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Art of Ancient Egypt
3 T’s:
Tombs, Temples, and
Timelessness
Essential Knowledge
• Funerary objects are the focus of most
Egyptian art and architecture
• Monumental stone sculpture is a specialty
of the Egyptians
• Strict stylistic formulas were applied to the
gods and pharaohs
Four Periods
• Predynastic 5000-2950
• Early Dynastic 2950-2575
• Old Kindom 2575-2150 BCE
• New Kingdom 1540-1075 BCE
– Amarna Period 1353-1336
Gift of the Nile
• Longest river in the world
• Made civilization possible
–Calm, predictable
• Kept land fertile
• Annual floods
Written Language
• Pictographs became hieroglyphs
• Hieroglyphs represented objects,
ideas, or sounds
• Deciphered through Rosetta Stone
Religion
• Polytheistic
• Gods were animal, human or both
• Strong believers in the afterlife
Triple Concept of Spirit
• Ka-Soul of deceased
• Akh-Lived in heavens as spirit
• Ba-in and out of touch with deceased.
– Human head, bird body.
Burial Method Progression
Body preservation for KA
1. Sand
2. Mastabas *
3. Stepped Pyramid *
4. Pyramid *
Usually in Necropolisis
Mastaba Layout
Stepped Pyramid of Djoser
Great Pyramids of Giza
Mummification
Egyptians developed embalming technique
4 step mummification process:
1. Organ Removal
2. Body Treatment
3. Wrapping
4. Protection
What was in a tomb?
• Mummy in sarcophagus
• Food, drink, clothing, utensils for the
afterlife
• Sometimes slaves, ushtabis
• Images of deceased-ka statue
The Pharaohs
• Deified with absolute power
• Pharaohs communicated with gods
• Sons of RA, the sun god.
• RA’s emblem was a pyramidal stone, hence
pyramid shaped tombs.
Painting/Relief Conventions
• Profile head, legs, feet
• Frontal eye, torso, arms
• ¾ view waist
Sculpture Conventions
• Solid, static, stiff, cube-like
• Slim, young, beautiful, timeless
Canon of Proportions
• Strict set of rules for figures
• Grid always drawn 18 units high
• Figure drawn over grid
Palette of Narmer
Predynastic
c. 3000
• Oldest historical narrative. Slate. Both
ceremonial and historical.
• Hieroglyphic labels and symbols help to identify
everyone
• Hathor at top-goddess mother of all pharaohs
• Horus (falcon) symbol of Upper Egypt, papyrus
symbol of Lower Egypt.
• Two sided palette commemorate Narmer’s
victorious unification of upper and lower
Egypt.
• One of first historical artworks
• EVERY image shows Narmer’s POWER.
• Registers/hierarchical scale/low relief
• Composite view
Seated Scribe
Old Kingdom
2620-2500 BCE
Painted limestone
• Features are more realistic than idealized
• Formality is relaxed and realism is increased as
a human subject’s importance is decreased.
• Sedentary vocation-free from hard labor
Great Pyramids of Giza
Old Kingdom
2550-2490 BCE
• Necropolis complex
• 3 pyramids-Khufu, Khafre, Menkaura
• Khufu=Kafre’s father
• Khafre=Menkaura’s father
• Pharaohs buried in pyramids
• Each side is oriented toward a point on the
compass.
• Face sunset-symbolizes death
• Part of huge necropolis
The Great Sphinx, from Giza
• Body of a lion and head of a pharaoh
• In Khafre’s complex-portrait of him?
• Intelligence/human and strength/beast
• Originally brightly painted to stand out in the desert.
• Immovable, eternal silent guardian of the tomb.
• Carved in situ
Seated Khafre, 2500 BCE, Old Kingdom
Menkaura and a Queen
Old Kingdom
c. 2490-2472 BCE
• Made of stone
• Valley temple statue
• Portrayed with idealized bodies
• Gaze confidently and serenely into the
future
• “Eternal stillness”
• One leg forward, influenced early Greek
artists
• Single unit
New Kingdom
• Country began to gain its strength back
politically and economically from Middle
Kingdom
• At the height of the New Kingdom, rulers
undertook extensive building programs
along the length of the Nile
New Kingdom Architecture
• Temples built to honor the gods and
emphasize pharaoh’s power
• Pylons and obelisks at entrance
• Outdoor-Indoor as it becomes more exclusive
• Amun-god of the air and sky
• Re=Ra
• Temple of Amun-Re:
– Largest columned temple in world
– 134 columns, 24 meters high
Front of Temple
Reconstruction Drawing of Hypostyle Hall,
Temple of Amun-Re at Karnak
New Kingdom
• Hypostyle Hall-Columns support the roof
• Only the priest and the pharaoh were allowed in the
hypostyle hall.
• Hypostyle hall led to the sanctuary where the god’s statue
was kept and cared for
• Allowed some light to come in
• Base of column waist high
• Columns-sunken reliefs
Flower and Bud Columns,
Great Temple of Amun at Karnak
New Kingdom
• Capitals-top of column
• Inspired by papyrus with open and closed
buds
• Within hypostyle hall
• Egyptian columns are based on plant forms
Hatshepsut
• History’s first great female ruler
• Crowned King of Egypt
• “Female Horus”
• Often portrayed as sphinx
• Represented in male pharaoh attire
Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut
New Kingdom
c.1470 BCE
• 3 colonnaded terraces and 2 ramps
– Terraces originally had gardens
• Visually coordinated with the natural setting– long horizontals and verticals
– patterns of dark and light
• Harmonized with its landscape*
Hatshepsut's Sphinx
New Kingdom
• Sculptors portrayed her as having male
and female characteristics.
• In traditional pharaoh dress
• Part pharaoh part lion: again, intelligence
of human with strength of a lion
Hatshepsut with offering jars
New Kingdom
• Destroyed, put back together
• Offering to RA, only knelt before gods-not
mortals
• Anatomically male
Amarna Period
• Amenhotep rules, controversial
• Monotheistic-Aton-represented only as a sun
disk
• Changed name to Akhenaton (servant of Aton)
• Defaced all the other god images, emptied
temples.
Amarna Style
•
•
•
•
Naturalistic Representations
Refined Sensuality
Unprecedented Intimacy
Specific features
– Thin arms
– Prominent bellies
– Full lips
– Heavily lidded eyes
– Dreamy expression
Akhenaton and His Family
Amarna
• Sunken relief
• Unprecedented for Egyptian royal figuresrelaxed poses, curved outlines, flowing
drapery
• Humanity of royal family*
• Aton-sun disk-rays turn into hands. Ankh
giving the breath of life
King Tutankhamen-New Kingdom
• Inside famous tomb discovered
in 1922 by Howard Carter
• Mummified body inside coffin
• Gold coffin 6’7”
• Smooth idealized featurestraditional
Return to Tradition
• King Tut was the son of Akenaton
• Rejected monotheism
• Returned Egypt to polytheistic religion and
traditional representation of pharaohs
• Discovery of nearly complete tomb in 1922
by Howard Carter
Last Judgment of Hu-Nefer, from the
Book of the Dead
New Kingdom
• Page from Book of the Dead
– book of spells and charms on papyrus
• Anubis weighs heart/soul against feather. If
guilty, hippo/lion hybrid eats heart.
• God Thoth is the stenographer of events in
hieroglyphics, which he invented
• Osiris enthroned to subject the deceased to a
day of judgment