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Summary of This Activity |
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Why
do Egyptian figures look the way they do? |
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Relief of Akhty-hotep
Limestone, 36 1/8 x 23 11/16
in. (91.8 x 60.2 cm)
Early Old Kingdom, late Dynasty 3–
early Dynasty 4, circa 2650–2600 B.C.
From Saqqara
57.178, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund |
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This Old Kingdom limestone
relief shows a man named Akhty-hotep. It comes from his tomb.
The relief shows how Egyptian artists combined profile and frontal
views of figures. |
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This figure’s profile
looks like it would in life, which is different from Akhty-hotep’s
profile. |
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The artist drew Akhty-hotep’s
mouth and nose in profile, but showed his eye from the
front. |
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Akhty-hotep’s shoulders and
arms are shown from the front, but one breast and nipple
are shown from the side. |
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Akhty-hotep has two left feet. Egyptian
artists depicted an object—such as a foot—by
showing its essential elements. In this case, the big
toes and arches of both of feet are visible, even though
in reality only the far foot would appear this way. |
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Why
did Egyptian artists combine profile and frontal views?
Ancient Egyptian artists sought to convey information rather
than reproduce reality. This was important because Egyptian
images—figures like this one of Akhty-hotep—also
functioned as hieroglyphs to be read. Isolating an object’s
components and reassembling them from different views to make
each detail most recognizable was a means of presenting subjects
in a clear, understandable way. Art historians call this mixture
of profile and frontal views “isolation and reassemblage.”
How would Akhty-hotep’s proportions
have differed over time?
Isolation and reassemblage wasn’t the only stylistic rule
or convention in ancient Egyptian art. Egyptian artists also
used a mathematical grid system to determine a figure’s
proportions—the relationship between each of the body’s
parts.
This image of Akhty-hotep was created in the Old Kingdom, before
Egyptians developed the grid system. The artists who carved
it used a few vertical and horizontal guidelines that helped
them achieve the harmonious placement of details, especially
body parts. This network was not yet as mathematical and specific
as the grids that developed later. Even though Egyptian artists
rigidly followed the grid system, it changed over time, along
with notions about the ideal human body.
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By the Middle Kingdom (12th
Dynasty), Egyptian artists had developed a grid that would be
followed for centuries. This mathematical grid regularized representations
of the human body, measuring 18 equal squares from the soles
of the feet to the hairline. |
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In the Amarna Period the accepted
model for the human figure changed, so the grid system changed
as well. King Akhenaten preferred figures with longer necks,
wider hips, and smaller, thinner legs than figures in previous
periods, so his artists developed a new 20-square grid. This
innovation was short-lived; after Akhenaten died, artists under
his successor, Tutankhamun, went back to the 18-square grid. |
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In the Late Period (25th Dynasty),
the ideal body proportions grew longer again and a longer 21-square
grid became the norm. The rulers of Egypt at this time were
Kushites from Nubia (south of Egypt) who brought their own sense
of style to traditional Egyptian imagery and form. |
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