| |
|
Arts and Culture
|
Introduction
In ancient Egypt, art was created in celebration of religion. Officially sanctioned art was produced according to strict religious tenets and rigid artistic conventions.
Painters and sculptors worked in communal studios with metalsmiths, joiners, and jewelers. They created their pieces under the guidance of a master artisan, a mentor who was often familiar with several crafts. Schools of artisans worked with infinite patience and care, their skill the result of rigorous apprenticeship. For larger pieces, tasks were divided. On reliefs, for example, the outlining, carving, and painting were each completed by separate artisans. On stone colossi, teams of workers spread out over the entire figure, individuals carving their own portion of the piece.
Artistic Conventions
Scenes involving human figures conformed to certain aesthetic rules: Differences in rank were shown by differences in size. Wives or consorts appeared to the left of their mates, and scribes sat cross-legged with papyri rolls spread on their laps.
In sculpture, men sitting on a throne were shown with their hands flat on their thighs. Standing men advanced the left foot, while women stood with both feet together. In block statues the sitter drew up his legs, crossed his arms on top of his knees, and enveloped himself in his cloak. Most figures were drawn facing right, and in the case of nobles, this orientation enabled artists to aesthetically frame the figure with the staff and baton.
For their formal royal and religious art, Egyptian artists chose to portray the body in profile while rendering the crown, eye, shoulders, breast, and occasionally the waist and tunic in front view. Feet always appeared in profile, big toe toward the observer. Remarkably, even from the viewpoint of modern Western artistic conventions, these pasted-together perspectives work esthetically.
Art Forms
Sculpture took the form both of free-standing statuary and bas-relief panels. Painting was a well-developed art, and painted scenes adorned most temples and royal tombs. The ancient Egyptians excelled in jewelry-making and design.
Egyptian Architecture
Architects built massive burial vaults—safe houses for the deceased's ka (life force)—and raised glorious temples as homes for the gods. These buildings were externally decorated with carvings, paintings of scenes, and texts designed to supply goods for the afterlife, as well as prayers, charms and sacrifices to appease the gods.
Tombs
The earliest burial chambers found in Egypt are simple shafts sunk in sand and stone. As architectural techniques evolved and beliefs about the afterlife became more complex, tombs became much more elaborate. By the beginning of the First Dynasty (about 3100 BC) tombs had evolved into complicated structures with multiple storage rooms and increasingly intricate subterranean burial chambers. Often entire mummified families or royal households would be buried in a grouping of tombs surrounded by a protecting wall. These complexes were called mastabas.
Tomb design became increasingly elaborate, incorporating chapels, cult rooms, statuary, and carvings. By the time of the New Kingdom (1570–1070 BC), most tombs contained a court and entrance, a transverse entrance hall with scenes from the deceased's career and daily life, and a passage with funerary scenes leading to the chapel, which often had a recess for a statue. The burial chamber was below, reached by a pit or tunnel from the chapel or, less frequently, the hall or court.
Pyramids
The most elaborate Egyptian tombs are the pyramids, imposing structures designed to house the spirits of the pharaohs. Built over a period of nearly 1,000 years, pyramids line the west side of the Nile for 97 kilometers (60 miles) from Cairo to Middle Egypt. The climax of pyramid building, however, occurred at Giza, where the kings of the Fourth Dynasty erected three large stone structures.
Archaeologists are still unsure how the pyramids were built, but some propose that the massive blocks were moved up earthen ramps that wound around the growing structures. Once this limestone core was built, the outside was sheathed in yet finer limestone. Workers would then have worked down from the top, dismantling the ramp as they moved.
Temples
A temple was considered the home of a god, designed to lead the visitor from the secular world into the hidden mysteries of the divine. Architects gradually lowered ceilings, raised floors, and decreased the light as rooms progressed toward the naos, the most sacred spot in the building. Access to the temple was guarded by a pair of gigantic pylons. This gateway opened into a courtyard bounded on three sides by a colonnaded walkway. In this area, on festival days, people could congregate to catch a glimpse of their god carried upon the shoulders of the priests.
Beyond the courtyard lay a great hall, accessible only to the social elite, at the end of which lay the chamber of the god's barque (royal barge used to transport statues of gods or mummies). There the god, after being washed, anointed, and dressed, spent the day in the company of priests and state officials. These rooms were lighted only dimly, although occasionally high windows were placed so that a shaft of light would strike the god. In the evening the god retired even deeper into the temple, to the dark chapel complex, where only the pharaoh or the high priest could approach him. This secluded area was the god's home.
Language and Literature
Like the visual arts, writing and literature supported religion and were tools of magic. Egyptians took from the Sumerians the practice of drawing pictures to represent objects or ideas and then adapted it to their own outlook, creating a formal script of carefully drawn animals and objects called hieroglyphs. Using this pictorial script, the Egyptians created elegant prayers, hymns, poems, and stories. The most famous example of ancient Egyptian writing is the Book of the Dead, a large collection of funerary texts describing the transformation of flesh into spirit. Despite the name, the texts do not form a single connected work and do not belong to one period.
Coptic Art
From the conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BC until the 7th-century Muslim invasions, Egypt was ruled by a series of foreign powers. Greek and Roman conquerors and the Christian church brought their own strong artistic influence, which blended with traditional Egyptian aesthetics to form Coptic art.
The studied naturalism of Greek and Roman art contrasted directly with the idealized figures and convention-laden imagery of pharaonic times. Egyptian artists quickly incorporated Mediterranean styles. Statuary became more realistic, though it retained stylized conventions. Through Roman influence, mosaic became a favored medium. After Constantine decreed Christianity the religion of the Roman empire, Christian themes and symbols appeared in Coptic art, often in odd juxtaposition with traditional Egyptian images.
Islamic Art
The Koran prohibits making idols, carefully separating the creation of life (which is Allah's prerogative) from human creations. Decorations for mosques and mausoleums are restricted to nonfigurative motifs, but even when figures are included in secular art they tend to be stylized rather than naturalistic. Islamic art is also distinguished by its use of calligraphy as an integral part of design, by its strongly stylized and silhouetted figures often isolated in roundels, and by its tendancy to cover the entire surface of an object with intricate patterns.
Early Islamic art in Egypt followed Roman and Coptic designs: Increasingly abstract, convoluted vines surrounded individual figures or symbols, with a continuation of the Roman, Persian, and Coptic traditions of equestrian figures. Books also blossomed into works of art.
Islamic Architecture
The most distinctive architectural form developed by Muslim artists is the mosque. The domes and slender minarets of Muhammad Ali's mosque dominate Cairo's skyline and have become a symbol of the city. The three main types of mosques—courtyard, cruciform, and domed or Ottoman—have common features. In mosques, Muslims face Mecca (birthplace of the prophet Muhammad) and its Kaaba—the sanctuary built to enclose the Black Stone, Islam's most venerated object—to pray. This direction, no matter what its coordinates, is called qiblah, and the wall of the mosque in this direction is the qiblah wall. Mosques lack an altar, but the mihrab, a niche set into the qiblah wall, points like an arrow to Mecca and focuses the direction of prayers. Toward the center of larger mosques a high, fenced platform contains a stand for the Koran and provides a place for its reader. The floor of the mosque is covered with carpets. In the courtyard of nearly all mosques stands a fountain for ritual washing before prayers. The distinctive minarets that rise above most mosques are the towers from which the muezzins call the faithful to prayer.
Islamic Intellectual Culture
Islamic science, along with the general culture, flourished between the 9th and 13th centuries. During the later part of this era, just as the West was beginning to emerge from the Middle Ages, Latin translations of Arabic writings appeared in Europe, where they were often quoted by Western scholars. In these texts, Muslim scholars not only preserved and transmitted ancient knowledge but added their own original data and ideas. These philosophers brought their intellects to bear on mathematics, astronomy, optics, medicine, agriculture, and engineering, preserving the information passed on from classical learning and building on its foundation.
|
|
|
|
|