Egyptian Art and Architecture

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1

The Purpose of Sculptures

Most statues of gods and kings were housed in temples. In addition to the cult statue, larger images of gods, or of gods and the king together, were placed within temple areas. In the Late and Ptolemaic periods, elite people presented offerings at temples of small bronze images of gods and of the animals sacred to those gods. They also put brightly painted wooden statues of funerary gods in tombs to help the deceased pass safely into the afterlife.

In the Old Kingdom, small chapels built in temple areas housed statues of the king, where the royal ka-spirit could receive offerings. In the New Kingdom, huge ka-statues of the king stood at the entrances to many major temples. Although most people could not enter the temples, they could come to the entrances, and these statues became places for people to communicate with the gods by addressing the king’s ka-spirit.

During the Old Kingdom, statues of the elite were placed in many tomb chapels in a special room, which today is called a serdab (modern Arabic for 'cellar”). The room was then made inaccessible so that it connected to the tomb chapel only through a small slot in the wall. Family members or special funerary priests performed rituals in front of the slot for the spirit of the deceased. Not all statues were hidden. In rock-cut tomb chapels, statues were carved out of the walls of the chapel and were visible to anyone entering to perform the rituals. By the Middle Kingdom, statues of the deceased, both male and female, had become the ritual focal point in chapels. And from the Middle Kingdom onward, statues of the elite, mainly male, were also placed in the outlying areas of the temple complex. Their purpose was to receive offerings, but they also enabled the statue owner (through his ka-spirit) to take part in the temple rituals and the great festivals that were celebrated on behalf of the deity of the temple.

Beginning in the late 4th Dynasty statues of servants and peasants were placed in tombs of the elite to serve them in the afterlife. These servants and peasants appear in a wide variety of poses, performing tasks such as grinding grain, baking bread, and brewing beer. What was important in these sculptures was not the person depicted but the action, which was meant to benefit the tomb owner in the afterlife.

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2

Sculptural Style and Materials

Ancient Egyptian statues were not intended to serve as realistic portraits. Instead, a statue represented an ideal image of the king or a member of the elite and did not include physical peculiarities, disabilities, or signs of aging. Although artists might incorporate some personal features in images of the king and the wealthy elite, people who were less wealthy simply bought ready-made statues. The subject’s name was then inscribed on the statue.

While kings were generally shown with youthful, physically fit bodies, elite male officials had two images that represented different stages of their careers. In one, the official appears youthful and physically fit. In the second, he is mature, with rolls of fat on his chest and sagging muscles representing the successful, sedentary official who eats well. Because elite women could not be government officials, they are represented by a single, youthful image that stresses the outline of their bodies and their child-bearing potential.

Statues of deities, the king, and the elite appear only in standing, seated, and kneeling poses. They also exhibit a characteristic called frontality, which means that they face straight ahead without twisting or turning the head or body. This posture relates to the ritual function of statues. Because the statue faces forward, it could witness people performing the rituals in front of it.

The majority of surviving statues are made of stone, most commonly limestone, but also calcite, sandstone, quartzite, granite, granodiorite, diorite, basalt, and other materials. Wood was widely used, but since it decomposes easily, fewer wooden statues have survived. Cult statues of gods employed precious metals, and some statues of the king and the elite were made of copper in the Old Kingdom and bronze from the Middle Kingdom on. Because metal was valuable and can be melted down and reused, however, only a small proportion of metal statues have survived to the present.

C

Painting and Relief

The ancient Egyptians decorated the walls of temples and tombs with painted scenes. The painting might be flat or in relief, meaning that figures and background occupy different levels of the wall surface. In raised relief, the background was cut away so that the figures stood out. In sunk relief, the figures were cut back to a slightly lower level than the background. Originally, sunk relief was designed to decorate exterior walls, because it is more visible in bright sunlight.

Although the relief decoration on many Egyptian monuments has by now lost all color, it was originally brightly painted. Before painting, artists sketched out scenes in red on the plaster surface of the wall. Then a master draftsman corrected the scene in black. Often the artists used squared grids that helped them obtain correct proportions as they laid out the entire scene. Artists painted onto dry plaster using ground mineral pigments combined with plant gum or glue made from animals. They applied the paint in broad strokes using thick brushes, one color at a time, with no shading or effects of light. The artists then outlined figures and other objects and added interior details with a thin brush.

Artists in ancient Egypt were not concerned with representing the world realistically, and they did not attempt to incorporate the illusion of depth in their art. They represented objects by their most characteristic view, sometimes combining different views within a single picture. For example, a chair might be drawn in profile (viewed from the side), and an animal skin in full view (viewed straight on). The human figure was a composite, with a face in profile that showed the full view of an eye and eyebrow, and full-view shoulders and chest facing the viewer. The waist, buttocks, and limbs were shown in profile. The different sizes of figures indicated their relative importance, with more important people shown larger.

The decoration of Egyptian buildings reflected their function. In temples, scenes depicted the interaction of the king and gods. On the outside walls the king was usually shown triumphantly battling foreign enemies. This action symbolized his role as upholder of order over chaos. Such scenes also served to protect and separate the pure, sacred space inside the temple from the impure, secular world outside. The decoration of the open court, which was open to some visitors, might show processions of sacred boats that held the statues of the temple gods when they were brought out at festivals.

The sacred interior of the temple was decorated with scenes depicting the king and gods together, drawn on the same scale. Each scene shows either the king performing a ritual act before the god—offering food, drink, or adoration—or the god acknowledging the king by embracing him, suckling him, or handing him an ankh, the sign of life in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Other human beings rarely appear in these scenes.

In the Old and Middle Kingdoms, scenes decorating the tomb chapels of the elite showed activities related to the tomb owner's estates and his government office. They also depicted the funeral procession and the performance of the burial rites, and the deceased before a table of offerings, often with rows of people bringing more offerings. Images of gods or the king were not included. In the New Kingdom’s 18th Dynasty, painted tombs at Thebes displayed similar subject matter, but they were by then allowed to show the deceased person worshiping funerary gods or being received in audience by the enthroned king.

The function of the tomb chapel was to provide a space where the living and the dead could interact. Intended to provide a familiar environment for the returning dead, much of the decoration portrayed images of daily life. Together with texts recording the tomb owner’s titles and achievements, the painted images also established the status of the dead person in the eyes of subsequent generations who visited the chapels. In the 19th Dynasty, these daily-life scenes disappeared and were replaced by scenes that showed the passage of the deceased from this world to the next and the deceased adoring and being welcomed by different gods in the afterlife.

Other important painted items in ancient Egypt were wooden coffins and funerary scrolls made of papyrus. In the Old and Middle Kingdoms, coffins were rectangular in shape. On the outside they were decorated with lines and columns of text that gave the titles and name of the owner and asked for offerings on his or her behalf. On the east side, a pair of painted eyes enabled the deceased to look out into the world of the living. During the first half of the Middle Kingdom, coffins were also richly decorated on the inside, with a false door painted behind the exterior eyes, painted piles of offerings for the deceased, and texts designed to protect the occupant and help him or her into the afterlife.

By the 18th Dynasty, most coffins had the shape of a mummified human body. The painted decoration of coffins changed over the next 1,500 years, though certain motifs remained popular. These included images of the sky goddess, Nut, who gave birth to the sun every day; of Hathor, who as the goddess of the west stood on the boundary between this world and the next; and of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, who resurrected the murdered god Osiris. The painted images reflected the function of the coffin, which was not simply to contain a dead body but to help the deceased make a successful transition into the afterlife.

Funerary papyri, put inside many coffins, had a similar purpose. The most famous of them is the so-called Book of the Dead, which contains texts designed to protect the owner during the passage into the next world. A painted scene accompanied each chapter, showing, for instance, the funeral procession, the burial rites performed before the tomb, the deceased adoring a variety of deities, and the deceased as an inhabitant of the next world.

D

Decorative Arts

Jewelry and amulets for protection were worn by the living and the dead in ancient Egypt. Both men and women wore necklaces, collars, bracelets, armlets (bands around the upper arm), and rings. Women also wore anklets (bands around the ankle), hip girdles (belts), and, from the end of the Middle Kingdom, earrings. Although young boys also wore earrings, adult men are rarely shown with them. The most popular materials for jewelry were gold, representing the flesh of the gods and the color of the sun; deep blue lapis lazuli, the color of the night sky; turquoise, the color of new plants; and red carnelian, associated with the sun and the color of blood. Egyptian faience, an inexpensive nonclay ceramic material with a glaze made from quartz, was also popular, even with the wealthy, because its shiny surface was associated with the brilliance of the sun.

Amulets were often made in the shape of what the Egyptians considered lucky hieroglyphs. These included the looped cross, or ankh, which was an emblem for life; the papyrus stem and flower, which stood for new growth and regeneration; and the djed pillar, which was associated with the backbone of Osiris, for stability. One of the most famous amulets is the wedjat eye. This was the eye of the god Horus, which was wounded and made whole again, and it protected the wearer from misfortune and bad influences. Other amulets were in the form of gods. For example, the goddess Isis protected pregnant women, women in childbirth, and young children.

E

The Amarna Period (1353 bc-1335 bc)

One period stands out from all others in Egyptian art because it represents a major change in style and subject matter. The Amarna period, as it is known, lasted fewer than 20 years at the end of the 18^th Dynasty and reflected a religious change made by King Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaton. Akhenaton worshiped only one god, Aton, who appeared as a sun disk . During Akhenaton’s rule, depictions of the sun disk above the king replaced traditional temple decoration showing the king interacting with different gods in human form. From the sun disk, rays ending in human hands reach down to touch Akhenaton and his queen, Nefertiti, and the offerings that they present to Aton. In tomb chapels as well, the king and queen, not the tomb owner, form the focal point of the decoration.

Most noticeable in Amarna art are the changed proportions of figures, particularly those of the king. Because Aton as the creator god was believed to embody both the male and female principles of the universe, Akhenaton, who was the representative of Aton on earth, was portrayed with characteristics the Egyptians regarded as feminine, such as narrow shoulders, a high waist, and pronounced belly, buttocks, and thighs. Other figures have similar proportions but are less exaggerated. A number of scholars have suggested that the king's image reflects his actual appearance, but given the lack of realism in Egyptian art generally, this portrayal is more likely to relate to his religious beliefs. After the death of Akhenaton, the style and subject matter of Egyptian art returned to traditional forms during the reign of his son-in-law, Tutankhamun.

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