Ancient art

Egypt’s mythic world, rich with creative imagery, was deeply informed by the natural world that surrounded them. The divine landscape and the stories about the beings that inhabited it continued to evolve through Egyptian history. Over time, these myths wove an elaborate tapestry of meaning and significance, often presenting layered, seemingly contradictory viewpoints that existed simultaneously without apparent conflict. Similarly, the concept of time in ancient Egypt was rather fluid; it was believed to move at different rates for certain beings and regions of the cosmos and was viewed as simultaneously linear and cyclical. Obviously, individual Egyptians experienced linear time—living…

It is not known exactly where and when Egyptian writing first began, but it was already well-advanced two centuries before the start of the First Dynasty that suggests a date for its invention in Egypt around 3,000 B.C.E. The most well-known script used for writing the Egyptian language was in the form of a series of small signs, or hieroglyphs. Some signs are pictures of real-world objects, while others are representations of spoken sounds. These sound signs are pictures that get their meaning from how the word for the object they represent sounds when said aloud. Some signs write one…

Nefertari (also spelled as Nefertari or Nefertiti) was the Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Ramesses II of the 19th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, who lived approximately from 1290 to 1254 BC. Her name means "beautiful companion," "the most beautiful woman," or "the best of women," and she is generally considered to have been Ramesses II's favorite queen. In the history of ancient Egypt, she is one of the most famous queens, second only to Cleopatra VII, Nefertiti, and Hatshepsut. After her death, she was buried in the Valley of the Queens located south of Deir el-Bahri on the west bank…

The Narmer Palette is a stone plaque with shallow reliefs discovered by James Quibell and Green in 1898 at the Horus Temple in Hierakonpolis (Nejen). It is currently housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Obverse The image depicts King Narmer wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, indicating that Upper Egypt was more superior to Lower Egypt. He is shown striking a foreigner, representing a person with curly hair and beard. This figure has been used to identify Libyans and Asians, but Narmer may have considered residents of the Delta as foreigners because unification was achieved through military conquest,…

The Golden Wood Statue of Queen Tiye is one of the treasures of ancient Egyptian art, a wooden half-figure statue depicting Tiye, the queen of Pharaoh Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty in ancient Egypt. The statue is about 50 cm high and 20 cm wide, made from a single piece of wood and covered with a layer of gold leaf, giving it a luxurious appearance. It was discovered in 1926 and is now housed at the Neues Museum in Berlin, Germany. The statue portrays Tiye wearing a snakeskin skirt and tight-fitting bodice, with her left hand placed on her…

Ancient Egyptian art must be viewed through the lens of ancient Egyptians to be understood. Many Egyptian images are somewhat static, often formalized, strangely abstract, and frequently blocky in nature, sometimes leading to unfavorable comparisons with the later, more "naturalistic" arts of Greece or the Renaissance. However, Egyptian art had a radically different purpose than these later cultures. While we marvel today at the glittering treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb, the grandeur of the reliefs from New Kingdom tombs, or the serene beauty of Old Kingdom statuary, it must be remembered that much of what is found in these works was…