Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Part 1
Background
The lush Nile River valley in northeastern Africa had been occupied since Paleolithic and
Neolithic times.
During the ice age, all of North Africa was lush grassland, but at its end, climate changes
turned this area into a desert. More people migrated to the Nile River, already a lush spot
for hunting, where they now learned the arts of managing water for agriculture. The Nile has
its origin deep in Africa, flowing north (one of very few rivers in the world to flow from
south to north) to the Mediterranean where it deposits topsoil in a fertile delta with plentiful
game and reliable conditions for farming.
A delta is a triangular flood plain, so-called after the Greek letter delta, which is a triangle.
Annual floods brought a new layer of rich soil into the delta every year, but people learned
how to regulate and divert the flow of water through dams and irrigation upstream as well.
Coming north from Ethiopia, the Nile falls over several cataracts and then creates a long
narrow valley before spreading out into the delta. The cataracts marked the southernmost
natural boundary of Egypt (they couldn't navigate beyond them). The Mediterranean marked
the northern border, and the east and west boundaries were determined by the desert on either
side of the river.
The long river valley and the delta marked two natural definable areas called Upper Egypt
and Lower Egypt. These two regions are so-called not because of direction, but of altitude.
Lower Egypt was almost at sea level in the northernmost region. The higher southern river
valley was called Upper Egypt. It is located upstream on the Nile. Upper Egypt was rural
and populated sparsely in villages, while Lower Egypt was more populous, urban, and richer.
Egyptian History
Egyptian history is divided into two periods: Predynastic and Dynastic. The Predynastic is
the long, mostly unrecorded time that leads from the Neolithic village settlements to the
conquest of Lower Egypt by Upper Egypt (unification) about 3100 BC by the king named
Narmer or Menes.
There are several important facts to remember from this conquest. It was unification as much
as conquest and continued over several centuries before it became permanent, around 2700
BC. The Egyptians themselves always referred to Egypt as the land of two kingdoms and
the crown of the pharaoh was a composite of the two crowns of the two regions, consisting of
the vulture head representing the goddess Nekhbet, from Upper Egypt and the cobra head
representing the goddess Wadjet/Uraeus, from Lower Egypt. A good example of this is the
burial mask of King Tut, shown below. The presence of these two symbols on the crown
represents the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. One of the pharaoh's names was He of
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the Two Ladies, referring to the two parts of the kingdom. A new city on the Nile was built
during the conquest, placed strategically where the two regions joined, a city known as the
White Walls, today called Memphis.
Chronogical Table
[note]: There are some opinions about the age and the division
I-II Dynasty
XI-XII Dynasty
XIII-XVII Dynasty
New Kingdom; c.1550 B.C.-c.1085 B.C. (Thebe)
XVIII-XX Dynasty
XXI-XXIV Dynasty
Late Period; c.712 B.C.-c.332 B.C. (Ethiopian kings at XXV Dynasty and Saitic
Kingdom in Delta at XXVI Dynasty. Egypt becomes satrapy of Persian Empire and then
begins last Dynasty)
XXV-XXXI Dynasty
Greco-Roman Period; c.332-c.395 A.D. (Alexander the Great annexes Egypt to his
empire. Founding of Alexandria in c.332 B.C.)
The Dynastic period is called that because the Egyptians measured their history by
dynasties.
1. A dynasty is the period during which the descendants of a founding family rule a
country.
2. This period is further divided into three major kingdoms: the Old Kingdom, the
Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom, sometimes called the period of the Empire.
Intermediate periods of turmoil and conquest fall in between the three kingdoms, and at the
very end of their history, the Egyptians were ruled by the Persians, by the Greeks, and finally
by the Romans, but throughout the three-thousand year BC period of ancient Egypt, there
was a strong culture marked by a profound sense of continuity and tradition, regularity and
permanence.
Egyptian art reflects the stability and permanence of Egyptian culture. Even from the
Predynastic period there are patterns that establish the way Egyptian painting will look
throughout its history.
Other interesting facts about the pharaohs, and a list of them, can be found at this site:
http://www.livius.org/pha-phd/pharaoh/pharaoh.htm
Types of Sculpture
Artistically, sculpture is classified in several ways. The types of sculpture we will pay
particular attention to in this section are described as Relief sculpture-meaning that it is a
design or figure that is always attached to the background or object on which it is carved.
Relief sculpture has several classifications. The first of which is bas or low relief sculpture.
This form, as the name implies is carved very shallow into the surface. The background is
carved away and the figure sticks out beyond the background.
Mastaba tombs
Very early in Egyptian prehistory it became important to preserve the body. Perhaps because
the desert soil and climate conditions naturally preserved organic forms and suggested
timelessness, the Egyptians began to help this process by mummification. Mummification
took several weeks to complete and was essential to the preservation of the soul in the
afterlife. The concept of the spirit was complex. There was both a spirit which hovered near
the mummy and a soul which went on to the otherworld. The spirit which remained near the
body was the ka and the other was the ba, which went into the underworld where it would
pass through a kind of initiation and was weighed and judged. During the mummification
process the organs were removed and preserved then stored in special containers called
canopic jars. These jars generally were carved from alabaster and the lid was in the form of
the various gods.
The cult of the dead focused around a special document called the book of the dead. This
book was actually a scroll that was written on papyrus, a form of paper made from layers
of the papyrus plant. On this scroll, was written various information that would help the soul
pass a variety of tests during the afterlife. Often found with the mummy was a decorative
carving or piece of jewelry called a scarab. The scarab is a beetle form and represents the
sun. This is due to the Egyptians observations of the beetle pushing a spherical piece of
dung.
It was important that some representation of the body remained in the tomb in case the
mummy was damaged. Shabti figures were made representing the deceased, and in some
cases a portrait called a reserve head was made and incorporated into hidden chambers in the
structure so it would never be found.
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In addition, the grave was protected from jackals by piling rocks on top. In the Old
Kingdom an early form of tomb was made by shaping the rocks into a solid rectangular
structure over a grave shaft. Called a mastaba after the Arabic word for "bench" because
that's what they resemble, the structure would also have an entrance leading to a chapel
where offerings could be made for the afterlife of the dead.
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Egyptian Sculpture
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Egyptian sculpture has a very distinct for that follows the geometrical form of the original
block. They used a variety of materials such as the one above which is made of diorite, a
hard dark stone, that could be very difficult to carve. The freestanding forms generally
represent the form in a very rigid manner. This presents the subject with great dignity. The
artists also used symmetry and frontality in the pose. Pharaohs were represented in a godlike manner showing them in the prime of their life.
Menkaure and his Wife, Queen Khamerenebty, c.2515 B.C.E. Slate, 54". Their equal size
shows her importance.
Menkaura flanked by the goddess Hathor (left) the goddess Bat (cow goddess) (right). Basalt
statue in Cairo Museum.
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Ka-Aper was a priest who lived in Memphis at around 2500 B.C. He was in charge of
reciting prayers for the deceased in temples and funerary chapels. The statue of him is made
of a single block of sycamore wood apart from the arms which are attached to the trunk with
pieces of wood. It shows remarkable carving skill and more realism than other
representations during the Old Kingdom, which tended to be more idealized. The statue is
only 37 tall. The eyes are inlaid; the rim is made out of copper and the white is of opaque
quartz, while the cornea is made out of rock crystal.
Art of the Old Kingdom can be characterized/described in the following ways: It uses size to
distinguish importance, people, especially royalty, are shown with dignity, it has formal
balance, and forms were generally massive and blocky.
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In front of the pyramid was the huge statue of a sphinx, a man's head on a lion's body. This
may have been a portrait of Khafre. The area around the sphinx was excavated as a quarry for
stone for the mortuary temple. Considerable erosion on the side of the lion's body has
suggested that the statue is actually much older than the Old Kingdom, and some believe that
it was sculpted in a much earlier time. The head might have been a yardang, or a naturally
protruding rock suggesting a lion's head. This rock might have been refined into a lion's head
facing the rising of the constellation Leo. It might have been recarved into a portrait of
Khafre at the time his pyramid was built. The head is relatively small for the body of the lion,
suggesting a reworking. The face has been disfigured. In spite of this, it shows less
weathering than the body, suggesting that it was carved later. The figure was buried for
centuries in the sand, and because is built of soft sandstone and would have disappeared long
ago had it not been buried for so long. The body is over 200 feet in length and 65 feet tall.
The face of the sphinx is 13 feet wide and its eyes are 6 feet high.
What happened to his nose? That is a question that has a lot of various tales associated
with it. For many years it was thought that Napoleons army blasted the nose with a cannon
but recent research attributes the damage to Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a religious fanatic
from Arabia. In 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in
the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the
nose.
times, this new plan was devised to conceal tombs by tunneling into the rock, but hiding the
entrance under rubble. The most famous of these tombs is that of Tutankhamen, not
discovered until 1922.
The early New Kingdom tombs, however, continued the practice of fronting the tomb with
mortuary temples. The most famous of these is that of Queen Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut was
followed by her son Tuthmoses III, who performed the damnatio memoriae (removal from
memory)on his mothers statues, then by his son Amenhotep II, then Tuthmosis IV,
Amenhotep III, and one of the most memorable of all pharoahs, Amenhotep IV, who initiated
a revolution in Egyptian religion and art. He is known to us as Akhenaton.
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Use the following links to read about her and her monument.
http://www.bediz.com/hatshep/story.html
As Akhenaten became ever more wrapped up in his new religion, so the administration of
Egypt started to suffer. The boundaries of the empire began to decrease.
With the new religion and the new capital came a new artistic style, almost certainly started
by the unusual physical characteristics possessed by the king himself (in some carvings, it is
hard to tell him apart from his wife), probably as the result of some sort of a disease. In one
fresco from the Amarna Period, Cretan diplomats are shown attending the royal court. The
contact with Crete, just north of Egypt in the Mediterranean, with its very naturalistic and
lively artistic tradition, has suggested that perhaps the Egyptians had been influenced by
Cretan craftsmen in the Amarna Period.
One person who managed to avoid the grotesque excesses of Amarna art was Akhenaten's
Queen, Nefertiti. Some historians believe her to have been allocated more power than was
traditionally allowed, since she is depicted in some carvings smiting the enemies of Egypt, a
privilege normally only reserved for a pharaoh. Whatever the truth about this, she died in
about year 12 of the reign, and 1 of Akhenaten's daughters became Chief Royal Wife.
Sometimes known as the Berlin bust, it was found in the workshop of the famed sculptor
Thutmose. This bust depicts Nefertiti with full lips enhanced by a bold red. Although the
crystal inlay is missing from her left eye, both eyelids and brows are outlined in black. Her
graceful elongated neck balances the tall, flat-top crown which adorns her sleek head. The
vibrant colors of her necklace and crown contrast the yellow-brown of her smooth skin.
Because this remarkable sculpture is still in existence, it is no wonder Nefertiti remains 'The
Most Beautiful Woman in the World.' To view the bust and read more about Nefertiti follow
the link: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/nefertiti.htm
It remains a mystery exactly what happened to Akhenaten's body after his death. It is highly
probable that he was interred at Akhetaten, where his tomb was smashed by the vengeful
masses when orthodoxy returned toEgypt. It is unlikely that those who still remained loyal to
his memory would have allowed his body to be desecrated along with his former capital, so it
might well have been moved back to Thebes or the Valley of the Kings. However, unless
new evidence turns up, we will probably never know the truth.
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Above: the first feature one sees when approaching the temple of Karnak is a row of
Sphinxes.
flowers. However, these columns in Egyptian architecture could also be based on palm
trees, and bundled reeds. These forms symbolized the primordial marsh (from which life
sprang).The center columns are raised higher (66), which allows for the addition of light.
This elevated section is called the clerestory. Eventually, one enters a space called the
sanctuary. This space was reserved for the Pharaoh and high priests.
Because of the layout of the temple, it can be described as bilateral symmetry along a single
axis, meaning that when it is divided down the center, it is the same on both sides.
Abu Simbel
The Abu Simbel temples are two massive rock temples in Nubia, southern Egypt. The twin
temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses
II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari. The
complex was relocated in its entirety in the 1960s, on an artificial hill made from a domed
structure. The relocation of the temples was necessary to avoid their being submerged during
the creation of Lake Nasser. As with many other temples the structure called an atlantid was
used in the interior spaces. An atlantid is a male figure used to serve as a column.
Tutankhamen
His original name, Tutankhaten, means "Living Image of Aten", while Tutankhamun means
"Living Image of Amun." The 1922 discovery by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun's intact
tomb received worldwide press coverage. There was much discussion of a curse on the tomb
due to the untimely death of Carter and several other archaeologists. The results of DNA
tests confirmed that Tutankhamun was the son of Akhenaten and his sister/wife (see
Akhenaten above).
This tomb was the first to be discovered intact. Because it was concealed so well all of the
riches of the tomb were still present.
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