Egyptian Art Relief, painting and sculpture

Early Civilisations Eleanor Simmance exs976@bham.ac.uk

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Features of Egyptian art

• Realism of lesser importance • Aims to maximise information conveyed • Governed by rules of ‘decorum’

– Religious, royal and ideological contexts – Cosmic order (ma’at)

• Clear order and hierarchy – Use of space – Registers – Size of figures

• horror vacui (fear of empty space) • 2D relief, 3D sculpture, writing system (hieroglyphs) -

connected

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Tomb of Mehu, Saqqara Old Kingdom

Realism vs. essence

Very strong men?

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Tomb of Djehutyhotep, El-Bersheh Middle Kingdom

The human form

Profile (but not eye)

Frontal (inc. arms)

Profile

Arches on both feet (in this example)

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Tomb of Nefertari (queen of Ramesses II), Valley of the Queens (Tomb 66) New Kingdom

But what is wrong with her hands…? 5

Ostracon [limestone flake] showing Senenmut(?) New Kingdom www.metmuseum.org: accession no. 36.3.252

Proportions learnt with gridlines

Red ink to start; black for final version

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All creatures great and small (and mythological)

Tribute scene, Beit el-Wali New Kingdom British Museum

Early art very different! ‘Two-dog’ palette, Hierakonpolis c.3150BC (pre-Dynastic) Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, E 3924

Hint – compare the sizes!

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Birds

Wings in flight shown frontally

Tail shown frontally

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Watercolours by Howard Carter, MSS vii.1.7.2 (above) and MSS vii.1.13 (right) Both © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford

Buildings and places

Tomb of Nebamun, Thebes New Kingdom

British Museum EA 37983 © Trustees of the British Museum www.britishmuseum.org

‘Opening of the mouth’ ritual, Papyrus of Hunefer New Kingdom British Museum EA 9901,5 © Trustees of the British Museum

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Luxor Temple façade

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‘Soul house’, Middle Kingdom British Museum EA 32610 © Trustees of the British Museum www.britishmuseum.org

Wooden brewery, Middle Kingdom www.metmuseum.org: accession no. 20.3.12

‘House for eternity’ (pr-Dt): art in the tomb and provision for the afterlife

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Water

Tomb of Ti, Saqqara Old Kingdom

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Hieroglyphs

• Generally the same conventions as art

• Frontal faces:

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Tomb of Nebamun, Thebes New Kingdom British Museum EA 37984 © Trustees of the British Museum www.britishmuseum.org

Bes-deity amulet New Kingdom

Eton Myers Collection, ECM 1666

Rare frontal face in art Certain deities shown from front

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Registers: order, passage of time and hierarchy

Tomb of Khnumhotep, Beni Hasan (Tomb 3) Middle Kingdom Tomb of Nakht, Thebes (TT 52)

New Kingdom

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Locations of artwork (reliefs, paintings, statues etc.)

• Tombs, particularly:

– OK – Giza and Saqqara necropoleis (mudbrick/stone mastaba tombs)

– MK – rock-cut tombs in Middle Egypt

– NK – Theban necropolis

• Temples

– Especially those of New Kingdom (Karnak and Luxor, Memphis, Heliopolis and many more…)

– Can be mortuary or ‘religious’

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‘False door’ of Mereruka, with statue ‘emerging’ from burial shaft to receive offerings

Mastaba

• Flat roofed, sloping sides • Early pyramid = several

mastabas of decreasing size on top of each other

• Superstructure for tomb chambers beneath

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Reconstructed pyramid tomb exterior of Sennedjem, Deir el-Medina (TT1) New Kingdom

Interior of Sennedjem’s tomb

Statue of Amenemheb with stela New Kingdom British Museum EA 22557 © Trustees of the British Museum www.britishmuseum.org

(but not actually this statue!)

Theban tombs 18

Religious temple at Philae,

dedicated to the goddess Isis, Aswan Graeco-Roman period

Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut,

Deir el-Bahari New Kingdom

N.B. not all mortuary temples have this design - some are more similar to their religious counterparts

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Burial scene, Manchester Museum (no.5886), Thebes(?)

The goddess Meretseger, Egyptian Museum, Turin (no.1659), Deir el-Medina New Kingdom

Dancer/acrobat Egyptian museum, Turin (no.7052), Deir el-Medina New Kingdom

Cat and Mouse, Thebes(?) New Kingdom © Brooklyn Museum: accession no. 37.51E

Ostraca (sing. ostracon): inexpensive religious devotion, practice pieces, informal records, doodles…

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Techniques: ‘raised’ relief

Preferred option (and earliest) – attractive, lasting; used widely, especially on interior walls

Inside the temple of Philae Graeco-Roman period

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Techniques: ‘sunken’ relief

Especially used on exterior walls

On the outside of the Philae pylon Graeco-Roman period

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Stela of Ipuy, (Turin no.7537) Deir el-Medina New Kingdom

Showing both ‘raised’ (upper register and lunette) and ‘sunken’ relief (lower register)

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Techniques: painting on relief:

Tomb of Setau, El-Kab New Kingdom

on plaster:

Tomb of Nebamun, Thebes New Kingdom British Museum EA 37979 © Trustees of the British Museum

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Oldest known painted tomb (Tomb 100), Hierakonpolis (Nekhen) c.3100 BC

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Techniques: filling (only Old Kingdom)

Some details carved (e.g. legs) and rest painted

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Processes

Drawing board with test pieces, Deir el-Medina New Kingdom British Museum EA 5601 © Trustees of the British Museum

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Unfinished statue of a king. Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin, no. 21238. © Sandra Steiß/Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hieroglyphs ready for carving (black ink)

Tomb of Pepi-ankh, Meir Old Kingdom

Unfinished false-door and wall-decoration (still only ink)

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Unfinished obelisk, Aswan quarry (in situ) New Kingdom

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Statuary • Stone: one block, usually no gaps, variety of poses

• Wooden: some have dowels (arms), seated pose rare

• Pose often equates to status (e.g. scribal statues)

• Once again, realism is not always key

‘Seated scribe’, Saqqara Old Kingdom Louvre E3023, © Musée du Louvre/ C. Décamps

Amenhotep son of Hapu (Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 44862), Karnak Temple New Kingdom

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The face of the king

Ideal

Thutmose III (British Museum EA 487, on loan to Basel Antikenmuseum), Deir el-Medina New Kingdom

Tired? Weird!

Senwosret III, Deir el-Bahari Middle Kingdom British Museum EA 686 © Trustees of the British Museum

Akhenaten (National Museum of Alexandria), New Kingdom

But are any of them accurate portraits?

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Links to the past - usurpation

Monuments could be changed, re-used and even dismantled – not necessarily permanent

• Re-carving cartouches of earlier monument

– often ideological/political reasons e.g. removing evidence of an earlier ruler

Cartouches of Tutankhamun (New Kingdom) altered by later New Kingdom pharaoh Horemheb. Note the deep depressions in the stone in order to remove the original signs

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• A nicer gesture: adding your cartouche to an earlier monument:

– Partaking in antiquity

– Recognising earlier ruler’s success

– Legitimising one’s own rule

Links to the past - usurpation

Sphinx of Amenemhat III (Cairo Museum, CG 394), from the Middle Kingdom, with cartouches of later pharaohs: Ramesses II, Merenptah and Psusennes I

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Periods of change Egyptian art generally very consistent – main characteristics seen by the 1st Dynasty, and were fully established by Old Kingdom Examples of change: • New Kingdom

– Wider use of colour, bodily forms (on statues and in reliefs) and expressions e.g. see fowling scene of Nebamun compared to OK equivalents.

• Reign of Akhenaten, NK (more in Lectures 6 and 7) – Tomb owner no longer centre of attention – focus on king

and new deity (the Aten) – Human form greatly changed, more feminine, almost

distorted

• Libyan, Kushite (Nubian) and Persian kings (Lecture 9) – Small changes in iconography

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Influence: both imported and exported

• Some foreign deities are absorbed into Egyptian pantheon (e.g. through composite deities, syncretism)

• Compare - Egyptian ‘striding statue’ with Greek kouros

• Roman mummy portrait: realism

in Egypt

Portrait of a youth, Hawara Roman Period © Petrie Museum of Egyptian archaeology. UC 19609 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie/

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Main points from this session: • Art governed by rules, conventions and ideals • Realism less important than purpose • Variety of techniques, media and materials • Art mostly from tombs and temples

– Elite bias – Audience?

• Purpose – not just art!

Good introduction: Robins, G. 1997. The art of ancient Egypt, London.

More advanced (and 40 years old. The original is even older…!): Schäfer, H. 1974 (translation). Principles of Egyptian art, Oxford.

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Image credits Where the image is from a museum’s database, credit is given in-slide and where possible, museum accession numbers have also been given; further images can often be accessed directly from there. The following photographs are my own (Eleanor Simmance, exs976@bham.ac.uk): ‘Religious temple’ - Philae pylon façade; the goddess Meretseger ostracon; Dancer/acrobat ostracon; Inside temple of Philae; outside Philae pylon; Stela of Ipuy; head of Thutmose III Where copy-right is not acknowledged in-slide, the credits are as follows • Tomb of Mehu:, Saqqara © Tour Egypt [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/mehut.htm] • Djehutyhotep, El-Bersheh: © Raymond Betz/Osirisnet.net [www.osirisnet.net]

• Tomb of Nefertari: © Manfred Heyde/Wikimedia Commons • Proportions grid: downloadable from http://www.daytonartinstitute.org/educator/social_studies/egyptian-resources.php • Beit el-Wali scene – cropped image from original © Andreas Rueda/Wikimedia Commons • Two-dog palette (Hierakonpolis) - © Scott D. Haddow/Flicker, under Creative Commons licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

• Luxor temple façade: © Neithsabes/Wikimedia Commons • Luxor temple façade in relief: photograph reproduced with permission from Steven Gregory • Water scenes – tomb of Ti, Saqqara: © Thierry Benderitter/Osirisnet.net; Cau Brualla/Osirisnet.net

• Face hieroglyph in relief: © Rémih/Wikimedia Commons • Owl – limestone trial piece (Brit. Mus. EA 59045): original image © John Bodsworth/Egypt Archive (now closed down), now Jeff Dahl/Wikimedia

Commons • Bes deity amulet: © Sarah Chapman/Eton Myers collection http://birminghamegyptology.co.uk/virtual-museum/bes-development-of-a-deity/c-

anthropomorphism-from-lion-to-man/ • Tomb of Nakht (two scenes): both © Abdel Ghaffar Shedid/Osirisnet.net

• Tomb of Khnumhotep (hunting in marshes): © Kurohito/Wikimedia Commons

• False door of Mereruka: © Horemweb/Wikimedia Commons • Tomb of Sennedjem pyramid: © Roland Unger/Wikimedia Commons • Tomb of Sennedjem interior: © Thierry Benderitter/Aude Gros de Beler/Christian Mariais/Osirisnet.net • Deir el-Bahari: © Aligatorek/Wikimedia Commons • Ostracon of burial (Manchester Museum no.5886: photograph reproduced with permission from Campbell Price • Tomb of Setau, El Kab: © Ramond Betz/Chrisitan Mariais/Osirisnet.net • Hierakonpolis painting: © Francesco Raffaele/Wikimedia Commons • Techniques: filling: photograph reproduced with permission from Tony Leahy • Uncarved hieroglyphs: photograph reproduced with permission from Tony Leahy • Unfinished wall/false door, tomb of Pepi-ankh: photograph reproduced with permission from Martin Bommas • Unfinished obelisk: user © Ad Meskens/Wikimedia Commons • Amenhotep son of Hapu: © Jerzy Strzelecki/Wikimedia Commons • Akhenaten: © JMCC1/Wikimedia Commons • Tutankhamun cartouche usurped by Horemheb: from P. Brand 2010. ‘Usurpation of Monuments’, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, fig.3

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5gj996k5 • Sphinx of Amenemhat III (usurped): from P. Brand 2010. ‘Usurpation of Monuments’, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, fig.10

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5gj996k5

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