convey the timeless and non-aging quality of the figure's ka.

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Head of Pharaoh & face from a

coffin

Wooden tomb models, Dynastry The Gold Mask of Tutankhamun,

XI; a high administrator counts c. late Eighteenth dynasty,
his cattle. Egyptian Museum

The Younger Memnon c. 1250 Sunk relief of the crocodile god Osiris on a lapis lazuli pillar in the
BC, British Museum Sobek middle, flanked by Horus on the
left, and Isis on the right, 22nd
dynasty, Louvre

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The ka statue provided a physical Block statue of Pa-Ankh-Ra, ship A sculpted head of Amenhotep III
place for the ka to manifest. master, bearing a statue of Ptah.
Egyptian Museum, Cairo Late Period, ca. 650633 BC,
Cabinet des Mdailles.

Queen Ankhnes-meryre II and

her Son, Pepy II,c. 2200 BC.
Brooklyn Museum

Faience, pottery, and glass

Egyptian faience, made from sand and chemicals, produced relatively cheap and very attractive small
objects in a variety of colours, and was used for a variety of types of objects including jewellery. Ancient
Egyptian glass goes back to very early Egyptian history, but was at first very much a luxury material. In
later periods it became common, and highly decorated small jars for perfume and other liquids are often
found as grave goods.

Ancient Egyptians used steatite (some varieties were called soapstone) and carved small pieces of
vases, amulets, images of deities, of animals and several other objects. Ancient Egyptian artists also
discovered the art of covering pottery with enamel. Covering by enamel was also applied to some stone
works. The colour blue, first used in the very expensive imported stone lapis lazuli, was highly regarded
by ancient Egypt, and the pigment Egyptian blue was widely used to colour a variety of materials.

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Different types of pottery items were

deposited in tombs of the dead.
Some such pottery items
represented interior parts of the
body, like the lungs, the liver and
smaller intestines, which were
removed before embalming. A large
number of smaller objects in enamel
pottery were also deposited with the New Kingdom pottery c.1400
dead. It was customary to craft on BC
Miniature Egyptian glassware from
the walls of the tombs cones of
the New Kingdom period.
pottery, about six to ten inches tall,
on which were engraved or impressed legends relating to the dead
occupants of the tombs. These cones usually contained the names
of the deceased, their titles, offices which they held, and some expressions appropriate to funeral
purposes.

Papyrus
Papyrus was used by ancient Egyptians (and exported to much of
the ancient Mediterranean world) for writing and painting. Papyrus
is relatively fragile, lasting at most a century or two in a library, and
though used all over the classical world has only survived when
buried in the very dry conditions of Egypt, and even then is often in
poor condition. Papyrus texts illustrate all dimensions of ancient
Egyptian life and include literary, religious, historical and
administrative documents.

Amarna period The Book of the Dead written on

papyrus

The Amarna period and the

years before the pharaoh Akhenaten moved the capital there in the
late Eighteenth Dynasty form the most drastic interruption to the
continuity of style in the Old and New Kingdoms. Amarna art is
characterized by a sense of movement and activity in images, with
figures having raised heads, many figures overlapping and many
scenes full and crowded. As the new religion was a monotheistic
worship of the sun, sacrifices and worship were apparently
conducted in open courtyards, and sunk relief decoration was widely
Two daughters of Akhenaten; used in these.
Neferneferuaten Tasherit and
Neferneferure, c. 13751358 BC The human body is portrayed differently in the Amarna style than
Egyptian art on the whole. For instance, many depictions of
Akhenaten's body give him distinctly feminine qualities, such as
large hips, prominent breasts, and a larger stomach and thighs. This is a divergence from the earlier
Egyptian art which shows men with perfectly chiseled bodies. Faces are still shown exclusively in profile.

Not many buildings from this period

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Not many buildings from this period have survived the ravages of later kings, partially as they were
constructed out of standard size blocks, known as Talatat, which were very easy to remove and reuse.
Temples in Amarna, following the trend, did not follow traditional Egyptian customs and were open,
without ceilings, and had no closing doors. In the generation after Akhenaten's death, artists reverted to
their old styles. There were still traces of this period's style in later art, but in most respects Egyptian
art, like Egyptian religion, resumed its usual characteristics after the death of Akhenaten as though the
period had never happened. Amarna itself was abandoned and considerable trouble was gone to in
defacing monuments from the reign, including dis-assembling buildings and reusing the blocks with their
decoration facing inwards, as has recently been discovered in one later building.

Ptolemaic period
Discoveries made since the end
of the 19th century surrounding
the (now submerged) ancient
Egyptian city of Heracleum at
Alexandria include a 4th-century
BC, unusually sensual, detailed
and feministic (as opposed to
deified) depiction of Isis,
marking a combination of
Egyptian and Hellenistic forms
Female's face, probably a goddess. beginning around the time of
Sculptor's model, used for plaster Egypt's conquest by Alexander
casts. Possibly originally from a the Great in 332-331 BC.
statue. Limestone. Ptolemaic period. However this was untypical of
From Egypt. The Petrie Museum of Ptolemaic sculpture, which
Egyptian Archaeology, London generally avoided mixing
Egyptian styles with the general
Hellenistic style which was used
in the court art of the Ptolemaic Dynasty,[12] while temples in the Terracotta figurine of Isis/Aphrodite
rest of the country continued using late versions of traditional
Egyptian formulae.[13] Scholars have proposed an "Alexandrian
style" in Hellenistic sculpture, but there is in fact little to connect it with Alexandria.[14]

Marble was extensively used in court art, although it all had to be imported, and use was made of
various marble-saving techniques, such as making even heads up from a number of pieces, and using
stucco for beards, the back of heads and hair.[15] In contrast to the art of other Hellenistic kingdoms,
Ptolemaic royal portraits are generalized and idealized, with little concern for achieving an individual
portrait, though thanks to coins some portrait sculpture can be identified as one of the 15 King
Ptolemys.[16] Many later portraits have clearly had the face reworked to show a later king.[17] One
Egyptian trait was to give much greater prominence to the queens than other successor dynasties to
Alexander, with the royal couple often shown as a pair. This predated the 2nd century, a series of
queens did indeed exercise real power.[18]

In the 2nd century, Egyptian temple sculptures did begin to reuse court models in their faces, and
sculptures of priest often used a Hellenistic style to achieve individually distinctive portrait heads.[19]
Many small statuettes were produced, with Alexander, as founder of the dynasty, a generalized "King

Ptolemy", and a naked Aphrodite

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Ptolemy", and a naked Aphrodite among the most common types. Pottery figurines included grotesques
and fashionable ladies of the Tanagra figurine style.[20] Erotic groups featured absurdly large phalluses.
Some fittings for wooden interiors include very delicately patterned polychrome falcons in faience.

Architecture
Ancient Egyptian architects used sun-dried and kiln-baked bricks,
fine sandstone, limestone and granite. Architects carefully planned
all their work. The stones had to fit precisely together, since there
was no mud or mortar. When creating the pyramids, ramps were
used to allow workmen to move up as the height of the construction
grew. When the top of the structure was completed, the artists
decorated from the top down, removing ramp sand as they went
down. Exterior walls of structures like the pyramids contained only a
few small openings. Hieroglyphic and pictorial carvings in brilliant
colors were abundantly used to decorate Egyptian structures,
including many motifs, like the scarab, sacred beetle, the solar disk,
and the vulture. They described the changes the Pharaoh would go
through to become a god.[21]

Hieroglyphs Capital, limestone model. Roman

period. From Egypt. The Petrie
Museum of Egyptian Archaeology,
London
Hieroglyphs are the ancient Egyptian
writing system in which pictures and
symbols stand for sounds and words.
Jean-Francois Champollion first decoded hieroglyphs from the Rosetta
Stone, which was found in 1799. Hieroglyphs have more than 700
symbols.

Notes
1. Smith, Stevenson, and Simpson,
33
2. Smith, Stevenson, and Simpson,
1213 and note 17
3. Smith, Stevenson, and Simpson,
2124
4. Smith, Stevenson, and Simpson,
170178; 192194
5. Smith, Stevenson, and Simpson,
102103; 133134
6. The Art of Ancient Egipt. A resource for educators. (http://www.met
museum.org/~/media/Files/Learn/For%20Educators/Publications%2
Pot with hieroglyphs 0for%20Educators/The%20Art%20of%20Ancient%20Egypt.pdf)
(PDF). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 44. Retrieved
July 7, 2013.
7. Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Bill Manley (1996) p. 83
8. Grove
9. Smith, Stevenson, and Simpson, 2
10. Smith, Stevenson, and Simpson, 45; 208209
11. Smith, Stevenson, and Simpson, 8990
12. Smith, 206, 208-209
13. Smith, 210

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14. Smith, 205

15. Smith, 206
16. Smith, 207
17. Smith, 209
18. Smith, 208
19. Smith, 208-209, 210
20. Smith, 210
21. Jenner, Jan (2008). Ancient Civilizations. Toronto: Scholastic.
References
Smith, R.R.R.,Hellenistic Sculpture, a handbook, Thames & Hudson, 1991, ISBN 0500202494
Smith, W. Stevenson, and Simpson, William Kelly. The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt, 3rd
edn. 1998, Yale University Press (Penguin/Yale History of Art), ISBN 0300077475

Further reading
Hill, Marsha (2007). Gifts for the gods: images from Egyptian temples
(http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.or
g/cdm/ref/collection/p15324coll10/id/74020). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ISBN 9781588392312.

External links
Ancient Egyptian Art Aldokkan (http://www.aldokkan.com/art/art.htm)
Senusret Collection (http://www.virtual-egyptian-museum.org/About/Story/About.Story-FR.html):
A well-annotated introduction to the arts of Egypt

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