Egyptian Art

Anthropology 101

Egyptian Art

The origin of art began with human's ability to think and imagine. Since humans are born with artistic skills, the history of art begins with humanity. Artistic expression is what allows a person's thoughts, feelings, and points of view to be represented and can include anything and has no boundaries. Culture can be described as a person's way of life which includes his language, activities, belief's etc. which gives them their identity as they feel part of a group. Prior to the development of technology people would record an important event with the help of art which allows us today to view the past and analyze it. Cultural universals are patterns which exist in every culture and art is considered to be one of them. Different forms of art came into existence within each culture. I was in fifth grade when I learned about the culture of Egypt. Whenever I think of art I think of Egyptian culture and their fascinating art therefore, I decided to do further research on them to find out the stories behind every artistic piece of Egyptian art.

Egyptians loved to make art. The Egyptians made statues, reliefs, paintings, pottery, jewelry, sculptures and coffins. They made art for gods, kings and queens, and for the dead in their tombs. Their beliefs and religion were often drawn on paintings like their predictions of what the afterlife was like, or pictures of gods doing certain things. Egyptian art was very delicate and beautiful. The Egyptians were influenced by many things. Their religion and beliefs were shown in most of their paintings. Paintings had pictures of gods and goddesses doing different activities. Colored portraits made predictions of the afterlife they believed in. Nature and everyday activities were main subjects too.

Egyptians had several kinds of art forms. Mummy cases, or sarcophaguses, were built for the bodies of kings or important people. They believed that the body went to an afterlife and the sarcophagus was to be a beautiful and valuable place for the body to rest. The body was wrapped in white bandages then it was put in its own case with a unique design. But the more significant people were given more than one case, which were piled inside each other. Another interesting art form was relief art. In relief art, the picture was carved into layers to give a raised look. In the Old and Middle Kingdom, reliefs were made in soft limestone. During the New Kingdom sandstone was used. Reliefs showed every kind of activity, from feasting to working, from learning to dancing.

Statues were another common art form Egyptians liked making. Most were of gods, goddesses, pharaohs, and queens. The statues could be made small or large. Statues were not supposed to copy nature, but they were meant to be symbols of the people's beliefs. Statues always had to be youthful figures. The paintings and drawings of Egyptian people look flat and strange, because they were painted in a particular way. Important people were painted larger than others. Heads were shown from front view. Eyes and the top half of the body were shown from the front, but arms and legs were shown from the side, so that they were easier to see.

Egyptian language in writing was called hieroglyphics. Because of its importance to the culture, this written and painted language was also an art form for the Egyptians. Hieroglyphics was a system with 24 alphabetic characters. Vowels wouldn't be written down. Instead they had phonograms and ideograms. Hieroglyphics were carved or painted. But for everyday purposes, they used a simple cursive form of hieroglyphics called hieratic. The picture writing, hieroglyphics was used for religious writings and for inscriptions on monuments. There were about 750 different hieroglyphs. It took as much as twelve years to learn to write in the Egyptians