Art and Culture - Ancient History: Egypt

The Egyptians believed in ritual and superstition. The ritual destruction of red pots, for example, was believed to protect the tomb of a deceased ruler and to ward off evil spirits.

In ancient Egyptian cosmology and iconography, the scarab was routinely associated with the rising sun. The Egyptians worshipped the Sun in many different forms, and a scarab was used in Egyptian hieroglyphics to refer to the Sun at dawn.

WMF Petrie, a well known Egyptologist, developed Sequence Dating among his other systematic methods for archaeology. Sequence dating uses pottery and ceramics found in archaeological layers to date the relative age of a settlement as compared to others in the region. Throughout the Predynastic period, handles and decorations on pottery evolved to become more ornamental, and so it is possible do deduce the relative age of a culture based on how decorative its pottery was.

The main results of the beginning of agriculture were the crops of wheat, barley, and herbs. This phenomenon of agriculture replaced the prior theme of hunting and gathering. This allowed the people to supplement their diets and spend more time of the development of culture and civilization rather than spending all their time hunting and gathering.

Senet was a board game that was played in Egypt beginning in the predynastic period. It is one of the earliest known games in human history and was played throughout Egyptian history.

The Red Crown was an important piece of Egyptian iconography. It first appeared in the predynastic era to denote the ruler of Lower Egypt. The Red Crown was worn by ancient Egyptians throughout the dynastic era to denote dominion over Lower Egypt. A white crown was worn by the rulers of Upper Egypt. Those pharaohs who ruled over both Upper and Lower Egypt tended to wear a red and white crown, so as to emphasize their ultimate authority.

It took 20 years to build and took over 2 million large cube-shaped pieces of rock (limestone). The last remaining of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World," the Great Pyramid was meant to be the final resting place of Khufu. Not much is known about Khufu, expect that he was the 2nd pharaoh of the 4th dynasty.

During the Naqada II phase (during the predynastic era) of Egyptian cultural development, artistic complexity and variety regressed significantly. This is primarily the result of the growing homogeneity of Egyptian culture at the time and the related decline in artistic and cultural diversity.

Iconography was extremely important in Egyptian culture. It was used to promote uniformity of religious belief and adherence to the rule of the Pharaoh. One such example is the “Nine Bows.” The “Nine Bows” were meant to represent the various enemies of Egypt and were always shown under the power of the Pharaoh’s might. There is no concrete list of the “Nine Bows” and the nations they represented obviously changed throughout Egyptian history as Egypt developed new enemies.

The Ancient Egyptian numerical system first developed sometime around 3100 BCE and was in a continual state of evolution thereafter, until it fell out of use around 400 CE. It was hieroglyphic in nature, with each number represented and depicted in pictorial form, and relied upon a base ten system, in which symbols were designated in increments of ten. (For example, the symbol for the number one was a single stroke, number ten was represented by a cattle hobble, and one hundred was shown as a coil of rope.) The Ancient Egyptians had no concept of zero; in fact, they would not come to understand this numerical reality for many centuries. This knowledge was finally transmitted to Ancient Egypt sometime in the mid-eighteenth century BCE, through their frequent trade and travel contacts with Middle Eastern and Asian civilizations.

A mastaba is a special type of tomb, in use for centuries throughout Ancient Egyptian history by pharaohs, royal family members, and aristocrats alike. Mastabas were not just simple tombs; rather, they were constructed with a very particular goal in mind: to serve as a house for the deceased person’s spirit. Mastabas had two structural components: an above-ground superstructure (usually shaped like a bench) and a massive underground substructure where the deceased would live. Accordingly, the underground sections of a mastaba would be filled with all the various goods and possessions (such as food, drink, clothing, and furniture) that any individual would need to survive in the afterlife. Later on, once pyramids became more popular, several mastabas would be built in groups, to form a royal court, around a pharaoh’s pyramid, so that his family and friends could surround him during the afterlife.

The Palette of Narmer or the Great Hierakonpolis Palette represents an archaeologically excavated artifact with iconographic depictions of the early pharaoh Narmer and several gods/divine beings.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palette\_de\_Narmer.jpg

In ancient Egyptian art, women are almost universally depicted as young and fertile. Women’s hips are heavily emphasized - to demonstrate the importance of women’s role in childbirth. Unlike men, women were never depicted beyond child bearing age. This may be understood as part of society’s desire to highlight the reproductive role of women.

To the ancient Egyptians, sport and games were generally part of a pre-ordained, ritual process. That is to say, the winner was predetermined and the sports (like boxing and wrestling) were actual ritual bouts between a good side “Egypt; a benevolent God” and a bad side “Egypt’s enemies; a malevolent God.”

“Negative Confessions” were part of the judgment of the dead in Egyptian theology. The ancient Egyptians believed that a deceased individual had to first pass the judgment of Osiris before moving on to the afterlife. This was generally understood as a sort of trial, whereby an individual had to first deny a series of accusations of wrongdoing (“negative confessions”) and then had to pass the weighing of the heart.

In Egyptian mythology, Bennu (or Benu) was a legendary phoenix type creature. It was worshipped by some ancient Egyptians as early as the beginning of the dynastic era. The Bennu was thought to have helped create the world and was sometimes viewed as an incarnation of Ra or Atum. The Egyptians believed that Benu sat atop the benben (the location of the “primordial hill of creation” where the world was born) and that he controlled the constant process of rebirth at the heart of the cosmic cycle.

“The Smiting Scene” is a powerful component of Egyptian iconography and is commonly found throughout ancient Egyptian dynastic history. “The Smiting Scene” depicts the Pharaoh smiting his enemies and was meant to project Pharaonic power, rather than accurately depict historical events.

Many historians consider Imhotep to be the “father” of Ancient Egyptian medicine. Imhotep possessed a wide array of talents; he excelled at dozens of complex subjects and skills, including architecture, medical care, poetry, astronomy, writing, and religious knowledge. He first rose to prominence during the Old Kingdom, in the midst of the reign of the Pharaoh Djoser, who employed him as both his court’s Chief Physician and Chief Architect. He is credited with designing two pyramids: the Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara and the Pyramid of Sekhemkhet. His medical talents were so widely renowned through Egypt that dozens of temples and monuments scattered around the nation bear inscriptions praising his treatments and acts of healing. Although definite proof no longer exists, many historians believe that Imhotep also founded the famous Memphis medical school and/or authored the Edwin Smith Papyrus, a medical scroll detailing how to diagnose and treat many ailments.

Besides perhaps the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Great Sphinx is one of the most majestic and enduring symbols of Ancient Egypt. Although it has been much altered due to the depredations of time and weather, today the Sphinx is as enigmatically compelling as ever. The Sphinx was built sometime during the Old Kingdom and carved entirely out of a single limestone mass. Although neither the name of the architect nor the original name of the monument is known, it is believed that the Sphinx’s face was deliberately styled to resemble the face of the Pharaoh Khafre, for whom the Middle Pyramid was also built. The structure seems to have some sort of connection with the Egyptian deity Horus (the god of the sky and warfare); many later sources reference it as the “Horus of the Horizon” and the “Horus of the Necropolis,” all the while admitting that these monikers are not the monument’s original name.

Ancient Egyptian temple architecture incorporated several very specific elements, all of which were standard due to their assumed religious connotations. Although a variety of decorative motifs and other relatively minor features varied from building to building, each temple had to have a large main gateway, a courtyard surrounded by columns, a hall of columns, and a sacred shrine chamber. Without such elements, by Ancient Egyptian standards, a temple would be not only incomplete, but also unfit for spiritual worship.