As we have seen in a previous post, the iconography of this coffin contains traditional images of Egyptian art to guarantee the resurrection of the deceased. In addition, in the previous post we exposed that the decoration was perfectly distributed on the surface. So,...
Images in Egyptian art were much more than just designs, specially in funerary sphere. They were a tool for achieving a goal and their effectiveness was out of doubt. Moreover, the artist also had to choose their location on the surface for creating a coherent...
Clay Coffin of Men. Dynasty XVIII. Tell el-Yahoudiyeh (tomb 411). Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles, E.4348. Photo: MRAH Coffins in Ancient Egypt were not made just in wood, but also in ceramic. Although these kind of coffins are much more...
Thanks to the numerous documents that has come down to us from Ancient Egypt, almost all related to their religious beliefs, we know about their gods, the ceremonies they practiced, their mythologies, and above all how they buried their dead and also how they did to...
Colour is a very important element in aesthetics, because by itself it provokes immediate emotions. A colour can determine a state of mind, predispose us to something or even influence someone’s attitude. Effects of Colours in our Emotions. The cold colours,...
I would like to focus on an exceptional coffin located in the National Museum of Scotland. Because it contains a depiction of Isis and Nephthys, that well deserves a mention. 1. Some Information about the Coffin of “Qurna Queen”. Flinders Petrie discovered...
In this post I would like to focus on two wooden sculptures of Isis and Nephthys. They are nowadays in two different museums; one is in the Art and History Museum of Brussels and the other one in the Museum of Fine Arts of Budapest. Although they are noadays separated...
The artist in Ancient Egypt was part of the elite and worked very close to the Court. But his importance did not come from his proximity to the Royal House. Let’s see more about it… 1. The Egyptian artists were specialised workers. Very early in history in...
How many great works of art in Ancient Egypt do we know? thousands!!! and yet … how many names of Egyptian artists (sculptors, draftsmen, painters …) do we know? I am sure you have to think…. Who made the Triads of Mycerinus? We refer to Michelangelo’s...
In Ancient Egypt there were many practices in the funerary rite to grant the dead’s resurrection. The most represented, but also very unkown, was the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony. The Opening of The Mouth Ceremony a group of gestures. It was a group of...
Pa-aton-em-heb (“The Sun Disk is in Feast”), was “Royal Singer” of the end of the Amarna period. It seems that his tomb was originally in Saqqara (although the location remains unknown) and was dismantled. Some blocks of the chapel are nowadays...
There are lots of artifacts from ancient Egypt all around the world. Many of them are still unknown and despite that they are important documents. Just surfing on internet I found this photo of a stele in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. I had no news of...
In Ancient Egypt there were many different ways of referring to same idea. For instance the concept of fertility could be expressing through the image of god Min, the icon of sematauy, the scene of copulation of Nut (the sky) and Geb (the earth)… It also...
There are in museums small pieces from ancient Egypt, which are hardly paid attention. And usually they are very valuable. Sometimes because they offer relevant information, other times because they invite us to reflect. Wall Painting E2380 of RMAH in Brussels. This...
Egyptian coffin was a good surface for decoration. And usually this decoration was quite standard. For example, goddess Nut was depicted on the chest of the mummy, or also on the inside part of the cover, some moments of the funerary ceremony were included in the...
Official or private, formal or informal, the art of ancient Egypt had some characteristics in its production. These features formed a common denominator and helped to give uniformity and cohesion to the art of ancient Egypt. The Lack of Emotions in the Art of Ancient...
Ancient Egyptian archaeology is plenty of small remains which are big in information. For instance the ushabti of Pay and Repit is a small artifact, which goes unnoticed but has a deep message about the sexual stimulation of the dead, a very important aspect of the...
The Senet game of Ancient Egypt was a board game for leisure in common life, which also had its funerary side. It was present in the wall decoration and was part of the funerary equipment. According to it, the deceased played against the death and once he or she...
The Senet game in the funerary sphere was a path to eternity. The deceased played alone this “countdown” to the eternal life. To arrive to the last square meant that he or she was going to live forever. At that point the decoration on the last three...
The senet was a board game in Ancient Egypt. In the daily life it was just a leisure game. In the funerary sphere it was more than just a game, but a way to reach the eternity. Basics on the Senet Game. The board was made of wood and was formed by thirty squares...
Recently we posted about the decoration on the upper register of the funerary mask of Artemidora. In it, we could differentiate two main elements: to the mourning ritual (related to the osirian legend) at both ends of the scene and the solar resurrection in the...
We know how important was the decoration on the corpse in Ancient Egypt. The egyptian artist selected the most effective iconography for the benefit of the deceased. Among the most requested images were those of the two mourners Isis and Nephthys. Because, in their...
Mourners shake and pull their hair on reliefs and paintings from ancient Egypt. They took part in funerary ceremonies in ancient Egypt, contributing to the dead’s resurrection in the afterlife. Hair played a clear role in these rites. In this publication Mª Rosa...
The both sides of the mummy was a good place for strategical iconography. At first sight, it seems that the Egyptian artist did not spend many sources in the decoration at right and left of Artemidora. It is about a very minimalist image consisting just in three...
Isis and Nephthys are the most preeminent figures on the decoration over the mummy of Artemidora. Over the wrappings of the feet, two appliqués of gold depicted these two goddesses Isis and Nephthys on the feet of the mummy of Artemidora. Photo: www.metmuseum.org...
In the ancient Egyptian funerary belief, Isis and Nephthys were crucial for the death resurrection. Two professional mourners in the role of Isis and Nephthys played mourning ritual over the mummy (Osiris). With it, the corpse recovered all the vital functions, which...
To understand the figure of the Egyptian artist it is convenient to differentiate art and craft in ancient Egyptian art. Ancient Egyptians just had the word hemuu (Hmww), for referring to the workers who carried out a work. In addition, those ones could be classified...
The idea of duality referred to good and evil confronted and linked. And it also meant two halves, which formed a unity. Duality is Egypt. Egypt itself evoked also that idea of duality, because the country was formed by two parts: Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. For that...
In the ideological thinking of Ancient Egypt, duality played a crucial role. The equilibrium principle could not exist without the imbalance; and in front of the idea of order was that of disorder. Duality in Egyptian landscape. Duality was supported by the...
The uniformity of Egyptian Art had also political basis. Pharaoh and Uniformity in Egyptian Art. In the state sphere, the Egyptian society required a balance, which depended directly on Pharaoh. The Egyptian monarchy was an institution with double nature, divine and...
At a celestial level, the cycles of the moon and the sun also had a strong influence in Egyptian Art. This influencie was in uniformity and also in iconography. The Uniformity of the Moon and the Sun. The lunar phases: quarter waning, new moon, crescent quarter and...
Plastic manifestations in Egyptian art remain almost unchanged for more than three millennia. Why? Art is something intimately linked with human feeling, with its conception of the world and with its ideology. But Egyptian art is the product of a collective...
Egyptian art shows an apparent uniformity, which makes us to refer to a unique Egyptian style. However, if we pay attention to other cultures of antiquity this perception is different. Evolution in European Art Greek art, for example, goes through different stages in...
Artists and theologist of Ancient Egypt worked together in the emergence of iconographies and they combined different planes of meaning: images and words. That is why reading the Egyptian art requires an iconographic and textual analysis. The Egyptian art: a...
Egyptian art had a magical-functional purpose and did not take into consideration the figure of the spectator. For that reason, we cannot consider Egyptian art from just an aesthetic empiricism. Which makes art feel in a subjective way through sensations. We must read...
The image in Ancient Egypt had a power in itself. Why? Because in addition to evoking a reality, they made it arise. In Ancient Egypt everything that was depicted was also happening. The Power of Scenes on Walls. The mural scenes that we observe in the mastabas of the...
It is necessary to know the physical space in which an ancient Egyptian plastic production is located in order to analyse it. Reliefs, paintings and statues of ancient Egypt we know come mainly from temples and / or tombs, that is, from sacred spaces impregnated with...
The king in Ancient Egypt, despite his solar nature, was also a human being. After dying, the pharaoh became also a corpse, so a mummy. Therefore it was inevitable to asimilate the dead souvereign with Osiris. And he required also a resurection following the...
Isis, Nephthys and later on also Serket and Neith were essential in the regeneration sphere. They, as women/goddessees, played a crucial role in the process of resurrection in Ancient Egypt. For that reason, ancient Egyptian artist included their images in every...
Let’s start with that: women were crucial in Ancient Egypt for the dead’s resurrection. The rite of the professional mourning ritual in ancient Egyptian funerals was based on the Osirian theology. That happened becasue in the belief of Ancient Egypt the dead (Osiris)...
In Ancient Egypt the iconography on the walls of the tombs were crucial for the dead’s resurrection. The iconography in the tomb of Tutankhamun was strong enough for granting the king’s regeneration. Both, the scenes and its emplacement had a sense....
The tomb of Tutankhamun needs to be seen as an historical document. Nowadays everyone knows about Tutankhamun. His mummy, his funeral mask, his golden sarcophagus, his jewels, his spectacular furniture … are familiar to anyone. But this familiarity towards...
The tomb of Tutankhmun is more than a mask, a mummy, Howard Carter… It is an historical document with lots of useful information about the funerary belief in Ancient Egypt. Let’s focus now on the funerary chamber. The decoration of the funerary chamber....
Iconography proofs the existence of a mourning practice in Amarna. Specially relevant is the Royal Tomb, where the funeral of Meketaten, the royal daughter, was depicted. The death of Meketaten was lamented by the royal family, that is Akhenaten, Nefertiti and the...
In Ancient Egypt the afterlife and the eternity were concepts very inserted into belief. The funerary art granted food, drink, furniture, religious cult…The mourning rite depicted was also crucial for the dead’s resurrection. During the reign of Akhenaten,...
During the reign of Akhenaten many things changed in Ancient Egypt. The new Pharaoh modified the artistic canon, his residence, the religion, the cult…but what happened with the death? Documents coming from that period of the history of Ancient Egypt show a belief on...
I have already written about the consideration of the Art of Ancient Egypt as an artwork or a craftwork. In that post some elements were enumerated as necessary for a piece of art: Artificiality. An observer. Communication. Authenticity. Individuality. The problem in...
Thanks to the many artifacts of Ancient Egypt found mainly in tombs, we know many aspects of the habits of ancient Egyptian people. However, the archaeological remains need also to be interpreted. For instance, why was the mummy buried sometimes with small female...
We have been lately writing about the artwork in general. The artwork is a human production conditioned by the author’s skills, by the historical moment and the place where it is produced. Ancient Egypt was not an exception. The big question also for us is, can we...
In Ancient Egypt common mourners taking part in funerary cortege were depicted making many different gestures. These women could raise their arms as if they were praying to the gods the return of the dead. Some times their hands appear over their heads as beating them...
The art of Ancient Egypt has a very big interest from the esthetical point of view. But its composition, its scenes, its colors… have always a specific meaning. Before getting into the art of a moment of the history, we should mention some theoretical matters about...
The artists of Ancient Egypt had a particular conception of perspective, which affected in the way they depicted groups of living beings and amounts of things. In our last posts we saw how in Ancient Egypt the funerary scene of Osiris being flanked by Isis and...
During the New Kingdom the dead was buried with rolls of papyrus containing passages of “The Book of the Dead”. That meant that the artist of the Ancient Egypt applied over this new surfaces a decoration took from the general corpus of images they had. One of the most...
In Ancient Egypt groups of common mourners walked during funerary processions making many gestures of lament: raising arms, beating their arms…One of the most typical gestures of these mourners was to pull from their lock of hair. We can watch this typical mourning...
In Ancient Egypt the lateral lock of hair was a distinctive of childhood. For the ancient Egyptian artist of the Old Kingdom, the lateral lock of hair pending from the scalp was, joint with nudity, an iconographical resource applied mainly to boys. Many familiar...
In Ancient Egypt a couple of two professional women in the role of Isis and Nephthys were actively involved in the dead’s resurrection. They appear usually at both ends of the coffin, during the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony or, from the New Kingdom, kneeling and...
The iconography in Ancient Egypt was not gratuitous. Every image had a reason to be, but also every space. From the Old Kingdom the two mourners in the role of Isis and Nephthys were accompanying the dead until the tomb at both ends of the mummy. The hieroglyphs of...
In Ancient Egypt the Legend of Osiris was so important that it was integrated into the solar theology. As a result Isis and Nephthys, the two mourners of Osiris, became an essential part of some solar iconography, so both from the New Kingdom were depicted flanking...
Cartonnages in Ancient Egypt were used over the wrapped mummy mainly for mummy masks and some important parts of the body. The cartonnage of Irtirutja in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York dates from the Ptolemaic period. In it one can see how the artist of...
It seems that in Ancient Egypt there were a relationship between the hair element and some rites of Heliopolis. The funerary texts show that the hair, the lock of hair and the cut of this lock of hair were somehow connected with religious practices of this ancient...
Tha artist in Ancient Egypt followed the rule of depicting children with the side lock of hair. However, this archetype so common in the Old and Middle Kingdom, had some changes from the New Kingdom on. It is specially evident in the mourning scenes. Among the...
Ancient Egypt gives us again a good document. The tomb of Amenhotep, the Gater’s keeper of god Amun, has been discovered in Gourna. Although it is still too soon for seeing the whole decoration, some images of the walls can help us to imagine how could be some...
The most evident proof of the importance in Ancient Egypt of Isis and Nephthys in a rebirth process is in the Books of the Day and Night, which describe the journey of the sun god through the sky. According to the thought of Ancient Egypt, especially during the New...
The religion of Ancient Egypt developed during the New Kingdom sophisticated religious texts, which combined the solar theology with the Myth of Osiris. As a consequence, the art of ancient Egypt included in its corpus of images a new solar-Osirian iconography. As we...
It was a fact, that the ancient Egyptian corpus of images needed an iconography for expressing the union of Re and Osiris. And little by little in this iconography Isis and Nephthys, the two mourners of Osiris, became essential. In the XIX Dynasty the ancient Egyptian...
The union of Re and Osiris supposed a challenge to the Ancient Egyptian Art, since new iconography was needed for decorating the tomb walls and the papyri. From the XVIII Dynasty, some passages of the Book of the Dead were introduced in the royal tombs decoration and...
The union of Re and Osiris in ancient Egyptian culture produced as a result new decorative motives in the ancient Egyptian iconography. The earth god and the sky god needed to be reconciled in religious scenes and from the New Kingdom artist worked in creating new...
One of the main challenges for priests and artists in Ancient Egypt were to combine the osirian and solar cosmogonies in the funerary literature and iconography. The two main pillars in the belief of resurrection in Ancient Egypt were the myth of Osiris and the solar...
In Ancient Egypt, virility was an essential faculty for granting the dead’s resurrection. All along my work I have been showing that, among the many practices in Ancient Egypt for reviving the corpse, there was one made by the professional mourners in the role...
There is always news about artifacts of Ancient Egypt. Now it is the turn of the coffin of “Denit-Ast”. It dates from the Persian Period and it is in the Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. As Gayle Gibson exposed, this coffin has many oddities in its...
Isis and Osiris were in the religion of Ancient Egypt the perfect couple. Despite the murder of Osiris, they could go on, Isis could revive her husband and both could have a boy. But Osiris was replaced by Apis. In the mortuary iconography of Ancient Egypt the union...
In the last post it was considered the role of Nephthys in the religion of Ancient Egypt. It is a fact that Nephtys was a very important goddess in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Isis needed her help for granting the resurrection of Osiris; they both Isis and Nephthys...
There is a scene of the Book of the Dead from the tomb of Ay, in which are depicted on the solar boat the gods of the Heliopolitan cosmogony and the Myth of Osiris (apart from Seth): Re-Horakhty, Atoum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Horus…and out of the...
Among the Ancient Egypt gods, Isis and Nephtys occupied a very important role. It is an ancient Egypt fact, that the two professional mourners in the role of Isis and Nephtys did a mourning rite during the funeral for granting the dead’s resurrection. All along our...
In ancient Egypt the dead needed many faculties for restarting his new life in the Hereafter: breathing, seeing, walking…and virility. Sex was an essential aspect for the resurrection in Ancient Egypt and in the funerary rites some ritual practices were full of...
Egyptian art can hide very important information in small pieces. That is the case of the stele of Sebekaa in British Museum. This piece of ancient Egyptian art dates from XI Dynasty and it was found in Thebes. In just a space of 70 cm x 60 cm (aprox.) the Egyptian...
We have been writing about the ancient Egyptian expression “The Hand in the Mouth” (Djat Ra) as a way in Egyptian language of referring to the gesture made by the mother breastfeeding her baby. In the funerary sphere of Ancient Egypt that expression seems to be...
The assiduousness of the icon in the icnongraphy of Ancient Eypt of the mother bringing closer her breast with the aid of her hand to her baby’s mouth seems to be plenty of sense in the ancient Egyptian belief related to the new life. For that reason it does not seem...
Let’s make a reflection about the expression “Djat Ra” belonging to the Opening of the Mouth ceremony of Ancient Egypt and that we saw in a previous post. It appears in a resurrection scene in the tomb of Qar; according to the inscription the...
Perspective in Egyptian art was special. For us, perspective is the representation on a flat surface of reality how it is seen by human eye. That means that observer is an important element when the artists paints or draw something. In Egyptian art the artists had...
Mourning is a extended practice in funerals of many cultures all over the world. Not just in Ancient Egypt, but also in some other African cultures, in the ancient Assyria or in Archaic Greece. I recently wrote a short text about mourning in Ancient Egypt for...
The goddess Serket was associated in Ancient Egypt to the scorpion and to the waterscorpion. Scholars have usually cosidered the ancient Egyptian goddess Serket as a goddess scorpion, whose harmful bite made her an effective protection against poisonous stings. Not...
We know why the ancient Egyptian goddess Neith was part of that team of four goddesses-mourners (Isis, Nephtys, Neith and Serket) protecting the dead. Serket was also a very important divinity in the Egyptian pantheon. She had a great healing power and for that reason...
In Ancient Egypt Isis, Nephtys, Neith and Serket formed a team of four goddesses, who protected the caponic jars containing the organs of the dead. For that reason Egyptians depicted these four goddesses in the canopic chests and sometimes also in sarcophagi. We know...
Hair has been from ancient times an important element for preserving a good- looking. Recently in the blog Studia Humanitatis it was published a very interesting post about how the concept of a woman’s beauty is closely related to hair. He mentioned a passage of...
Egyptian artisans of the New Kingdom used hair in their drawings for expressing body movements (dance, body bow…). This technique, adopted from the way of drawing the professional mourners, was applied to the masculine figures in a respectful attitude. The front...
Hair became in Ancient Egypt a resource for expressing things. The bending hair was used in Ancient Egypt art for drawing body movements. As some movements were related in Ancient Egyptian belief to some attitudes, hair was also used for expressing those attitudes. We...
Due to the estrict rules of the Egyptian art, artists in Ancient Egypt needed to find unnatural ways of expressing some movements, especially during the Old and Middle Kingdom. Distorsion and sprain characterises dynamic scenes (dancing, acrobaces, games…) in those...
The blog “Hair and Death in Ancient Egypt” started in May 2013 as a way of transmiting the results of my research about the mourning rite in the funerary ceremony of Ancient Egypt. Especially base on Egyptian art and religious texts. At the beginning the...
