Ancient Egyptian Art

     Egyptian artists made useful, decorative, and delicate objects. The Greeks admired their work in gold, silver and copper, their translucent vases and beautiful pottery.

     Certain conventions in art, particularly for sculpture and painting, were set in the Old Kingdom and persisted for centuries. This conservatism evidenced that art, like the painting on the walls of tombs, served a religious purpose. Accordingly, it was more important to perpetuate religious customs than to experiment.

     In painting, for example, there was little interest in perspective or shading, and objects of different sizes were often shown as if they were of the same scale. The king was usually rendered as larger than any other figure. For centuries faces were painted in profile, but the eye was in full view; legs in profile but the shoulders forward. Sculptors carved figures in a frontal pose, arms to the side, with the left leg advanced.

     Representations of the deceased were believed to contribute to the welfare of the soul of the dead, and were placed in the tomb of the deceased. For this purpose the paintings on the walls of the tombs depicted happy scenes, the bounty of hunting, and the abundance of life. The primary architectural concern of the Egyptians, in addition to the pyramids, were religious shrines and temples built in the post and lintel method (horizontal beams called lintels held up by columns or “posts”). Geography played a role here, for the Egyptians had access to immense supplies of stone.

     Another structure sacred to the sun god Re was the obelisk, a slim, four-sided stone shaft that tapers upward to a pyramidal cap. These structures were raised at temples to honor deities and rulers. The Romans seemed to have been enthralled by the design, for they dragged many of these obelisks back to Italy. The form was copied throughout the world, the most familiar to Americans being the Washington Monument erected in the 19th century to honor our first president.

Ancient Egypt Art and Architecture

Section 8

Section 10