7.2: Ancient Egypt (Introduction)

Ancient Egypt, an introduction

by Dr. Amy Calvert

Egypt’s impact on later cultures was immense. You could say that Egypt provided the building blocks for Greek and Roman culture, and, through them, influenced all of the Western tradition. Today, Egyptian imagery, concepts, and perspectives are found everywhere; you will find them in architectural forms, on money, and in our day to day lives. Many cosmetic surgeons, for example, use the silhouette of Queen Nefertiti (whose name means “the beautiful one has come”) in their advertisements.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Imhotep, stepped Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, Old Kingdom, c. 2675-2625 BCE. (Photo: Dr. Cerise Myers, CC BY) Imhotep's is the first name recorded for any artist in history, and his innovation here—stacking stone mastabas (rectangular tombs with sloped sides) into a towering structure with an underground complex—results in a royal tomb that clearly communicates the king's godlike power.

Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for more than 3000 years and showed an incredible amount of continuity. That is more than 15 times the age of the United States, and consider how often our culture shifts; less than 10 years ago, there was no Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

While today we consider the Greco-Roman period to be in the distant past, it should be noted that Cleopatra VII’s reign (which ended in 30 BCE) is closer to our own time than it was to that of the construction of the pyramids of Giza. It took humans nearly 4000 years to build something—anything—taller than the Great Pyramids. Contrast that span to the modern era; we get excited when a record lasts longer than a decade.

Consistency and stability

Egypt’s stability is in stark contrast to the Ancient Near East of the same period, which endured an overlapping series of cultures and upheavals with amazing regularity. The earliest royal monuments, such as the Narmer Palette carved around 3100 BCE, display identical royal costumes and poses as those seen on later rulers, even Ptolemaic kings on their temples 3000 years later.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Palette of Narmer, c. 3000-2920 BCE (left) and Ramses III smiting at Medinet Habu (1160 BCE) (right). (Photo via Smarthistory) Although approximately two millennia separate these representations, both Narmer and Ramses wear the same distinctive crown and beard, and each is shown pulling back his right arm to smite the enemy clasped in his left hand.

A vast amount of Egyptian imagery, especially royal imagery that was governed by decorum (a sense of what was ‘appropriate’), remained stupefyingly consistent throughout its history. This is why, especially to the untrained eye, their art appears extremely static—and in terms of symbols, gestures, and the way the body is rendered, it was. It was intentional. The Egyptians were aware of their consistency, which they viewed as stability, divine balance, and clear evidence of the correctness of their culture.

This consistency was closely related to a fundamental belief that depictions had an impact beyond the image itself—tomb scenes of the deceased receiving food, or temple scenes of the king performing perfect rituals for the gods—were functionally causing those things to occur in the divine realm. If the image of the bread loaf was omitted from the deceased’s table, they had no bread in the Afterlife; if the king was depicted with the incorrect ritual implement, the ritual was incorrect and this could have dire consequences. This belief led to an active resistance to change in codified depictions.

The earliest recorded tourist graffiti on the planet came from a visitor from the time of Ramses II who left their appreciative mark at the already 1300-year-old site of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the earliest of the massive royal stone monuments. They were understandably impressed by the works of their ancestors and endeavored to continue that ancient legacy.

Geography

Egypt is a land of duality and cycles, both in topography and culture. The geography is almost entirely rugged, barren desert, except for an explosion of green that straddles either side of the Nile as it flows the length of the country (Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\)). The river emerges from far to the south, deep in Africa, and empties into the Mediterranean sea in the north after spreading from a single channel into a fan-shaped system, known as a delta, at its northernmost section.

The influence of this river on Egyptian culture and development cannot be overstated—without its presence, the civilization would have been entirely different. The Nile provided not only a constant source of life-giving water, but created the fertile lands that fed the growth of this unique (and uniquely resilient) culture.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): View from the high peak of the Theban hills showing the sharp delineation between the lush Valley and the barren desert. (Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert, via Smarthistory)

Each year, fed by melting snows in the far-off headlands, the river overflowed its banks in an annual flood that covered the ground with a rich, black silt and produced incredibly fertile fields. The Egyptians referred to this as Kemet, the “black lands,” and contrasted this dense, dark soil against the Deshret, the “red lands” of the sterile desert; the line between these zones was (and in most cases still is) a literal line. The visual effect is stark, appearing almost artificial in its precision.

Time–cyclical and linear

The annual inundation of the Nile was also a reliable, and measurable, cycle that helped form their concept of the passage of time. In fact, the calendar we use today is derived from one developed by the ancient Egyptians. They divided the year into 3 seasons: akhet “inundation,” peret “growing/emergence.” and shemw “harvest.” Each season was, in turn, divided into four 30-day months. Although this annual cycle, paired with the daily solar cycle that is so evident in the desert, led to a powerful drive to see the universe in cyclical time, this idea existed simultaneously with the reality of linear time.

These two concepts—the cyclical and the linear—came to be associated with two of their primary deities: Osiris, the eternal lord of the dead, and Re, the sun god who was reborn with each dawn.

Early development: The Predynastic period

The civilization of Egypt obviously did not spring fully formed from the Nile mud; although the massive pyramids at Giza may appear to the uninitiated to have appeared out of nowhere, they were founded on thousands of years of cultural and technological development and experimentation. “Dynastic” Egypt—sometimes referred to as “Pharaonic” (after “pharaoh,” the Greek title of the Egyptian kings derived from the Egyptian title per aA, “Great House”) which was the time when the country was largely unified under a single ruler, begins around 3100 BCE.

The period before this, lasting from about 5000 BCE until unification, is referred to as Predynastic by modern scholars. Prior to this were thriving Paleolithic and Neolithic groups, stretching back hundreds of thousands of years, descended from northward migrating homo erectus who settled along the Nile Valley. During the Predynastic period, ceramics, figurines, mace heads, and other artifacts such as slate palettes used for grinding pigments, begin to appear, as does imagery that will become iconic during the Pharaonic era—we can see the first hints of what is to come.

Dynasties

It is important to recognize that the dynastic divisions modern scholars use were not used by the ancients themselves. These divisions were created in the first Western-style history of Egypt, written by an Egyptian priest named Manetho in the 3rd century BCE. Each of the 33 dynasties included a series of rulers usually related by kinship or the location of their seat of power. Egyptian history is also divided into larger chunks, known as “kingdoms” and “periods,” to distinguish times of strength and unity from those of change, foreign rule, or disunity.

Table showing periods and corresponding dates in ancient Egypt.

Period	Dates
Old Kingdom (the 'pyramid age')	c. 2649-2150 BCE
First Intermediate Period	c. 2150-2030 BCE
Middle Kingdom	c. 2030-1640 BCE
Second Intermediate Period (Northern Delta region ruled by Asiatics)	c. 1640-1540 BCE
New Kingdom	c. 1550-1070 BCE
Third Intermediate Period	c. 1070-713 BCE
Late Period (a series from foreign dynasties, including Nubian, Libyan and Persian rulers)	c. 712-332 BCE
Ptolemaic Period (ruled by Greco-Romans)	c. 332-30 BCE

The Egyptians themselves referred to their history in relation to the ruler of the time. Years were generally recorded as the regnal dates (from the Latin regnum, meaning kingdom or rule) of the ruling king, so that with each new reign, the numbers began anew. Later kings recorded the names of their predecessors in vast “king-lists” on the walls of their temples and depicted themselves offering to the rulers who came before them—one of the best known examples is in the temple of Seti I at Abydos.

These lists were often condensed, with some rulers (such as the contentious and disruptive Akhenaten) and even entire dynasties omitted from the record; they are not truly history, rather they are a form of ancestor worship, a celebration of the consistency of kingship of which the current ruler was a part.

The pharaoh—not just a king

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Statue of Horus at the Temple of Horus, Edfu. Ptolemaic Dynasty, begun 237 BCE. (Photo: Dr. Cerise Myers, CC BY)

Kings in Egypt were complex intermediaries that straddled the terrestrial and divine realms. They were, obviously, living humans, but upon accession to the throne, they also embodied the eternal office of kingship itself. The ka, or spirit, of kingship was often depicted as a separate entity standing behind the human ruler. This divine aspect of the office of kingship was what gave authority to the human ruler. The living king was associated with the god Horus, the powerful, virile falcon-headed god who was believed to bestow the throne to the first human king (Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\)).

Horus’s immensely important father, Osiris, was the lord of the underworld. One of the original divine rulers of Egypt, this deity embodied the promise of regeneration. Cruelly murdered by his brother Seth, the god of the chaotic desert, Osiris was revived through the potent magic of his wife Isis. Through her knowledge and skill, Osiris was able to sire the miraculous Horus, who avenged his father and threw his criminal uncle off the throne to take his rightful place.

Osiris became ruler of the realm of the dead, the eternal source of regeneration in the Afterlife. Deceased kings were identified with this god, creating a cycle where the dead king fused with the divine king of the dead and his successor “defeated” death to take his place on the throne as Horus.

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Egypt in Africa: What Was the Relationship between the Egyptians and Other Africans?

Many European and American universities and museums separate Egypt from the rest of Africa, presenting it either in relation to the European cultures of Greece and Rome or as an isolated phenomenon with no connections to the peoples of central and southern Africa. These “Eurocentric” or “isolationist” approaches are modern. The Greek historian Herodotus—the so-called father of history—fully acknowledged the African aspects of Egyptian civilization when he visited the Nile Valley in the fifth century BCE.

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Amunhotep III, c. 1390-1352 BCE. Wood, gold leaf, glass, pigment, total height: 10 3/8" (26.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 48.28. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, CC BY 2.0) This strikingly naturalistic sculpture is made of a dark wood or ebony that, given Egypt's lack of trees suitable for carving, indicates it is an imported precious material. At the same time that this material, along with the gold headdress and kilt, emphasize the pharaoh's royal status, the sculpture also portrays his aging facial features and darker brown skin tone.

It was not until the 1840s that a group of American authors, writing to justify the Atlantic slave trade, argued that the Egyptians were a separate population with no relation to other Africans. They did not believe that Africans could have produced one of the world’s most sophisticated civilizations. Although prominent African-American intellectuals—including David Walker, Frederick Douglass, and W. E. B. DuBois—challenged these notions, such ideas continued to dominate how Egypt was presented to the American public throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries.

Since the 1960s, western-trained Egyptologists have begun to rethink many of their assumptions about ancient Egypt. This trend is due partly to changes in American society and partly to the efforts of African and African-American scholars who continue to challenge outdated ideas. These modern scholars use the same name the ancient Egyptians used for their kingdom: “Kemet,” or “Black Land.” Linguists have identified similarities in grammar and vocabulary between the language of the ancient Egyptians and several contemporary African languages. Important aspects of Egyptian culture, including divine kingship and devotion to dead ancestors, are now seen as examples of traditional African approaches to social organization.

The debate over whether or when ancient Egyptian influence reached central and western Africa remains open. Some may question the very assumptions underlying a search for cultural traits specific to Africa. In any case, we continue to explore how much of Egyptian thought and behavior survives among today’s African populations.

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Ancient Egyptian art

by Dr. Amy Calvert

Appreciating and understanding ancient Egyptian art

Ancient Egyptian art must be viewed from the standpoint of the ancient Egyptians to understand it. The somewhat static, usually formal, strangely abstract, and often blocky nature of much Egyptian imagery has, at times, led to unfavorable comparisons with later, and much more ‘naturalistic,’ Greek or Renaissance art. However, the art of the Egyptians served a vastly different purpose than that of these later cultures.

Art not meant to be seen

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Funerary statues of Rahotep and Nofret (detail showing both faces in profile), Old Kingdom, Fourth Dynasty, c. 2575-25551 BCE. Painted limestone with inlaid rock crystal eyes, 121 cm tall. Egyptian Museum, Cairo. (Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert, via Smarthistory) Sculptures like these, with their rigid sense of permanence, were intended to remain in the owners' tomb, not be on display.

While today we marvel at the glittering treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun, the sublime reliefs in New Kingdom tombs, and the serene beauty of Old Kingdom statuary, it is imperative to remember that the majority of these works were never intended to be seen—that was simply not their purpose.

The function of Egyptian art

These images, whether statues or relief (Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\)), were designed to benefit a divine or deceased recipient. Statuary provided a place for the recipient to manifest and receive the benefit of ritual action. Most statues show a formal frontality, meaning they are arranged straight ahead, because they were designed to face the ritual being performed before them. Many statues were also originally placed in recessed niches or other architectural settings—contexts that would make frontality their expected and natural mode.

Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Painted sunken relief of the king being embraced by a goddess, Tomb of Amenherkhepshef (QV 55) (New Kingdom). (Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert, via Smarthistory)

Statuary, whether divine, royal, or elite, provided a kind of conduit for the spirit (or ka) of that being to interact with the terrestrial realm. Divine cult statues (few of which survive) were the subject of daily rituals of clothing, anointing, and perfuming with incense and were carried in processions for special festivals so that the people could “see” them (they were almost all entirely shrouded from view, but their ‘presence’ was felt).

Royal and elite statuary served as intermediaries between the people and the gods. Family chapels with the statuary of a deceased forefather could serve as a sort of ‘family temple.’ There were festivals in honor of the dead, where the family would come and eat in the chapel, offering food for the Afterlife, flowers (symbols of rebirth), and incense (the scent of which was considered divine). Preserved letters let us know that the deceased was actively petitioned for their assistance, both in this world and the next.

What we see in museums

Generally, the works we see on display in museums were products of royal or elite workshops; these pieces fit best with our modern aesthetic and ideas of beauty. Most museum basements, however, are packed with hundreds (even thousands!) of other objects made for people of lower status—small statuary, amulets, coffins, and stelae (similar to modern tombstones) that are completely recognizable, but rarely displayed. These pieces generally show less quality in the workmanship; being oddly proportioned or poorly executed; they are less often considered ‘art’ in the modern sense. However, these objects served the exact same function of providing benefit to their owners (and to the same degree of effectiveness), as those made for the elite.Modes of representation for three-dimensional art

Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): Menkaure between Hathor and the personification of the nome of Thebes. Schist, 4th Dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Cairo. (Photo: Dr. Cerise Myers, CC BY)

Three-dimensional representations, while being quite formal, also aimed to reproduce the real-world—statuary of gods, royalty, and the elite was designed to convey an idealized version of that individual. Some aspects of ‘naturalism’ were dictated by the material. Stone statuary, for example, was quite closed—with arms held close to the sides, limited positions, a strong back pillar that provided support, and with the fill spaces left between limbs (Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\)).

Wood and metal statuary, in contrast, was more expressive—arms could be extended and hold separate objects, spaces between the limbs were opened to create a more realistic appearance, and more positions were possible. Stone, wood, and metal statuary of elite figures, however, all served the same functions and retained the same type of formalization and frontality. Only statuettes of lower status people displayed a wide range of possible actions, and these pieces were focused on the actions, which benefited the elite owner, not the people involved.

Figure \(\PageIndex{9}\): Painted wooden model of the deceased overseeing the counting of cattle in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo (Middle Kingdom). (Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert, via Smarthistory)

Modes of representation for two-dimensional art

Two-dimensional art represented the world quite differently. Egyptian artists embraced the two-dimensional surface and attempted to provide the most representative aspects of each element in the scenes rather than attempting to create vistas that replicated the real world.Each object or element in a scene was rendered from its most recognizable angle and these were then grouped together to create the whole. This is why images of people show their face, waist, and limbs in profile, but eye and shoulders frontally. These scenes are complex composite images that provide complete information about the various elements, rather than ones designed from a single viewpoint, which would not be as comprehensive in the data they conveyed.

Registers

Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\): Chaotic fighting scene on a painted box from the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo (New Kingdom). (Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert, via Smarthistory)

Scenes were ordered in parallel lines, known as registers. These registers separate the scene as well as provide ground lines for the figures. Scenes without registers are unusual and were generally only used to specifically evoke chaos; battle and hunting scenes will often show the prey or foreign armies without groundlines (Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\)). Registers were also used to convey information about the scenes—the higher up in the scene, the higher the status; overlapping figures imply that the ones underneath are further away, as are those elements that are higher within the register.

Hierarchy of scale

Difference in scale was the most commonly used method for conveying hierarchy—the larger the scale of the figures, the more important they were. Kings were often shown at the same scale as deities, but both are shown larger than the elite and far larger than the average Egyptian.

Text and image

Text accompanied almost all images. In statuary, identifying text will appear on the back pillar or base, and relief usually has captions or longer texts that complete and elaborate on the scenes. Hieroglyphs (as in Figure \(\PageIndex{12}\)) were often rendered as tiny works of art in themselves, even though these small pictures do not always stand for what they depict; many are instead phonetic sounds. Some, however, are logographic, meaning they stand for an object or concept.

Figure \(\PageIndex{12}\): Sunken relief hieroglyphs on the wall of the tomb of Ramses IV (KV 2) at the Valley of the Kings, 20th Dynasty (New Kingdom). (Photo: Dr. Cerise Myers, CC BY)

The lines blur between text and image in many cases. For instance, the name of a figure in the text on a statue will regularly omit the determinative (an unspoken sign at the end of a word that aids identification—for example, verbs of motion are followed by a pair of walking legs, names of men end with the image of a man, names of gods with the image of a seated god, etc.) at the end of the name. In these instances, the representation itself serves this function.

Figure \(\PageIndex{11}\): Highly detailed raised relief hieroglyphs on the White Chapel of Senusret I at Karnak (Middle Kingdom). (Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert, via Smarthistory)

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The Rosetta Stone

by The British Museum

Figure \(\PageIndex{13}\): The Rosetta Stone, 196 BCE, Ptolemaic Period, Egypt. Granodiorite, 112.3 x 75.7 x 28.4 cm. British Museum, London. (Photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). The Rosetta Stone was discovered in Egypt, at Fort St Julien in el-Rashid, known as Rosetta.

The key to translating hieroglyphics

Figure \(\PageIndex{14}\): A reconstruction of the stele of which the Rosetta Stone was originally a part. (A. Parrot, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most important objects in the British Museum as it holds the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs—a script made up of small pictures that was used originally in ancient Egypt for religious texts. Hieroglyphic writing died out in Egypt in the fourth century CE. Over time the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs was lost, until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 and its subsequent decipherment.

The Stone is a tablet of black rock called granodiorite. It is part of a larger inscribed stone that would have stood some 2 meters high. The top part of the stone has broken off at an angle—in line with a band of pink granite whose crystalline structure glints a little in the light. The back of the Rosetta stone is rough, where it has been hewn into shape, but the front face is smooth and crammed with text, inscribed in three different scripts. These form three distinct bands of writing.

Three translations of the same decree

Figure \(\PageIndex{15}\): The Rosetta Stone (detail). Part of grey and pink granodiorite stela bearing priestly decree concerning Ptolemy V in three blocks of text: Hieroglyphic (14 lines), Demotic (32 lines) and Greek (53 lines). (Photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The inscriptions are three translations of the same decree, passed by a council of priests, that affirms the royal cult of the thirteen-year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation. The decree is inscribed on the stone three times, in hieroglyphic (suitable for a priestly decree), demotic (the native script used for daily purposes), and Greek (the language of the administration). The importance of this to Egyptology is immense. In the early years of the nineteenth century, scholars were able to use the Greek inscription on this stone as the key to deciphering the others.

Opposition to the Ptolemies

In previous years the family of the Ptolemies had lost control of certain parts of the country. It had taken their armies some time to put down opposition in the Delta, and parts of southern Upper Egypt, particularly Thebes, were not yet back under the government’s control.

Before the Ptolemaic era (that is before about 332 BCE), decrees in hieroglyphs such as this were usually set up by the king. It shows how much things had changed from Pharaonic times that the priests, the only people who had kept the knowledge of writing hieroglyphs, were now issuing such decrees. The list of good deeds done by the king for the temples hints at the way in which the support of the priests was ensured.

The end of hieroglyphics

Soon after the end of the fourth century CE, when hieroglyphs had gone out of use, the knowledge of how to read and write them disappeared. In the early years of the nineteenth century, some 1400 years later, scholars were able to use the Greek inscription on this stone as the key to decipher them.

The discovery

Thomas Young, an English physicist, was the first to show that some of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone wrote the sounds of a royal name, that of Ptolemy. The French scholar Jean-François Champollion then realized that hieroglyphs recorded the sound of the Egyptian language and laid the foundations of our knowledge of ancient Egyptian language and culture.

Soldiers in Napoleon’s army discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799 while digging the foundations of an addition to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta). On Napoleon’s defeat, the stone became the property of the British under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801) along with other antiquities that the French had found.

The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. Towards the end of the First World War, in 1917, when the Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London, they moved it to safety along with other, portable, ‘important’ objects. The Rosetta Stone spent the next two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway 50 feet below the ground at Holborn.

Figure \(\PageIndex{16}\): The Rosetta Stone (detail with Greek). (Photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Analyzing the Rosetta Stone

When the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, the carved characters that covered its surface were quickly copied. Printer’s ink was applied to the Stone and white paper was laid over it. When the paper was removed, it revealed an exact copy of the text—but in reverse. Since then, many copies or “facsimiles” have been made using a variety of materials. Inevitably, the surface of the Stone accumulated many layers of material left over from these activities, despite attempts to remove any residue. Once on display, the grease from many thousands of human hands eager to touch the Stone added to the problem.

Figure \(\PageIndex{17}\): Left: Detail of the right side of the Rosetta Stone; Right: Detail of the Rosetta Stone with Demotic script. The Rosetta Stone. (Photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

An opportunity for investigation and cleaning the Rosetta Stone arose when this famous object was made the centerpiece of the Cracking Codes exhibition at The British Museum in 1999. When work commenced to remove all but the original, ancient material, the stone was black with white lettering. As treatment progressed, the different substances uncovered were analyzed. Grease from human handling, a coating of carnauba wax from the early 1800s and printer’s ink from 1799 were cleaned away using cotton wool swabs and liniment of soap, white spirit, acetone and purified water. Finally, white paint in the text, applied in 1981, which had been left in place until now as a protective coating, was removed with cotton swabs and purified water. A small square at the bottom left corner of the face of the Stone was left untouched to show the darkened wax and the white infill.

The Stone has a dark grey-pinkish tone with a pink streak running through it. Today you can see traces of a reddish brown in the text. This material was analyzed and found to be a clear mineral known as hydroxyapatite; the color may be due to iron traces. The mineral may have been applied deliberately, but there is no proof of this. This substance is not known by experts to have been used as a pigment, nor to have been used as a base for painting (a ground) in ancient Egypt.

Translation of the demotic text

[Year 9, Xandikos day 4], which is equivalent to the Egyptian month, second month of Peret, day 18, of the King “The Youth who has appeared as King in the place of his Father,” the Lord of the Uraei “Whose might is great, who has established Egypt, causing it to prosper, whose heart is beneficial before the gods…”

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Articles in this section:

• Dr. Amy Calvert, "Ancient Egypt, an introduction," in Smarthistory, August 8, 2015 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• The Brooklyn Museum, “Egypt in Africa: What Was the Relationship between the Egyptians and Other Africans?” from Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, April 12, 2003 through October 26, 2015 (Reproduced by permission of the Brooklyn Museum)
• Dr. Amy Calvert, "Ancient Egyptian art," in Smarthistory, August 8, 2015 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• The British Museum, "The Rosetta Stone," in Smarthistory, August 29, 2016 (CC BY-NC-SA)