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Ancient Egyptian Art

Is five thousand years old. It emerged and took shape in the ancient Egypt, the civilization of the
Nile Valley. Expressed in paintings and sculptures, it was highly symbolic and fascinating - this
art form revolves round the past and was intended to keep history alive. It was created between
3000 BCE and 100 AD. Most of this art was highly stylized and symbolic. A major contributor
to late Neolithic art.
Most Egyptian art is found buried in the ground or found in pyramids. Egyptian art included
Paintings, Statues, and Relief carvings, Pottery, Jewelry and Coffins.

1. Paintings
Ancient Egyptian paintings survived due to the extremely dry climate. The ancient Egyptians
created paintings to make the afterlife of the deceased a pleasant place. Accordingly, beautiful
paintings were created. The themes included journey through the afterworld or their protective
deities introducing the deceased to the gods of the underworld. Some examples of such
paintings are paintings of Osiris and Warriors.
The name that was given to the Egyptian style of painting is “Frontalism”.
This style was very formal and stylized rules that have made Egyptian Art one of the most
widely recognized forms of art in the world, Simply the goal of Egyptian art wasn’t Realism,
Every known piece of Egyptian art was drawn in this style.
Every color had a particular meaning and was used for a reason. For example:
 Black represents night and underworld.
 Blue represents sky and water.
 Gold represents sun and gods.
 Green represent vegetation.
It was influenced by religion and their beliefs in the afterlife.

Rules of Frontalism:
Rule 1: Head/Face
 Head always in profile
 Side view of eye and eyebrow.
 Eye never looks straight ahead.
 Faces shown as serene and Peaceful.
Rule 2: Color
 Women often painted in yellow ochre ( Skin tone of women lighter than skin of men).
 Men often painted in red ochre.
Rule 3: Stance
 Both feet, legs, arms and hands must be shown.
 Hips have a three-quarter turn.
 shoulders shown at their full width.

Rule 4: Scale
 Men are larger than women of equal status
 Size of figures reflects social status

Rule 5: Proportions
 Hands and feet are often large compared to the rest of the body

Their paintings have represented:

 Daily life Egyptian houses were of two types, the town house and the country house. The
town house, occupying a small plot but several stories high, was to be found not only in cities
but even villages, where a comparatively large number of dwellings might be crowded
together on the only piece of ground available for building.
 Gods that they believed in worshipped. some of them were drawn up as half human and
half animal (head), the reason for that is the animal were reverenced and worshipped at that
time. Others were only drawn up as humans but in other paintings they had appearance of
animal.
 Ankh (every god holds in their hand) is hieroglyphic symbol. it represents the word for
“life"
 Afterlife According to Egyptian beliefs of the afterlife, the soul would leave the body (on death) and
enter into the form of a bird called ‘ba.’ Then join the path of the sun god, Ra. To Egyptians, the sun
represented warmth, light, and growth so this made the sun diety a very essential part of their life, as the
sun was viewed as the ruler of everything that he created. In order to be reborn after death, it was
absolutely essential for the bird (ba) to find its way to the mummy in the burial chamber and unite with it.
In order for this to happen, the coffin had to resemble as much as possible the deified state of the deceased
so that the returning ba could recognize it. The central figure is ram-headed, bird-bodied deity, the afterlife
aspect of the sun god, stretching out his wings over the deceased. The tail of the bird continues in a
column of hieroglyphic inscription consisting of a short offering formula, which divides the surface of the
lid under the waist into two symmetrical halves. On each side run three scene panels with figures of Osiris
and protective funerary deities (the four Sons of Horus), and below, winged sun-discs (the sun disk was
viewed as either the body or eye of Ra) provide magical protection and rebirth for the deceased.

2. Statues :Represented their Gods and their Pharaohs


Ancient Egyptian sculpture was closely associated with Egyptian architecture and mostly
concerned the temple and the funeral tomb. The temple was built as if it were the tomb or
eternal resting-place of a divinity whose statue was hidden within a succession of closed
halls, opened to view only for a short time, when the sun or moon or particular star reached
a point on the horizon from which their rays shone directly upon the innermost shrine. These
divine statues were consulted as oracles, and were seldom of an imposing size. Sculptors
were also employed for wall-reliefs, the capitals of columns, colossal figures guarding the
pylons, and for long avenues of sphinxes. The mural illustrations on the temple walls
typically depict the piety of the Pharaohs as well as their foreign conquests.
Egyptian tombs required the most extensive use of sculpture. In these vaults were placed
portrait statues of the deceased King or Queen. In addition, this type of prehistoric sculpture
included statues of public functionaries, and scribes, and the groups portraying a man and
his wife. The walls of the earlier Egyptian tombs resemble, in effect, an illustrated book of
the manners and customs of the population. Illustrative scenes feature activities like hunting,
fishing, and agricultural settings; artistic and commercial pursuits, such as the making of
statues, or glass, or metal-ware, or the construction of pyramids; women performing
domestic chores, or wailing for the dead; boys engaged in sports. Such reliefs reveal a
confident belief in the future as a kind of untroubled extension of the present life. During
later periods of Egyptian art, beginning with the tombs of the New Empire, gods appear
more prominently in scenes of judgment; indicating less certainty about the happiness of the
future state.

3. Cartouche
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that
the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty
under Pharaoh Sneferu, replacing the earlier serekh. While the cartouche is usually vertical with
a horizontal line, it is sometimes horizontal if it makes the name fit better, with a vertical line on
the left. The Ancient Egyptian word for it was shenu, and it was essentially an expanded shen
ring. In Demotic, the cartouche was reduced to a pair of parentheses and a vertical line.

4. Character and Style


Homeometric regularity, keen observation and exact representation of actual life and nature, and
strict conformity to a set of rules regarding representation of three dimensional forms dominated
the character and style of the art of ancient Egypt. Completeness and exactness were preferred to
prettiness and cosmetic representation.
Because of the highly religious nature of Ancient Egyptian civilization, many of the great works
of Ancient Egypt depict gods, goddesses, and Pharaohs, who were also considered divine.
Ancient Egyptian art is characterized by the idea of order. Clear and simple lines combined with
simple shapes and flat areas of color helped to create a sense of order and balance in the art of
ancient Egypt.

5. Papyri
The word paper is derived from "papyrus", a plant which was cultivated in the Nile delta.
Papyrus sheets were derived after processing the papyrus plant. Some rolls of papyrus discovered
are lengthy, up to 10 meters. The technique for crafting papyrus was lost over time, but was
rediscovered by an Egyptologist in the 1940s.
Papyrus texts illustrate all dimensions of ancient Egyptian life and include literary, religious,
historical and administrative documents. The pictorial script used in these texts ultimately
provided the model for two most common alphabets in the world, the Roman and the Arabic.

6. Pottery
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.
Different types of pottery items were deposited in burial chambers of the dead. Some such
pottery items represented interior parts of the body, like the heart and 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 dead. It was customary to craft on the walls of the
tombs cones of 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.

7. Textile and Dye Making


The beginning of the arts of weaving and dyeing are lost in antiquity. Mummy cloths of varying
degrees of fitness, still evidencing the dyer's skill, are preserved in many museums.
The invention of royal purple was perhaps as early as 1600 B.C. From the painted walls of
tombs, temples and other structures that have been protected from exposure to weather, and from
the decorated surfaces of pottery, chemical analysis often is able to give us knowledge of the
materials used for such purposes.

8. Hieroglyphics
A hieroglyphic script is one consisting of a variety of pictures and symbols. Some of symbols
had independent meanings, whereas some of such symbols were used in combinations. In
addition, some hieroglyphs were used phonetically, in a similar fashion to the Roman alphabet.
Some symbols also conveyed multiple meanings, like the legs meant to walk, to run, to go and to
come. The script was written in three directions: from top to bottom, from left to right, and from
right to left. This style of writing continued to be used by the ancient Egyptians for nearly 3500
years, from 3300 BC till the third century AD.

9. Literature
Ancient Egyptian literature also contains elements of Ancient Egyptian art, as the texts and
connected pictures were recorded on papyrus or on wall paintings and so on. They date from the
Old Kingdom to the Greco-Roman period. The subject matter of such literature related art forms
include hymns to the gods, mythological and magical texts, mortuary texts. Other subject matters
were biographical and historical texts, scientific premises, including mathematical and medical
texts, wisdom texts dealing with instructive literature, and stories. A number of such stories from
the ancient Egypt have survived thousand of years, the most famous being Cinderella, where her
names is Rhodopis in the oldest version of the story.

10. The Amarna Period


During the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt the Pharaoh Akhenaten took the throne. He worshiped a
monotheistic religion based on the worship of Aten, a sun god. Artistic changes followed
political upheaval, although some stylistic changes are apparent before his reign. A new style of
art was introduced that was more naturalistic than the stylized frieze favored in Egyptian art for
the previous 1700 years. After Akhenaton's death, however, Egyptian artists reverted to their old
styles, although there are many traces of this period's style in late art.
The Ancient Egyptian art style known as Amarna Art was a style of art that was adopted in the
Amarna Period (i.e. during and just after the reign of Akhenaten in the late Eighteenth Dynasty,
and is noticeably different from more conventional Egyptian art styles.
It is characterized by a sense of movement and activity in images, with figures having raised
heads, many figures overlapping and many scenes are crowded and very busy.

11. Carvings
The Egyptians feared that the heart would testify against the deceased at the Divine Tribunal. So
heart scarab was placed in the mummy bandages or around the neck of the deceased was
designed to prevent this.

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