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, we can distinguish three parts: body (lower part), shoulders and neck…
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 composition. DISTRIBUTION OF THE IMAGES IN THE CLAY COFFIN OF…
Coffins in Ancient Egypt were not made just in wood, but also in ceramic. Although these kind of coffins are much more common in the Middle East, there are some examples coming from the northeast of Egyptian Delta. Let us pay attention to the clay coffin of Men (Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles,…
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 resurrect them. In the funerary sphere, we know that…
Keep safe and protect the others with your actions.
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, like blue, green or violet, relax and calm. That is thanks to their association…
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 1908 the coffin of Qurna Queen in the Egyptian village of Qurna…
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 it sems quite clear that…
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 Ancient Egypt there were a specialised collective of…
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 David, if we think of La Gioconda (Mona Lisa)…
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 practices for giving the life back to the deceased, which…
The artists in ancient Egypt used the bending hair for drawing body movements. The Egyptian artists in Amarna could also depict hair in a more plastic and less rigid way. In fact that followed one of the identity signature of the art of Amarna: more dynamic and natural. And maybe there were a contribution from Amarna to traditional iconoraphy on that subject.
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 it and the style is really…
In Ancient Egypt many verbal and artistic expressions were used to refer to the entrance of the deceased into the Hereafter with goddess Hathor as mentor.
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 is the case of this small wall painting from ancient Egypt now in…
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 laterals… Isis and Nephthys in the Egyptian Coffin. It…
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 Egypt In the faces of the people from paintings, reliefs…
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 ancient Egyptian funerary ritual. In Egypt there are also…
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 achieved the end of the board…
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 squares of the board are crucial to understand…
The senet in Ancient Egypt was an enterteinment board game, but in the funerary sphere it was also a way of reaching the eternity.
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 center. Lower Register. This part of the funerary mask present…
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 role of mourners of Osiris, guaranteed the mummy’s resurrection. We have…
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 golden appliqués of Osiris being flanked by Isis…
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 Osirian and Solar features. Isis and Nephtys are not identified with any inscription but we know their identity because they appear in a typical mourning…
Looking carefully at the decoration on the mummy of Artemidora we can discover the intentions of the artist.
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 into three categories: artist, artisan and worker. Egyptian artist: main…
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 reason, the ancient Egyptians referred to it…
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 Egyptian geography itself: In front of the cultivable and fertile area was the arid…
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 human. The sovereign, by his superhuman essence, was the one who mediated between the…
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 full moon; formed a vital cycle of life,…
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 feeling. It is no an individual matter. For that reason, Egyptian art must be conceived…
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 its history, each with its own style in the plastic manifestations. Thus…
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 language of signs. The Egyptian art is a language of signs and just like the Egyptian language,…
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 Egyptian Art from the technical realization, but also from its ideological-religious…
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 Old Kingdom depict very realistically scenes…
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 spirituality. The art of Ancient Egypt was not “contemplated”….
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 belief of Ancient Egypt. Even Akhenaten needed it. Royal sarcophagi in…
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 funerary artefact related with the mummy (at both ends of coffins and sarcophagi, in…
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) was regenerated thanks to aid of his wife/sister Isis (and by extension…
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. Orientation of the Tutankhamun iconography. The ancient Egyptian artists selected for this king a…
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 figure of Tutankhamun and his tomb does not always mean true knowledge. The Tomb of…
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. The funerary chamber of Tutankhmun is the only decorated room in the tomb. The decorative…
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 three sisters, Meritaton, Ankhesenpaaton and Neferferuaton-ta-sherit, but also by a group of mourners. These scenes of lament…
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, iconography coming from tombs of Amarna show mainly scenes of the “living ones”: Sculptors in the workshop, worship…
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 Aton as the creator of everything. The hymns pray to him…
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 Ancient Egypt is that the only property we find in its figurative production…
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 figurines? Any text says a clear explanation, but we can assume that…
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 speak about artwork in Ancient Egypt? Or must…
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 in an evident show of despair. The ancient Egyptian…
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 art and history. Because any artistic expression needs to…
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 Nephthys was usually depicted with the two mourners of…
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 common scenes in those papyrus was…
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 movement in two dimensional depictions, as for instance the mastaba of Mereruka…
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 statues from the Memphite cemetery show how the male was the…
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 offering two globular vases nw at the end of…
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 the wooden coffins from the Middle…
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 the solar disk in its daily rebirth. It also…
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 Ancient Egypt dedicated this technique for covering some special parts of the mummy….
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 Egyptian city. The festivities of snwt and dnit were important lunar…
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 mourners usually some young girls can be seen taking…
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 complete scenes. This is the case of a…
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 Kingdom, Nut was the goddess of…
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 saw in the previous posts, the artists of Ancient Egypt started painting…
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 artists conceived some of the most famous images of…
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 that meant to depict moments and gods from…
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 depictions of this mixed conception of ancient Egyptian religion….
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 theory. The central aspect in the first one was the…
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 of Isis and Nephthys. These two women shook their hair forwards the mummy…
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 decoration, which could be a proof of the lack of god masters in…
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 of Osiris and Isis was constant, as…
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 formed a perfect team. But it is also a fact…
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 boat Nephtys stands alone apart from her…
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 work we have been writing about those two women,…
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 sexual symbolism. In this line I would like to focus on the ushabti…
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 artist could include a number of typical…
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 related to the mourning rite made by the professional…
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 too crazy to think…
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 mourner and the embalmer are making the “Djat Ra“. Many scholars considered that with…
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 to represent reality, not how it was seen, but how it was. The Egyptian artisan did not think about depth or…
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 www.mexicolore.co.uk, an on-line platform for the diffusion of Aztec…
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 for nothing, Serket is invoked in many remedies against scorpions bites. But the animal in the…
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 she was invoked in ancient Egyptian remedies against scorpion bites. …
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 that the link of Isis and Nephtys with the corpse is…
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 The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, in which he falls in…
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 lock of hair forwards helped the Egyptian artist to represent the respectful bow in…
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 are referring concretly to “respect”. The gesture of bending the body forwards was…
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 periods of Egyptian history. However, from the New Kingdom dynamism appears in Ancient Egypt decoration…
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 posts were about the progessions on the research and the final…