7.1: Chapter Introduction

Introduction: The Power of Imagery; Intimidation and Destruction

In ancient Egypt, art was not made for art’s sake; it served a much higher purpose. Images depicted religious rituals and important beliefs, imbuing art with power beyond the imagery itself. Art carried consequences in both life and beyond, in the afterlife. Most well-known Egyptian art was made to aid in private ceremonies and rituals, and to accompany people to the afterlife through the architecture of rich burial complexes. Relief inscriptions in temples recorded important religious beliefs and statuary served as physical intermediaries between humans, kings, and gods.

But images could also carry power in different, more threatening ways in the world of the living. Twenty years after the 25-year reign of a female king named Hatshepsut (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\))—one of the most unprecedented and unpredictable in ancient Egypt—her male successors toppled or recarved the features of her statues, chipped away her relief portraits and hieroglyphics, and annihilated nearly all renderings of her in the historical record. Was the physical memory of this powerful female king so threatening to her successors that they had to remove her haunting menace by destroying all mentions of Hatshepsut—both verbally and visually? Was this an early example of misogyny in reaction to a woman’s peaceful coronation and reign? Was Hatsheptsut later seen as a dangerous aberration to Egypt’s consistent succession of male rulers? Or was something different at play?

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Hatshepsut, c. 1473-1458 BCE. Indurated limestone. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Photo: Postdlf, CC BY-SA 3.0) In this seated sculpture, Hatshepsut, depicted here with a feminine face and figure, wears the traditional nemes headdress of the ruler, but not the royal beard. Other images of her as pharaoh show her with more masculine characteristics, including the traditional beard.

The great Hatshepsut was an Egyptian king in the Eighteenth Dynasty, and through all of antiquity, she was the only woman to rise to power during a time of peace. Kara Cooney (author of a fascinating biography about Hatshepsut) explains that, grammatically, “[i]t is not precise to call Hatshepsut a queen, despite the English understanding of the word; once she took the throne, Hatshepsut could only be called a king.” Cooney goes on to describe how in ancient Egyptian, the very word “queen” only existed in relation to a man (as the “woman of the king”) and this was not accurate for Hatshepsut since she acted and ruled independently and without existing in relation to or service of a man.

Interestingly, the physical depictions of Hatshepsut, aesthetically and stylistically, seemed to follow or mimic these grammatical shifts in gender as well. Statuary depictions of Hatshepsut before her coronation showed her as an iconographically traditional Egyptian woman, in a dress with breasts visible. But after she became king, she was most often depicted with more of the traditional trappings of previous male kings, emphasizing masculine qualities including widening her shoulders, narrowing her hips, and erasing her breasts. However, there were also rare times when she presented herself as both male and female; sometimes statuary showed her bare breasts wearing what was considered to be masculine regalia. She also continued to go by her feminine name (Hatshepsut means “the Foremost Noble Women”) and use “she” and “her” pronouns in contemporaneous writings, while quite purposely also using the title of king, traditionally reserved only for men.

Architecturally, her massive temple complexes in Karnak shaped and shifted royal architecture, both at the time and for decades to come. She transformed existing mud-brick structures, rebuilding them in sandstone, and adding luxurious architectural embellishments, rich materials, stunning red granite obelisks, towering statues, and massive, repetitive columns.

Nevertheless, despite her great accomplishments as king and the creative ways in which she depicted her masculine side to fit her kingly role—or perhaps because of all of this—her successors saw it as an imperative to destroy her monuments and imagery as if to obliterate her existence and history. Cooney argues,

Ancient civilization didn’t suffer a woman to rule, no matter how much she conformed to religious and political systems; no matter how much she ascribed her rule to the will of the gods themselves; no matter how much she changed her womanly form into masculine ideals. Her rule was perceived as a complication by later rulers—praiseworthy yet blameworthy, conservatively pious and yet audaciously innovative—nuances that the two kings who ruled after her reconciled only through the destruction of her public monuments.

The Egyptians were detailed record keepers, and believed in the power of images. A sculpture could provide a secondary home after death, along with the mummified body, for the ka, or immortal spirit. Damage to a sculpture was seen as disrupting its functionality, which is why rulers’ ka statues were often sculpted from hard stone and with few projections, leading to both a literal and aesthetic sense of longevity and permanence. In fact, the remarkable consistency of Egyptian art itself highlights that sense of longevity and permanence, especially when it came to their god-like rulers. Sculptures of Hatshepsut as king, with the distinctive false beard, idealized features, and strong, youthful physique resemble both Narmer, Egypt’s first unifying king from about 1500 years earlier, and Tutankhamen, who reigned 200 years after Hatshepsut’s death. The aggressive purging from the record of Hatshepsut’s images as a female king may give a clue of just how important it was for Egyptian royalty to maintain that conservative tradition.

Thankfully, clues remained that are still helping scholars make sense of the remaining fragments—including a massive obelisk at the Temple of Amun-Re in Karnak that was too large to destroy, and was instead simply walled up. That the physical vestiges of Hatshepsut’s reign were seen as so threatening, infuriating, or deviant that they must be destroyed tells its own tale of Egyptian art, of royal imagery, and of the lasting power of an image.

This chapter explores the enduring importance of images and imagery in Egyptian art, particularly of styles and iconography that span thousands of years, all while retaining a fairly rigorous consistency. Part of the draw of Egyptian art now is that ancient Egyptian culture is ubiquitous—it is everywhere, whether in timeless aesthetic references, popular culture mentions, or the technology and inventions they pioneered for modern society, such as their mastery of metal and glass making or in moving water through irrigation channels and canals.

Historiography (Writing History)

Egyptology Before the Rosetta Stone

Many people have heard of the Rosetta Stone, or are at least familiar with the name, because of the present-day software company that aids in teaching foreign languages. However, the Rosetta Stone, for which the company is named, holds a very important place in history and in the discipline of Egyptology. This stone, found in 1799, helped Egyptologists and linguists to crack the code to understand hieroglyphic writing, which died out in Egypt during the fourth century CE.

The large black granodiorite rock measures about 44 inches tall and 30 inches wide and contains one royal decree inscribed onto its smoothed surface in three forms: hieroglyphic Egyptian, demotic Egyptian, and Greek. Because the rock contained three versions of the same decree, the Rosetta Stone led to the decipherment of hieroglyphics. (Read more about the dynamic languages of Ancient Egypt in “Multilingualism along the Nile.”)

The importance of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone to the field of Egyptology cannot be underestimated. Remember that before hieroglyphics were deciphered, Egyptologists were basically guessing what they meant. The deciphering of hieroglyphics changed the world’s understanding of Egyptian society, as an ancient and unknown writing became suddenly understandable and translatable, contributing to a growing knowledge of ritual, history, political succession, and cultural changes recorded in temples and burial complexes throughout Egypt. Despite calls for its repatriation, the Rosetta Stone is housed in the British Museum and is one of the most prized possessions of its collection.

Egypt in the Context (and on the Continent) of Africa

Traditionally in the discipline of art history, Egypt is studied as a predecessor to Greek, Roman, and European art and culture. Indeed, Egypt played a major role in the ancient Mediterranean world, with particularly strong and influential ties to the Greeks, Romans and Assyrians. In considering it as part of a European tradition, art historians have isolated it from the study of the art of Africa, despite the fact that Egypt is located on the African continent and can be studied in relation to, in consideration of, and in context with its neighbors.

Part of this isolationist and Eurocentric approach to separating Egypt’s history from that of the African continent stemmed from a racist belief that (sub-Saharan) Africans were inferior and uncivilized, and hence could not have produced such a sophisticated civilization. (Remember in Chapter 5 when European archaeologists could not believe that the cave paintings in Namibia were painted by Africans?) Separating ancient Egyptian culture from the study of African culture and civilizations therefore also helped to justify the violent and inhumane transatlantic slave trade.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars, activists, and political leaders from the African diaspora championed Pan-Africanism, a movement to politically and culturally unify people of African descent. Some of these scholars, such as Cheikh Anta Diop, also looked back to Egypt to draw connections between Egypt and the rest of the African continent, reclaiming Egyptian art as a key element and symbol of Pan-African and diasporic identity. In 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art curated a show entitled The African Origin of Civilization, acknowledging Diop's "visionary call to acknowledge Africa’s foundational role in major cultural developments" by featuring art from both their Ancient Egyptian and Sub-Saharan African holdings together for the first time.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Fred Wilson (American, born 1954). Grey Area (Brown version), 1993. Pigment, plaster, and wood, Overall: 20 x 84 in. (50.8 x 213.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of William K. Jacobs, Jr. and bequest of Richard J. Kempe, by exchange, 2008.6a-j. © Artist or artist's estate, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Modernist artists, such as Sudanese painter Ibrahim El-Salahi and Ethiopian multimedia artist Skunder Boghossian, made art inspired by their heritage and national identity, drawing attention to Pan-Africanism and postcolonial movements through their visual arts. And the tradition continues. More recently, contemporary artists of the African diaspora, such as American musical artist Beyoncé, Ethiopian-American photographer Awol Erizku, Egyptian graffiti artist Zeft, and American visual artists Fred Wilson and Umar Rashid, have reclaimed and repopularized famous and iconic images of Nefertiti and other well-known Egyptian art, forcefully reclaiming and returning it back into the art historical canon of the African diaspora. (Read more about these artists in the suggested optional readings.)

Later in this chapter, an excerpt from the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity discusses these ideas and scholarship further. Additionally, this chapter includes the history of the ancient Nubian Kingdom of Kush in order to draw more parallels between Egypt and neighboring ancient civilizations in Africa, such as Nubia (in present-day northern Sudan and Egypt). Finally, this chapter also acknowledges the scholarship that ties important aspects of Egyptian culture, such as ancestral devotion, divine kingship, and the celebration of queen mothers, to a larger, traditional social system common among different African societies, kingdoms, and countries.

Chapter Overview

The history of ancient Egypt is marked by three major kingdoms, with bookends at either end, and a few so-called “Indeterminate periods” in between. This chapter starts with the Pre- and Early Dynastic period before diving into the Old Kingdom, which saw the creation of the Great Pyramids at Giza. Next, the chapter touches briefly on the Middle Kingdom before landing in the New Kingdom, a 500-year period known for such notable figures as Hatshepsut and Tutankhamen (or “King Tut”). During the New Kingdom, there was also a very brief, but artistically- and socially-daring blip, in religion and subsequent aesthetic style, called the Amarna period. In the first millennium BCE, Egypt’s power faded. A series of foreign powers occupied Egypt, which fell under the control of Alexander the Great and eventually, following the death in 30 BCE of Egypt’s last queen, Cleopatra, of Rome.

Below is a condensed timeline of the kingdoms and the final periods in ancient Egyptian history:

• Predynastic period: c. 3500 BCE
• Old Kingdom: c. 2649-2150 BCE
• Middle Kingdom: c. 2030-1640 BCE
• New Kingdom: c. 1550-1070 BCE
  • Amarna Period: c. 1350 BCE (the short 17-year period during which styles changed drastically)
• Late Period: c. 712-332 BCE (a series of foreign, including Nubian, Libyan, and Persian, rulers)
• Ptolemaic Period: c. 332-30 BCE (final rule by Greco-Romans)

This chapter begins with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt in the predynastic period, around 3500 BCE, and covers material through the end of the first century BCE. Observing the famous predynastic Palette of Narmer and the façade of the monumental Temple of Edfu, viewers see striking similarities, including the proportions and presentation of the figures and the “smiting” pose of the ruler in each. This is remarkable since the span between these objects is 3000 years. More than a millennium separates the pyramids at Giza and the tomb of King Tut. However, one who did not know those dates might believe them to have been designed and built around the same time—because Egyptian culture, with a few exceptions, is remarkably consistent in its aesthetic style, pictorial representations, and statuary; extremely conservative in its politics; strict in its line of successors; coherent in religious beliefs and rituals; and remarkably stable over this long expanse of time. This can lead some viewers to mistakenly see the culture as static, when it is anything but. To an attentive viewer, subtle changes across the five major periods of ancient Egyptian history reveal flexibility in Egyptian culture and important differences in those periods.

This chapter also covers Ancient Nubia and the Kingdom of Kush, which spanned about 1,000 years, from 2500-1500 BCE (correlating with the Egyptian Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms). Note that by the Late and Ptolemaic Periods, there is a series of foreign leaders in Egypt, including Nubian and Greco-Romans, discussed at the end of this chapter.

Objects overview

This chapter covers some iconic works of art that you have likely seen referenced in popular media, books, movies, and television. This includes art as famous as the Great Sphinx as well as lesser-known objects such as the yet-undeciphered Meroitic stele, from the Kushite period in Nubia, c. 24 BCE. This chapter will include a wide range of burial complexes and architecture, sculpture, and vessels, including:

• the trilingual Rosetta Stone, the key to solving the puzzle of hieroglyphics
• the Narmer Palette, an intricately carved ritual object that communicates a narrative and is an early example of twisted perspective or composite view
• pyramids, from early precedents like the Stepped Pyramid of Djoser to the famed Great Pyramids of Giza and the attendant Great Sphinx
• the serene and timeless sculpture of King Menkaure (Mycerinus) and Queen
• the Temple of Amun-Re and Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, an impressive and rich religious complex
• the great Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, including reconstructions of Hatshepsut as a sphinx and a large kneeling statue of Hatshepsut
• paintings from the Tomb-chapel of Nebamun, featuring colorful and engaging images of his elite lifestyle, in hopes of projecting such comforts in the afterlife
• works of art from the Amarna period, demonstrating a radical, stylistic shift, resulting from Akhenaten’s changing the state religion in 1350 to a monotheistic society
• such iconic New Kingdom artifacts as the Bust of Nefertiti and Tutankhaman’s tomb

By the time you finish reading this chapter on Ancient Egyptian art, you should be able to:

• Discuss the evolution of Egyptian culture and its relationship to the Nile
• Describe key characteristics of Old, Middle, and New Kingdom art, explaining how its form follows its function
• Recognize the importance of religion (polytheism or monotheism) on Egyptian art and its different kingdoms or periods
• Describe Egypt’s relationship to its neighboring kingdoms and its place on the African continent
• Explore Egypt’s relationship to the Mediterranean in the ancient world
• Discuss the role of consistency and stability in Egyptian political power and subsequently in its art
• Recognize and explain overriding themes and techniques in Egyptian art