AHIS 120g 1st Edition Lecture 4 Current LectureMiddle Kingdom (1500 BCE)- Dynasty 11-13- Old Kingdom collapsed.- Antagonisms between Upper and Lower Egypt. - Shows break from tradition. - Rock-cut tombs, Beni Hasan, (1950-1900 BCE)o Burial patterns among court officials and other members of the elite stayed relatively constant during the Middle Kingdom. o Rock-cut tombs were particularly popular at the time. o Paintings and relief decorated the walls.o Tomb owners believed the paintings provided nourishment, company and pastimes for the dead. - Lady Sennuwy (1920 BCE)o Rupture with convention in the representation of royalty.o Rather than sculpting a smooth-skinned, idealized face, the artist developed skillsto render more naturalistic facial features.o Departure from the canon of proportions. Depictions of women during the Middle Kingdom have increasingly narrower shoulders and waists.  Males have proportionally smaller heads, and lack the tight musculature of their Old Kingdom counterparts. The New Kingdom- 18th, 19th and 20th Dynasties are designated the New Kingdom.- They constitute a time of renewed territorial expansion and tremendous prosperity for Egypt, and a time when the arts flourished. - Tremendous architectural projects were accomplished along the full length of the Nile, centering on the region of Thebes—present-day Luxor.- Funerary temple of Hatshepsut, Deir-el-Bahri (1478-1458 BCE)o Striking response to its physical setting.o Its ascending white limestone courts, linked by wide ramps on a central axis, echo the desert’s strong horizontal ground-line and the clifftop above.- Temple of Amun-Ra, Karnak, Thebes (1279-1212 BCE)o Entering the complex, a visitor walked through massive pylons, or gateways built as monuments to individual kings.  The columns are far heavier than they needed to be, with the effect that aviewer senses the overwhelming presence of stone all around—heavy, solid, and permanent.o Smaller halls were sun-drenched courts, and processional ways decorated with obelisks, tall stone markers topped by pyramid-shaped points.o Throughout the complex, a distinctively Egyptian form of decoration covered the pylons and hall and enclosure walls: sunken relief.  The sculptor cut sharp outlines into the stone’s face, and modeled the figures within the outlines.o The subject of the reliefs at Karnak was the king’s relationship with the gods. - Temple of Ramesses II, Abu Simbel (1279-1213 BCE)o Ramsessess II ruled for 67 years during the 19th Dynasty and commissioned more architectural projects than any other Egyptian king. o A massive rock façade substitutes for a pylon, where four huge seated statues of the king almost 70 feet high flank the doorway, dwarfing any visitor. o Between the statues’ legs, small figures represent members of the royal family. o A niche above the entrance holds an image of Amun, who is shown as a falcon-headed figure crowned by the sun disk. Isocephaly. Portrayal of the figure of the god is at a slightly smaller scale than that of the king but the two appear to be of equal height when the statue is placed upon its plinth. - Akhenaten, from Karnak (1353-1335 BCE)o Amenhotep II raised the level of devotion to the sun-god during his reign. The king established open-air courtyards where Egyptians could worship the sun in its manifestation as a disk (or Aten) in the sky. The sun’s life-giving force began to be visualized as a disk that radiated beams terminating in hands. Amenhotep II was the first Egyptian monotheist.  Established a new city Akhenaten—now known as Amarna—and changedhis name to Akehnaten as well.o Sculptures of Akhenaten and his family break dramatically with long-established conventions for depicting royal subjects.  The figure represents the king with narrow shoulders lacking musculature, marked pot belly, wide hips and generous thighs.  The Amarna style specifically emphasized naturalism of the body. Possibily the intended feminized appearance was to capture the androgynous fertile character of Aten as life-giver. - Akhenaten and His Family (1355 BCE)o Group representations of Akhenaten with his family—his wife Nefertiti and three oldest daughters—are remarkable for the apparent intimacy among the figures. o Beneath the disk of the sun, its life-giving beams radiate downward.o The king and his wife face each other and hold three lively daughters, who climb on their laps and in their arms.o Deliberate emphasis on the daughters’ childishness marks a change. In the past, artists had represented children with a hieroglyphic pictograph of an adult in miniature. The emphasis on the children epitomizes the regeneration that the royal couple represents, and especially the king as manifestation of Aten. - Queen Nefertiti (1348-1336/35 BCE)o Bust is plastered over a limestone core and painted.o The sculpture’s left eye lacks the inlay of the right, showing that the bust remained unfinished; however an extraordinary elegance still derives from the sculptor’s command of geometry. - Coffin of Tutankhameno Three coffins preserved the king’s mummified corpse, the innermost of which is gold and weighs over 250 pounds. Most impressive is the exquisite workmanship of its cover, with its richplay of colored inlays against polished high