CHAPTER 3: EGYPT

The Palette of Narmer (back) From Hierakonpolis Early Dynastic period, c. 2950 BCE Green schist, height 25"

It is commonly interpreted as representing the unification of Egypt and the beginning of the country's growth as a powerful nation-state.

GREAT SPHINX, FUNERARY COMPLEX OF KHAFRE Giza. Old Kingdom, c. 2520-2494 BCE. Limestone, height approx. 65'

KHAFRE'S COMPLEX Khafre's funerary complex is the best preserved. Its pyramid is the only one of the three to have maintained some of its veneer facing at the top. But the complex is most famous for the GREAT SPHINX that sits just behind Khafre's valley temple. This colossal portrait of the king—65 feet tall—combines his head with the long body of a crouching lion seemingly merging notions of human intelligence with animal strength.

KHAFRE Giza, valley temple of Khafre. Fourth Dynasty, c. 2520-2494 BCE. Diorite-gabbro gneiss, height 5'6 1/8"

Khafre wears the traditional royal costume—a short, pleated kilt, a linen headdress, and a false beard symbolic of royalty. He exudes a strong sense of dignity, calm, and above all permanence. In his right hand, he holds a cylinder, probably a rolled piece of cloth. His arms are pressed tightly within the contours of his body, which is firmly anchored in the confines of the stone block from which it was carved. The statue was created from an unusual stone, a type of gneiss (related to diorite), imported from Nubia, that produces a rare optical effect. When illuminated by sunlight entering through the temple's clerestory, it glows a deep blue, the celestial color of Horus, filling the space with a blue radiance. As the surviving statues of Khafre's valley temple demonstrate, Egyptian sculptors were adept at creating lifelike three-dimensional figures that also express a feeling of strength and permanence consistent with the unusually hard stones from which they were carved

ROSETTA STONE 196 BCE.

Known today as the Rosetta Stone—for the area of the delta where one of Napoleon's officers discovered it in 1799—it contains a decree issued by the priests at Memphis honoring Ptolemy V (r. c. 205-180 BCE) carved in hieroglyphs, demotic (a simplified, cursive form of hieroglyphs), and Greek. French scholar Jean-François Champollion located the names Ptolemy and Cleopatra in both of the Egyptian scripts. With the phonetic symbols for P, T, O, and L in demotic, he was able to build up an "alphabet" of hieroglyphs, and by 1822 he had deciphered the two Egyptian texts.

SEATED SCRIBE Found near the tomb of Kai, Saqqara. Fifth Dynasty, c. 2450-2325 BCE. Painted limestone with inlaid eyes of rock crystal, calcite, and magnesite mounted in copper, height 21"

Old Kingdom sculptors also produced statues of less prominent people, rendered in a more relaxed, lifelike fashion. A more lively and less formal mode is employed in the statue of a SEATED SCRIBE from early in the Fifth Dynasty - with round head, alert expression, and cap of closecropped hair—that was discovered near the tomb of a government official named Kai. It could be a portrait of Kai himself. The irregular contours of his engaging face project a sense of individual likeness and human presence. The scribe's sedentary vocation has made his sagging body slightly flabby, his condition advertising a life free from hard physical labor. As an ancient Egyptian inscription advises—"Become a scribe so that your limbs remain smooth and your hands soft and you can wear white and walk like a man of standing whom [even] courtiers will greet"

JUDGMENT OF HUNEFER BEFORE OSIRIS Illustration from a Book of the Dead. Nineteenth Dynasty, c. 1285 BCE. Painted papyrus, height 15-5/8"

By the time of the New Kingdom, the Egyptians had come to believe that only a person free from wrongdoing could enjoy an afterlife. The dead were thought to undergo a last judgment consisting of two tests presided over by Osiris, the god of the underworld, and supervised by the jackal-headed god of embalming and cemeteries, Anubis. After the deceased were questioned about their behavior in life, their hearts—which the Egyptians believed to be the seat of the soul—were weighed on a scale against an ostrich feather, the symbol of Ma'at, goddess of truth, order, and justice. Ma'at herself appears atop the balancing arm of the scales wearing the feather as a headdress. To the right of the scales, Ammit, the dreaded "Eater of the Dead"— part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus—watches eagerly for a sign from the ibis-headed god Thoth, who prepares to record the result of the weighing. This is scene in one that was created for a man named Hunefer, showing three of the successive stages in his induction into the afterlife. Family members commissioned papyrus scrolls containing magical texts or spells, which the embalmers sometimes placed among the wrappings of the mummified bodies.

MENKAURE AND A QUEEN, PROBABLY KHAMERERNEBTY II From Giza. Fourth Dynasty, 2490-2472 BCE. Schist with traces of red and black paint, height 54 1/2"

Dignity, calm, and permanence also characterize a sleek double portrait of King Menkaure (Khafre's son) and his Queen. Her sheer, close-fitting garment reveals the soft curves of her gently swelling body, a foil for the tight muscularity of the king. They are further united by the queen's symbolic gesture of embrace. Her right hand comes from behind to clasp his torso, and her left hand rests gently, if stiffly, over his upper arm. The king—depicted in accordance with Egyptian ideals as an athletic, youthful figure, nude to the waist and wearing the royal kilt and headcloth - stands in a conventional, balanced pose, striding with the left foot forward, his arms straight at his sides, and his fists clenched over cylindrical objects.

TEMPLE OF RAMSES II Abu Simbel. Nineteenth Dynasty, c. 1279-1213 BCE

Ramses II's great temple is north of the second cataract of the Nile, in Nubia, the ancient land of Kush, which Ramses ruled and which was the source of his gold, ivory, and exotic animal skins. The monuments were carved directly into the living rock of the sacred hills. The temple is dedicated to Ramses and the Egyptian gods Amun, Ra-Horakhty, and Ptah A row of four colossal seated statues of the king himself, 65 feet high, dominate the monument, flanked by relatively small statues of family members, including his principal wife Nefertari. Proclaims his divinity. The inner corridor was oriented so that twice a year the first rays of the rising sun shot through it to illuminate statues of the king as Osiris and the three gods (Amun, Ra-Horakhty, and Ptah) placed against the back wall .

GREAT PYRAMIDS, GIZA Fourth Dynasty, c. 2575-2450 BCE. Erected by (from the left) Menkaure, Khafre, and Khufu. Limestone and granite, height of pyramid of Khufu, 450'

The angled sides may have been meant to represent the slanting rays of the sun, for inscriptions on the walls of pyramid tombs built in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties tell of deceased kings climbing up the rays to join the sun god Ra. Although not the first pyramids, the most famous are the three great pyramid tombs at Giza. The site was carefully planned to follow the sun's east-west path. Next to each of the pyramids was a funerary temple connected by a causeway—an elevated and enclosed pathway or corridor—to a valley temple on the bank of the Nile. When a king died, his body was embalmed and ferried west across the Nile from the royal palace to his valley temple, where it was received with elaborate ceremonies. It was then carried up the causeway to his funerary temple and placed in its chapel, where family members presented offerings of food and drink, and priests performed rites in which the deceased's spirit consumed a meal. These rites were to be performed at the chapel in perpetuity.

FUNERARY MASK OF TUTANKHAMUN From the tomb of Tutankhamun, Valley of the Kings. Eighteenth Dynasty 1327 BCE Gold inlaid with glass and semiprecious stones, height 21-1/4"

The sealed inner chamber of Tutankhamun's tomb was never plundered, and when it was found in 1922 its incredible riches were just as they had been left since his interment. His mummified body, crowned with a spectacular mask preserving his royal likeness, lay inside three nested coffins that identified him with Osiris, the god of the dead. The innermost coffin, in the shape of a mummy, is the richest of the three. Made of over 240 pounds of gold, its surface is decorated with colored glass and semiprecious gemstones, as well as finely incised linear designs and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The king holds a crook and a flail, symbols that were associated with Osiris and had become a traditional part of the royal regalia.