Exploring the Art of Ancient Egypt
Over some 5,000 years the people of the ancient Nile Valley and regions beyond produced some of the easily recognisable works of art the world has ever known, whether carved in stone, painted on tomb walls, or cast in metal
By Macquarie University
Dr Alexandra Woods
Monumentality
Often monumental in scale and certainly culturally distinct, the art and architecture of ancient Egypt has never lost its power to inspire fascination and awe in the Western imagination.
‘Golden Age’ of Discovery
Some of the earliest documentation of ancient Egyptian art began in the 19th-20th Centuries and arose from a context of imperialism and colonial 'exploration' in Egypt, within the so-called “golden age” of archaeological discovery.
A lotus presentation scene, the tomb of Iyi-mery, Giza (5th Dynasty) by Alexandra WoodsMacquarie University
In a practice that goes back millennia, generations of European soldiers, tourists and archaeologists, from Napoleonic soldiers to Giovanni Belzoni, left their marks across swathes of monuments in Egypt.
Such added inscriptions often cover and obscure the original carved and painted decoration in tombs or temples.
Carrier of cultural tradition and knowledge
The art of ancient Egypt is found in both sacred and non-sacred contexts and is attested on a wide range of surfaces and items made of stone, wood, ivory, ceramics, or metal. Ancient Egyptian 2-Dimensional and 3-Dimensional artistic forms combine function and aesthetic, and acts as a powerful carrier of cultural tradition and knowledge.
The material and graphical cultural outputs from ancient Egypt can be seen on tomb and temple walls, ceramic vessels, palettes, false doors, stelae in addition to statuary, figurines and models.
Communication, display and engagement
A crucial element of ancient Egyptian artistic tradition was its emphasis on communication, display, engagement and spatial connection with the landscape, architectural form, texts, sculpture and/or imagery. However, the rise of museum and gallery collections has meant that today’s audience associates a range of objects and forms to the broad category of ‘ancient art’.
Museum Display
Displaying ancient objects in a collection environment places them in an artificial category that aligns with practices in the modern art world and does not recognise the object's original cultural context. Thereby disabling an understanding and appreciation of the social dimension of aesthetic experience.
View of the ceiling, the Temple of Hathor, Dendera (Antiquity) by Alexandra WoodsMacquarie University
Ancient Egyptian Worldview
Nevertheless, by examining the remaining visual and material record from ancient Egypt, modern viewers can attempt to understand the ancient Egyptian's worldview, how this worldview shaped their attitude towards the art they created to reveal the significance of art making and its broader cultural value.
Dr Alexandra Woods
Dr Nicolle Leary
Dr Brian Ballsun-Stanton
References
E. Colla, Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity (Duke University Press, Durham, 2007).
C. Riggs, Ancient Egyptian Art and Architecture: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014).
C. Riggs, Photographing Tutankhamun: Archaeology, Ancient Egypt and the Archive (London, 2019).
G. Robins, The Art of Ancient Egypt (Revised Edition, British Museum Press, London, 2008).
A. Stevenson, ‘Egyptian Archaeology and the Museum’, in Oxford Handbooks, (Online 2015).
A. Woods, & N. Leary, ''Art', aesthetics and the functioning image in ancient Egyptian elite tombs', Tristant, Y. & Ryan, E. M. (eds.) Death is only the beginning: Egyptian funerary customs at the Macquarie Museum of Ancient Cultures (The Australian Centre for Egyptology Studies; vol. 11, Oxford: Aris and Phillips, 2017) pp. 74-83.
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