Ancient Egyptian Art

Composite Poses

Many figures are shown in these types of poses, where heads are in profile but eyes, shoulders, and torso are shown frontally; Hips, legs, and feet are also shown in profile.

Thebes

Egypt's religious center throughout most of the New Kingdom

Mud bricks

Egyptians built their own dwellings with simple _ and only the foundations of these dwellings now remain.

Osiris

Funerary practices revolved around this guy.

Nile River

Longest River in the world

Khafre's Complex

This complex is the best preserved and best known for the Great Sphinx, which is a portrait of the king.

Scarab Beetle

This creature is associated with creation, resurrection, and the rising sun.

Mastaba

a flat-topped, one-story structure with slanted walls erected above an underground burial chamber.

Portraits of Senusret III

a series of royal portraits took on a new sensibility, aware of the hardship and frailty of human existence. •Twelfth Dynasty King Sensuret III's statue shows sunken cheeks and drooping eyelids.

Necropolis

city of the dead; places where the serdab was often grouped.

Deir el-Bahri

•Hatshepsut's funerary temple at this place is larger than her tomb. •It was constructed on three levels connected by ramps and fronted by colonnades. •A hypostyle hall fills the upper level and contains chapels dedicated to Hatshepsut, Tutmose I, and gods Amun and Ra-Horakhty.

Funerary Stelae

An upright stone or slab with an inscribed or sculptured surface, used as a monument or as a commemorative tablet in the face of a building; Used by people who could not afford mastabas or rock-cut tombs.

5000

Around _ BCE, they adopted the agricultural life associated with Neolithic culture.

The Narmer Palette

Art piece depicting the believed first pharaoh of Egypt, Narmer; often interpreted as representing the unification of Egypt.

8000

By _ BCE, the valley's inhabitants became sedentary, living off the fish, game and plants of the Nile.

3500

By _ BCE, there were several Chiefdoms in the lower Nile Valley and a centralized form of leadership had emerged.

New Kingdom

Egypt flourished politically and economically in this time period

royal and wealthy

Tombs of these types of individuals were often decorated with elaborate paintings and reliefs.

1922

Tutankhamun's undisturbed tomb was discovered in this year, and contained great treasures such as a spectacular gold mask and nested coffins. •The innermost mask was constructed with over 240 pounds of gold decorated with colored glass and semiprecious gemstones.

Statuettes of Servants

Types of small figurines depicting servants at work that were made for inclusion in Old Kingdom tombs so that the deceased could be provided for in the next world. Poses weren`t formal, but rooted directly in the labor these figures were expected to perform throughout eternity.

Rock-Cut Tombs

types of tombs created during the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, where members of the nobility and high-level officials commissioned tombs hollowed out of the face of a cliff.

ka

The belief existed that the _, or spirit, lived on after every human being died, and would require a body to inhabit.

statues

To fulfill the requirements of the ka, Egyptians built _ as substitute bodies and tombs with furnishings.

The New Kingdom Temple Plan

An plan that involved enlarging and multiplying these elements in Egyptian temples (which originally took the form of a house) by builders of the New Kingdom. •The temple itself included an outer hypostyle hall (a vast hall filled with columns) and an inner offering hall and sanctuary.

Great Sphinx

A large three-dimensional statue of Khafre from the adjacent Valley Temple represents the ruler protected by Horus.

Stele of Amenemhat

A more modest stele for a man named Amenemhat was brought to completion as a vibrantly painted relief. •It shows a portrait of him with his wife, son, and daughter. •The painter of this relief follows the convention of differentiating gender by skin tonality: dark red-brown for men and lighter yellow-ocher for women.

The Tomb of Ti

A scene in the mastaba of government official Ti shows the supervising of a hippopotamus hunt. The hunters are captured at the moment of closing in on their prey while Ti stands in hierarchic scale above them

Old Kingdom

A time of social and political stability; time of growing wealth of ruling families, which manifested itself in the large and elaborate tomb complexes; Upper-level government officials could also afford elaborate tombs.

Middle Kingdom

A time period were the Mentuhotep kings reestablished royal power after centuries of disorganization. Arts and writing flourished in the Twelfth Dynasty.

Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt

According to legend, the country had evolved into these two political entities.

His mother, Queen Tiy

Akhenaten's goals were actively supported not only by Nefertiti but also by this individual, who was closely related to him.

Djoser's Complex at Saqqara

An extensive, monumental stepped pyramid made from finely cut stone. The adjacent funerary temple was used for continuing worship of the dead king.

bands or registers

Figures, scenes, and text were composed in these.

Glass

Heating a mixture of sand, lime, and sodium carbonate or sodium sulfate to a very high temperature produces this substance.

The Amarna period.

Historians refer to Akhenaten/Amenhotep IV's reign as this time period.

Great Temple of Amun

In Karnak, successive kings renovated and expanded the complex of this place until it covered 60 acres.

Karomama

One of the most extraordinary and largest surviving examples of ancient Egyptian bronze sculpture dates from this period. Characterized for the sculpture`s slender limbs, ample hips, and more prominent breasts contrast with the uniformly slender female figures of the late New Kingdom.

The Great Hall of Karnak

One of the most prominent features of the complex at Karnak. •The hall was 340 feet wide, 170 feet long, and had 134 columns. •Artists covered nearly every inch of the columns, walls, and cross-beams with painted pictorial reliefs and inscriptions.

Grid

Parallel streets were laid out on a _, forming rectangular blocks divided into lots for homes and other buildings.

Cleopatra VII

The Last ruler of Egypt`s Ptolemaic Dynasty, and by extension, Egypt`s last monarch in history. - Tried to use her position and influence to win favor with foreign forces. "By trading with Eastern nations—Arabia and possibly as far away as India—she built up Egypt's economy, bolstering her country's status as a world power." - Descendant of Alexander the Great. - Had a son with Julius Caesar and three children with Mark Antony.

Early Dynastic

The art of this time period shows the development of fundamental ideas about kingship and the cosmic order; The majority of surviving works have religious connotation, as they come from sturdy tombs and temples.

Pyramid

The burial structure began as a low, solid, rectangular mastaba with an external area that served as the focus of offerings; Eventually, mastabas of decreasing size were stacked over an underground burial chamber to form the step pyramid; The culmination of this development lead to the creation of this structure, in which the actual burial site may be within the place with false chambers and doors, and confusing passageways to stop tomb robbers.

Three millennia

The conventions that govern ancient Egyptian art appear early and are maintained over almost this amount of time in its history.

Anubis

The dead were thought to undergo a last judgment supervised by this guy wherein their hearts were weighted on a scale against an ostrich feather.

Core-Formed Glass

The first objects to be made entirely of glass in Egypt were produced with this technique.

Ramses and the Egyptian gods Amun, Ra-Horakhty, and Ptah

The larger temple of Ramesses is dedicated to these major figures

Great Pyramids of Giza

The most famous architectural forms of Egypt; These were built by three successive Fourth-Dynasty kings: Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure; The oldest and largest is Khufu's, which covers 13 acres at its base.

Hathor and Nefertari

The smaller temple of Ramesses was carved into a mountain sacred to Hathor and is dedicated to these figures.

Tutankhamun

The son of Akhenaten, this ruler, (whose royal lineage was doubted until recent DNA testing confirmed both his lineage and the malaria and infected leg that may have killed him) returned Egypt back to its original time prior to his father`s rule; he also suffered from birth defects, possibly from inbreeding.

Thutmose III

The tradition of rulers being called "pharaoh" began with this ruler.

Tall, clublike white crown

The type of crown represented Upper Egypt

Hatshepsut

The wife of Tutmose II, ruled after her husband's death alongside her son Tutmose III. •A statue represents her as a male king, complete with false beard, showing that Egyptian convention was more important than the individual.

The Temples of Ramses II at Abu Simbel

These duo monuments were carved directly into the living rock of the sacred hills.

Workers and their families

These types of people lived in small, five-room row-houses built back to back along narrow streets.

Nubians, Persians, Macedonians, Greeks, and Romans

These various people groups influenced the style in the last era of Egyptian art.

flat/scooped red cap with projecting spiral crown.

This crown represented Lower Egypt

Ptolemaic Dynasty

This dynasty in Egypt`s history started when they were conquered by the Romans, and ended with the death of its last ruler.(and the end of the Egyptian empire as a whole).

Vizier Ramose

This man abandoned this tomb when Amenhotep IV renamed himself and relocated the court to Akhenaten.

Ptolemy

This man declared himself king in 305

Amenhotep IV

This man founded a new religion honoring a single supreme god and changed his own name to Akhenaten. He abandoned the capital of Egypt and built a new capital further north called Akhetaten.

Macedonian Greeks

This people group conquered the Egyptians under Alexander in 332 BCE.

Ramses II

This pharaoh was both powerful and long-lived, and Egypt was a mighty empire under his rule. He initiated building projects on a scale rivaling the Old Kingdom pyramids at Giza. •At Abu Simbel, he ordered two large temples to be carved, one for himself and the other for his wife, Nefertari.

Predynastic

This time period, lasting from 5000-2950 BCE, was a time of significant social and political transition; Art of this time period consists of ceramic figurines, decorated pottery, and reliefs carved on stone plaques and pieces of ivory.

Double crown

This type of crown represented unified Egypt

Beni Hasan

a cemetery site created during the Middle Kingdom; contains an impressive necropolis was created in the cliffs. In that necropolis contains painted scenes cover the interior walls of many tombs and figurines of farm workers feature a more lifelike posture that deviates from the frontality of the royal composite pose.

Menkaure and Queen

a figurine pair depicting formal and expressive features of Khafre's son Menkaure and (probably) his wife. •The king is depicted as an athletic, youthful figure in a balanced pose with one foot extended. •His wife takes a similar step forward but her arms connect with the King.

Karnak

a long-standing sacred site, where temples were built and rebuilt for over 1,500 years.

Portico

a main hall, and a shrine with a burial chamber under the offering chapel.

Pylon

a monumental gateway of an Egyptian temple. Consisted of two tapering towers, each surmounted by a cornice, joined by a less elevated section which encloses the entrance between them.

Serdab

a small, sealed room housing the ka statue of the deceased and a chapel designed to receive relatives and offerings.

Seated Scribe

a statue of a less prominent person rendered in a more relaxed style. This figurine depicts the scribe holding a papyrus scroll and the slightly flabby nature of his body; Polished crystal inlay reproduces a reflective quality that makes it seem as though the scribe's eyes are in motion.

Nemes Headdress

a striped gold and blue linen head cloth having a cobra and a vulture at the center front, was also commonly used as royal headgear

New Amarna Style

a type of style used in the art of the New Kingdom under the reign of Akhenaten; as shown in the colossal figure of Akhenaten, this type of art used physical distortion in the depiction of figurines, with the aforementioned figure having a sagging stomach and inflated thighs contrasting sharp lines in the upper body.

Imhotep

architect who lived and worked for King Djoser, who designed a new form of burial structure for the king in the shape of a pyramid in six stages

Pharaoh

term means "great house."; title of Egyptian kings at this time.

Conventions

established ways of representing things that artists and patrons of the time accepted.

Relief Sculpture

sculptural technique where the sculpted elements remain attached to a solid background of the same material; usually depended on the play of light and shadow alone, but in Egypt, they were also painted.

Ankh

symbol of everlasting life