Male Bust
grey granite with pink spots
© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Egyptian art descibed the joyous lifestyle of a prosperous civilization. Celebrations and rituals were represented in detail. The Ancient Egyptians took note of life's goodness and bounty, and anticipated death as a continuation of the pleasures that they had known in their mortal lives.

Without their appreciation of the domesticities and pastimes on earth, Egyptians would have never made such elaborate preparations to take their comforts into eternity.

The highly stylized forms appearing in Egyptian art seemed to remain constant throughout recorded civilization. This is partly because the work was created to communicate concepts and to portray events in a clearly understood format. Therefore, clarity was very important. The artist worked to reach this goal rather than to introduce innovations or to "express" himself.

Sculpture was created for permanence; therefore granite - which was plentiful - was a popular medium. Other stones that were used include quartzite, diroite, alabaster and limestone. Wood and occasionally metal were also sculpted.

Figures were formed to receive the spirits of the deceased, if anything were to happen to the mummified remains of that person. The depictions of kings were very elaborately decorated, and followed prescribed sculptural formulas. Figures might be shown seated or standing, paired together as husband and wife, or in groups of family members. These forms were painted, and the eyes were usually inlaid in other materials, such as rock crystal or glass, to seem more life-like.

Statuette of Thoth

© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Thoth was represented with the head of an ibis and the body of a man.

The figure of Thoth shows examples of several ancient Egyptian sculptural conventions: the standing male is shown facing frontward, arms held along his sides, hands clenched, feet flat with the left leg forward.

Thoth was considered to be a very important diety. He was the inventor and patron god of all the arts and sciences, including music, drawing, literature, language, geometry and astronomy. Most significantly, Thoth was considered to be the inventor of hieroglyphic writing.

Painting, often executed on the inside wall of tombs and palaces, rendered a greater range of expression than sculpture. Through the colorful paintings that survive, we can witness the daily activities and pleasures of this long-ago civilization.

From the Old Kingdom on, one of the standard scenes depicted in tomb painting shows the deceased enjoying hunting and fishing. These images provide a means for that person to enjoy those pleasures throughout eternity.

The burial of the deceased was often depicted on the walls of the tombs, from the procession to the tombs through the final prayers.

The houses where people led their daily lives were made of impermanent mud bricks. The palace ruins that survive in Egypt's arid climate give evidence of well-planned, multi-roomed dwellings with painted walls, floors and ceilings. The impermanence of those dwellings, no doubt, reflected the relative brevity of providing for a mortal existence.

The mortuary structures, on the other hand, were built to last for a very long time.

A pyramid - probably the structure most readily associated with Egyptian architecture - was built of stone or mud, created to house and protect the mummy of the king for eternity. Composed of four triangular, smooth, angled or stepped walls enclosing a mortuary chamber, pyramids were erected in royal burial complexes.

The three prominent pyramids built at Giza during the years 2551-2472 B.C. (early in the Old Kingdom) are what most people think of when considering "Egyptian pyramids." However, throughout Ancient Egypt, archaeologists have identified about eighty more pyramids built in various places.

During the New Kingdom Egyptians cut tombs deep into the cliffs of the Valley of the Kings. These tombs were designed to blend into the landscape, in an effort to conceal them from discovery.

Seated Scribe with detail of base
alabaster
© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Hieroglyphs are inscribed on the sheaf of papyrus on the scribe's lap, as well as on the base of the statue pictured above. The hieroglyphs identify the figure as "Overseer of the Army of Heracleopolis, Sema-tawy-tefnakht, born of the Princess Tasher-ta-ihet." Another inscription makes clear the importance of Sema-tawy-tefnakht to the king's court: he is addressed as "...the Herald of the King in all His Places, the One who surrounds the King and speaks to Him when He is Alone, the Overseer of the Secrets of the King in all His Places, Who loves the King, Who is beloved by the King..."

Egyptians developed three forms of writing: hieroglyphics (used for formal inscriptions); hieratic (used up to c. 650 BC) and demotic (used c. 650 BC-c. AD 450). For all three, the signs represented pictograms, ideograms, syllables (representing consonants only), single letters, and interpretive symbols for the words whose spelling could represent more than one meaning. The Ancient Egyptians did not use vowels.

Writing was chiseled into stone, carved into clay tablets and brushed onto papyrus, the "first paper."

The Egyptians invented papyrus, which was formed from pounding strips of reed-pith together. This was a more convenient writing surface than stone, skin or clay, and less expensive to produce. By pasting sheets of papyrus together, Egyptians were able to create long scrolls and communicate in great detail.

The Book of the Dead, reproduced onto papyrus, was an important document which gave detailed instructions for the deceased to survive the long and dangerous journey into the afterlife