Sculpture of the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt Essay Example For Students

Sculpture of the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt Essay Introduction Egypt is situated in the north-eastern corner of the African continent. It is composed of two very different regionsUpper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Lower Egyptthe Black Land as it was also called by the ancient Egyptianswith its fertile soil strip along the Nile River makes up the northern part of the country. The Red Landthe Upper Egyptis a desertous southern part with the red, sun-baked soil. The history of ancient Egypt starts around 3000 B. C. when, according to the tradition, Menes Narmer unified the two lands and founded the first dynasty. That was the beginning of the Old Kingdomthe period of stability of the state that lasted until 2263 B. C. and included the dynasties Ist to VIth. Old Kingdom is known as the Golden Age of Egyptian art: during this period the famous pyramids of Giza and the legendary Sphinx were built and the canon that lasted for two millenniums was established. Influences Even though Egyptians were the first to build a civilization they werent the first artists. Obviously the first artists on Earth were the cavemen who produced the beautiful cave paintings found all over the world. However, the artworks that date tens of thousands of years back had little influenceor at least little direct influenceon the Egyptian art. The characteristic features of the art of the Old Kingdom were derived almost exclusively from the works of the Bronze Age 4500-3000 B. C.. Made in that period, there were sculptures of animals that were the predecessors of the statues of Egyptian gods and goddesses in the shape of animals. There were terra-cotta figures of womenprobably the slaves from the African tribeswhich probably were to represent the Mother Goddesses. However the art of the Old Kingdom had much more to borrow from that prehistoric period than just bits and pieces of ideas here and there. Probably the most important thing that the Bronze Age should be noted for in this context is the development of the canon of Egyptian sculpture. Here is quite long, but very complete and precise definition of the word canon given by the Polish Egyptologist Kazimierz Michalowski in his book called Great Sculpture of Ancient Egypt: 1 The canon is a historically conditioned element of indigenous character. It is a result of a mass of observations and experiences that lead to the fixing in art of the most typical forms found in nature but brought down to specific and constant proportions. 3 Its aim is to depict in the most legible and comprehensible idiom and to reflect reality not only as a visible but also a social experience. It fulfils an active function in the ideological superstructure, which serves the ruling class, by reinforcing the conviction that the social order is stable and just through the glorification of the gods and the king. It is one of the essential conditions for creating teamwork in workshops, to maintain a high level of production and quality. The sculptures from the predynastic period and the Old Kingdom were similar in many ways. General stiffness, unnatural positions, and little attention to detail and musculature mark the sculptures from both time periods. However, during the Old Kingdom the elaboration of human figure occurred adding more realism to the sculptural works. General Analysis of The Sculpture of Old KingdomDifferent Canons To me its a very logical approach to analyze ancient Egyptian sculpture using the canonical criteria and analyzing the rigid sets of art rules that determined the appearance statues. Obviously all the sculptures of the Old Kingdom can be recognized as such because of the general features barely indicated musculature, lack of detailing, and general squareness and materials used painted limestone, wood, terra-cotta. However, there were different canons for the people of different social classes. The sculptures of pharaohs i. e. ings and the high royalty were the most canonical of all. The statues possess the very hierarchic attitudes and are depicted only in two posesseating and walking. They have perfectly shaped young bodies and the only defects that can be found on the sculptures are due to the age of the stone that obviously did wear down in more than four millenniums. This approach is very logical since the pharaohs were considered to be the children of Egyptian greatest god Horus. The subjects of the pharaoh could only see him seating or walking and probably couldnt even dare to imagine him doing anything like yawning, jumping, crawling, you name it. Art History Assignment Ancient Egypt EssaySitting on the ground there is a man holding the papyrus that Egyptians used to write on in his hands. We can say its a portrait even bearing in mind that Egyptian portraits do not necessarily aim to depict likeness. Background and foreground can hardly be identified since all we see is a front of a seating man. In fact, Egyptian sculptures often were done to be looked at only from one side, and this is the case with the Scribe too. Some scholars tend to call Egyptian art abstract because the sculptures do not resemble men realistically enough. However, I believe its not correct to call the art of Old Kingdom abstract for it looks too realistically for that. After all, we all can see totally recognizable objects on them. I think that the Scribe can be called a realistic sculpture; maybe the people who have Renaissance as the mark for realism might call the Scribe semi-abstract that leans much more towards realism than abstraction. The most important element of the sculpture is form since the object is three-dimensional and is, actually, composed of forms. Colour in this statueas well as many other ones by ancient Egyptian artistis another very important element. Even though a lot of the paint came off, we still can see the orange-pinkly skin, dark hair, green eyes with a green rim around I wonder if the rim represents the make-up that was used not only by ancient Egyptian women but by men as well. The colours add a lot to the realism of the sculpture and make it more interesting to see than the non-coloured statue. The balance of this work can be called asymmetrical because of the slightly different positions of hands and legs, but its extremely close to the complete symmetry because the artists goal was not to make the sculpture interesting but to follow the canon, which is symmetrical. Obviously the author created the sense of three-dimensional space because the sculpture it self is three-dimensional. However, as I have mentioned earlier the space does not look very deepagain, its because the artist didnt want it to be deep since canon says it shouldnt. In my own opinion, this piece of art is a masterpieceit has a charm and spirit of ancient Egypt and it looks beautiful because of the skilfully carved shapes and nice bright colours. My Opinion on The Sculpture of Old Kingdom I found it hard to talk the ancient Egyptian sculpture from the point of view of aesthetics because most of it was not necessarily made for the purposes of pleasing the eye. Usually the statue had either religious purposesdepicting one of several hundreds of ancient Egyptian gods or representing the owner to live in the world of dead instead of himor social purposes like spreading the image of stabler society of the Old Kingdom and glorifying the pharaohs. However, even in those cases the Egyptian sculpture has a certain artistic meritsometimes very highotherwise, it wouldnt have been called great art and it truly is great art. Many sculptures that Ive looked at when doing this project wonderfully represented the power and dignity of pharaohs, depicted with the great realism different shades of peoples mood and personality, caught the movement beautifully when making the statues of working. Every sculpture of the Old Kingdom resembles the other in appearanceand yet they are not exactly the same. I think that the great ancient sculptors had an amazing ability to catch mood and personality just with a few lines without showing all the detail. Some people say that they find ancient Egyptian statues lifeless. Maybe they are lifeless, but its not because they are deadits because they are magically frozen in time. Every single one carries the flavour of the great Old Kingdom of Egypt, and through its lifeless art ancient Egypt continues the journey through the millenniums. The lifeless statues keep the spirit of the amazingly great ancient civilization alive.