Since the Ancient Egyptians were highly religious people, much of the art they created can be found on temple walls and in tombs in the form of sculptures and paintings. The paintings in tombs were meant to help guide the dead pharaoh into the afterlife. This is known as funerary art and is not only found on temple walls, but also inside tombs on scrolls of papyrus.
Characteristics of Ancient Egyptian Art
Ancient Egyptian art had a number of distinctive characteristics that it followed throughout ancient Egyptian rule. For example in paintings we see:
- People depicted in paintings are usually facing the viewer with their heads turned so the viewer only sees their profile.
- When a pharaoh is depicted in a painting, he is always larger than the other human figures in it.
- Social status determined how large the individual was represented in a painting.
- Pharaohs are always depicted as being tense and formal, whereas ordinary people are depicted in a more relaxed manner (more realistic).
- Pictures in ancient Egyptian art are usually never drawn with any depth perception which makes them two-dimensional.
And in sculptures we see:
- Realistic human faces
- Images are always upright, whether they are sitting or standing and are always formal.
- Figures always face forward.
- Males are depicted as darker in color than females.
- Seated subjects always had their hands on their knees.
The ancient Egyptians loved depicting the world around them in their art. But as fond as they were of details, they aimed more for idyllic representations instead of exact copies. They used simple, well defined shapes against areas of smooth color. The six colors they used in their paintings were green, yellow, black, white, blue and red. Each had a different meaning.
