Much of what the modern world knows about Ancient Egypt can be attributed to Ancient Egyptian art. Everything from knowing what they looked like to what they did for a living, what they held dear and even the clothes they wore are things that have been made possible by viewing and examining the art that they left behind.
The art of ancient Egyptians remained much the same over the course of their 3,000 year rule. To them, it meant something different than what it means to us today. Art was their science, it represented what they believed to be divine truth.
Ancient Egyptian Art and Religion
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.
Ancient Egyptian Art and Symbols
Symbolism played an important role in ancient Egyptian art. Today, when a painter paints the sun, it is just a sun, but in ancient Egypt, it might mean creation, illumination or spiritual sight. The ancient Egyptians used symbols like we would use code today.
Animals and other living organisms were often used as symbols to depict their gods and goddesses. They didn’t believe that, for example, Horus had the head of a falcon, they used it as a symbol to represent that they believed he was full of wisdom.
- One of the most well-known ancient Egyptian symbols was the hieroglyph. It is a language based on pictures instead of an alphabet.
- Colors were used as symbols. Green represented new life; Red represented life, victory, fire and rage; White represented purity and authority; Black represented death as well as resurrection, and at times it also symbolized life and fertility; Yellow represented eternity (as the Sun was yellow); and Blue represented the sun and sky, re-birth and life.
- The vulture often represented motherhood, as seen in the headdresses of goddesses including Nekhbet, Satet and Mut. Vultures were known to be very protective of their young.
- The beetle represented transformation or evolution. This is because the scarab beetle, or dung beetle, would lay its eggs in dung and its young ate and dug their way out of it. Many amulets bore the scarab beetle symbol to help the deceased during their final judgment.
- The Ankh was used as a symbol of eternal life. It’s found in hieroglyphs, in paintings, on papyrus and was often shaped out of metal to make decorative mirror cases.
