ARTH 103 Ancient Egyptian Art and Architecture Time periods o Old 2700 2100 BCE o Middle 2100 1800 BCE o New 1800 1000 BCE Egyptians o Fairly stable group of individuals with a fairly elaborate religious system that included mythology Gods depicted the same way in art o Obsessed with death Life along the Nile o sophisticated agricultural techniques to compensate for population increase o permanent settlements usually didn t expand beyond the Nile Nile land fertile land Seasonal floods bring about new and enriched soil which means continuous source of food and agriculture o Very stratified classes of people noble class middle class farmer class peasant class o Really specialized religious practices defined cosmology and religion with ceremony ritual specialized structure Early Egypt o Prior to the old era two kingdoms societies lived next to each other Kingdom North of the Nile and Kingdom South of the Nile Inverted because the Nile flows from South to North Early Dynastic o The Palette of Narmar c 2950 BCE green schist 25 tall Used to make mix cohl black eye make up Originally intended to block out sunlight from a farmer s eyes Later adapted to line their eyes for religious purposes Then changed once again to line one s eyes to mimic a falcon s eyes god Horace Egyptian Museum Humongous heavy and significant imagery important and probably ceremonial To recall a god Horace protects Eye make up reserved for the noble class rich individuals Front man hitting another man on the head one man vanquishing another hierarctic scale larger man important wearing crown on head important symbol of lower Egypt papyrus from the lower Egypt register horizontal bands of images separated by ground lines cartouche identifying information of name ex Narmar translated as King Catfish the important man who is standing buffalo symbol representation of the goddess Hathor maternal aggressive protector of the noble class kings Back Hathor located at the bottom A decorated mixing dish located in the middle Dead men soldiers with flags Narmar wearing two hats crowns o Narmar s two hats symbolize the two kingdoms of Egypt lower and upper o First king of upper and lower Egypt status acquired through war o Pre dynastic period Egyptian Gods and Goddesses o Pantheon many gods goddesses o Usually depicted in one of three ways Humans with attributes to show who they are ex Crowns Half human half animal Completely animal o List of gods and goddesses Horus Set god of evil Thoth Khnum Hathor Sobek Ra sun god Amon Ptah Anubis Osiris god of goodness also of the underworld Isis goddess of love o Egyptians created a great mythological system o Kings often depicted wearing false beards symbol of virility and a hat tip to Osiris missing penis Symbols and Hieroglyphs o Pictographic like cuneiform o Develops into more abstract ideas writing then into totally abstracted only associated with letters or syllables and sounds o Until the mid 1800s Egyptian language was indecipherable then someone found the Rosetta Stone The Death Cult o Very important part of the Egyptian religious system beliefs o Before mummification Egyptians would take the dead and bury them in the western desert towards the setting sun some type of salt in the sand that preserves the bodies natural mummification emerges thought that your soul goes into the underworld but need your body in the afterlife o embalming and mummification begins everyone wants to be mummified bodies being preserved so that their soul has a place to reside in the underworld o development of Mastabas nearly solid one story structures with underground rooms Shafts led to the rooms Filled for extra protection Old Kingdom o Stepped pyramid of Djoser Imhotep architect c 260 BCE limestone 204 ft Saqqara Elaborate Top solid limestone rocks Mastabas built first bottom and later added on to for the Pyramidal shape o Great Pyramids at Giza c 2575 2450 BCE granite and limestone 450 ft Housed the mummified bodies of three kings From left to right Menkaure Khafre and Khufru Pyramids meant to resemble sun rays relate to the sun god Ra father of all gods Shafts are not located in the center o Pyramid giant neon sign that says Treasure here Burial spots of kings contained all the treasure any valuables of that King very elaborate and expensive burial chambers all sorts of things surrounding the pyramids smaller pyramids that queens were buried in the great sphinx carved out of a rock Mt Rushmore of Egypt mythological creature with the body of a cat head of a man o During the Old Kingdom pyramids were robbed so kings got smart and instructed to be buried in places that no one would suspect or find pyramids later developed into places of worship pay homage to instead of burial chambers o Khafre c 2520 2490 BCE gneiss 5 6 tall Egyptian Museum Idealized Ka Statue put in funerary temples to honor resemble Khafre in the afterlife he could leave his mummified body and reside in one of the statues Well taken care of cleaned well Originally holding a flywhisk symbol of the noble family o Menkaure and his Queen 2490 2472 BCE Formal wedding portrait you can tell because of the erect postures formal Both the King and Queen are idealized Idealized something culturally relative subscribes to what a culture finds beautiful and perfect but doesn t have to be the truth Stylized tell immediately what the artwork is supposed to be even with enlarge parts ex Sumerian votive figures had enlarged eyes to represent a sort of readiness to receive the gods could still tell that they were humans Naturalized an exact representation of the person object that is being sculpted drawn recreated New Kingdom o Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut c 1473 1458 BCE important because it was dedicated to one of the only female kings queens were wives of kings not rulers ceremonial architecture separated from the King simply just places of worship Rock Cut tombs places that Egyptian Kings were buried in caves in the middle of the desert Hatshepsut pretty good ruler ruled for about 15 20 years Relief carving on interior of temple Ka sculptures After she died her predecessors chiseled off her name and faces off statues in an attempt to erase her from history but they missed a few things which have helped archaeologists to determine who the temple was for o Hatshepsut c 1473 1458 BCE red granite 8 6 tall Metropolitan Museum Probably thrown off a cliff and broken into pieces modern day archaeologists reassembled it but some pieces are still