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The History of Art Survey
Lecture 5
Egypt: Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom
Gardner 60-75
A
B
C
Style Period: Middle Kingdom 2040 - 1640
3-
18 Rock-cut tombs Beni Hasan
19 Interior of Amenemhet’s tomb Beni Hasan
Style Period: New Kingdom 1550 - 1070
20 Mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, Senmut Deir el-Bahri
21 Hatshepsut kneeling in worship with Offering Jars Deir el-Bahri
22 Temple of Ramses II Abu Simbel
23 Temple of Ramses II (int) Abu Simbel
24 Temple of Amen-Re (plan) Karnak
25 Temple of Amen-Re (int) Karnak
26 Temple of Amen-Re hypostyl hall, model Karnak
27 Temple of Amen-Mut-Khonsu Luxor
28 Pylon, Temple of Horus Ptolemaic (Greek) Period, 3rd c BC Edfu]
29 Senmut with Princes Nefrua Thebes
30 Fowling scene, Tomb of Nebamun (?) Thebes
31 Musicians and dancers, Tomb of Nebamun (?) Thebes
32 Akhenaton, Temple of Amen-Re Karnak
33 Queen Nefertiti, Thutmose Tell el-Amarna
34 Queen Tiye Gurob
35 King Semenkhare and Meritaten (?) Tell el-Amarna
36 Tutankhamen’s innermost coffin Thebes
37 Tutankhamen’s death mask Thebes
38 Painted Chest, Tutankhamen’s tomb Thebes
39 The Last judgment of Hu-Nefer Thebes
40 Mentemhet Late Period, 7th c Karnak
[XX Alexander Ptolemaic (Greek) Period, 4th c BC Alexandria

Critical Art Historiography

By now it should be clear, to any one who has looked at other survey texts on the history of art, that the canon of our book is very close to the others. Indeed there is a hegemonic canon of chosen objects —the great works of art— shared almost universally in all of the half dozen best know texts and the dozen or son lesser known ones. I’d guess they all include around 75% of this canon and select the remaining 25% more freely in terms of the works chosen, though they are from the same artists in almost all of those choices. So there is near unanimity in 95 % of the choices. In these early historical periods, the choices of images are almost identical.

Why? Is it because these are the best items in quality or the most important historically? No. Nor is it because there is a particularly limited number of works to choose among. The main reason for keeping to a relatively narrow canon of examples is these works fit the relatively narrow historical canon. That is authoritative or official story. The history we teach is built around a carefully developed interpretation. The examples we use to illustrate the story are chosen for their fit with the story. To understand what that means we may compare the ancient, medieval and Renaissance sections of our history, which fit the model just described, with the last century where there most of the variety in choices is found. Our interpretation of the most recent period is still controversial in many parts and so no agreed upon canon of meaning is there to allow for an agreed upon canon of examples.

Middle Kingdom 2040 - 1640

The Old, Middle and New Kingdoms were periods of cultural florescence. In between them were periods of regression or chaos in the view of the rulers and so of later hegemonic Egyptologists.

The period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms is one of civil disruption and established authoritarian rule is interrupted. This comes to an end with the reuniting of Upper and Lower Egypt under Mentuhotep I (2060 - 2010 BCE).

Realizing that the size of the Pyramid was of no particular value in safekeeping the tomb goods, the pyramids built now were smaller, but the interior layouts became much more ingeniously evasive They were now constructed largely in brick, rather than stone. Sarcophagi, by contrast grew in size. There was now a shift to rock cut tombs, replacing constructed ones.

18 Rock-cut tombs, Beni Hasan, 1950 - 1900 BCE, Dyn XII
In the Middle Kingdom, rock-cut tombs generally replace mastabas. The site is marked by a prominent entrance porch, leading into a columned hall. These are cut directly out of the existing rock of their sites.

Here we see a pair of simply fluted (faceted) columns with thin impost blocks beneath a horizontal lintel and eaves marked by dentals, in imitation of a wooden household structure. These flutes are slightly concave.

The flutes articulate the columns, so that their esthetic impact is strengthened and they look both carefully constructed and cleanly distinct.

19 Interior of Amenemhet’s tomb, Beni Hasan Dyn, XII
Pillars here, indeed all we see here has no structural function, they are only representation of the functions in the buildings they mimic, as can be seen by the broken pillars visible in this pictures.

New Kingdom 1550 - 1050
The New Kingdom represents a return to indigenous dynastic rule after a period of foreign rule by Hyksos rulers, from the Fertile Crescent, who conquered Egypt and held it for a century or so. The New Kingdom differs from the previous period in part by incorporating some of the innovations brought in by the Hyksos. This included the domestication of horses.

Now it was Egypt’s time to extend it’s borders, conquering south into Nubia and north up the coast to Euphrates. A new capital emerged at Thebes to the south.

20 Mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, Senmut Deir el-Bahri, Thebes 1473 - 1458 BCE
The most impressive monuments of the New Kingdom were not pyramids or even tombs, but temples. The most luxurious of these are the pair at Deir el-Bahri of the 18th Dynasty. The most developed of these, that mortuary temple of Hatshepsut.

Here once again we know the official designer’s name: Senmut, her chancellor and possibly consort.

Does it strike you as interesting that the text calls him her “lover”? The great majority of the kings we will see had multiple wives and concubines. Why does our book, like most never refer to them as their “lovers.”?

The 3 colonnaded, ramped terraces of the temple rise up to the cliff side. This is modeled in part on the temple it is built beside: the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II, of th Middle Kingdom. There are columns of two sorts: simple square sectioned columns and sixteen sided ones. Originally these terraces were covered with vegetation artificially developed for the site. Reliefs in the temple depict the voyages to find exotic plants for the site and also her life and coronation. On the upper lever she is seen as the daughter of Amon-Re. She is the first woman to receive such lavish royal eulogies and representation.

There were as many as 200 free standing images depicting Hatshepsut in various activities. Most of these were removed or shattered by the “revengeful” Thutmose III (r 1458 - 1425 BCE), when he came to throne in the following reign. It was his contention that she usurped 20 years of his reign.

We can see some of this destruction in the reliefs of the temple, still intact, where Hatshepsut’s image has been cut crudely away.

Hatshepsut was the Principle Queen and half-sister of Thutmose II (r 1492 - 1475 BCE), when he died. “Pharaohs had extensive harems” [many lovers?] She claims to have actually been appointed by Thutmose I to have been his successor, and so she took up the throne herself on the death of her half-brother, rather than allowing it to go to his son and heir by a minor queen. I the temple she has him depicted crowning her. She is the first Woman ruler of a major nation to be recorded (r 1458-58 BCE).

21 Hatshepsut with offering jars, 8’6” from the upper court of her mortuary temple, 1473-58 BCE
In her portraits Hatshepsut has herself depicted in pharaonic dress. Indeed, inscriptions refer to her as “his Majesty.” Here she is seen in one of these devastated images, carefully reassembled in modern times. She is shown holding offering jars in a ritual for the Sun god. She wears the royal nemes and ceremonial beard.

Calling masculine is a little too gender fixated. There was a royal symbol not a gender one, there being no female alternative. The beard, even on male figures, was attached.

What is unusual here is that she is shown in male anatomy, where she is normally shown with female breasts in acknowledgment of her gender.

22 Temple of Ramses II, Abu Simbel, 1290 -1224 BCE, 65’
Ramses II (r 1290-1224 BCE) was the last great warrior Pharaoh. His tomb is in Thebes, but his mortuary temple was far upstream in Upper Egypt. These rock-cut images at the entrance to his temple are 65’ tall seated. They lack the refinement of earlier work. according to our book. “This is a characteristic of colossal statuary of every period and every place.” it adds.

This may be true, but I don’t know what the measure is. Up close I found them to be quite as carefully finished and articulated as one could hope for. At this scale, one doesn’t include details too small to show up.

23 Temple of Ramses II (int.) Abu Simbel
Inside images of Ramses stand against each pillar at 32.’

Our book calls these figures atlantids. I wouldn’t because they stand against the pillars, not as supports themselves.

24 Temple of Amen-Re (plan) 16th - 13th c BCE Karnak
The New Kingdom and particularly Ramses II are know for the gigantic size to which their monuments reached. The temple of Amen-Re at Karnak is the product of many enlargements. One temple burgeoning into a complex grid of temples. The Thutmoses and Hatshepsut contributed most of it, but Ramses II came along a century later and added considerably. And others did as late as the 26th dynasty.

On their exteriors, temples were fronted by slope side gateways called (by the Greeks) pylons. Internally, each was organized in terms of a bilateral symmetry about a single longitudinal axis that led from the entrance to the innermost sanctum, all within a high wall.

This arrangement was the architectural expression of the building’s use, the ritual whose form gave it meaning. The essential ritual was a procession in which priests led a train of great personages to the altar, located at its innermost recesses. People in the procession were graded hierarchically, with each proceeding in only so far as their rank would take them. The higher the rank the deeper they moved, with only the most important reaching the deepest recesses. The great majority of Egyptians never saw the insides, much less the inner apartments of these temples.

If they were religious devices for worshipping the gods, they were social devices recapitulating the various classes of society. Their high walls and even more striking pylon gateways were symbolic of the society’s restriction of all power to a very few.

Developed studies of ancient Egyptian culture emphasize its binary character set as the entire culture is, on either side of the Nile river and with this progressive bilateral symmetry found in many permutations.

25 Temple of Amen-Re (int), 1290 - 1224 BCE, Karnak
Here we see the colonnaded courtyards the gradually thinning procession passed through. Most of these were open to the sky. But some were roofed.

You can see the difference on the plan. One of your jobs here is to learn to read plans, so take you time to figure them out. You can tell those open to the sky by their great open spaces. The plan’s scale here shows the first courtyard to be approximately two by three hundred feet. The roofed courtyard is the one that appears on the plan as a forest of pillars. With the limited span of 17’ for a stone lintel, it took many pillars here, as in the Appadana at Persepolis, to carry a roof.

26 Model of the Hypostyle Hall
The model here shows the hypostyle hall, the hall of pillars. This is a room constructed around the simplest of architectural forms: the pillar and lintel: uprights supporting a cross bar. The structure is held together by the shear weight of one stone lying upon another. This one is further characterized by its clerestory (or clearstory). The inner pillar ranks being taller than the outer rows, they carry a taller roof, leaving a space for light to filter into the interior. If you think for a moment back to a time when there was no electric lighting, you will understand how important this device was.

The pillars here are 66’ tall. Their capitals are 22’ in diameter ”large enough to hold one hundred people,” which gives an impression of their immensity.

Plato’s Cave: Amon Temple, Karnak
When we look at the full temple complex at Karnak, of which the Amon-Re temple is only the most important, we can see how things grew over time. One great longitudinal axis after another, beside another. All are pretty much controlled within the orthogonal grid of the solar axes.

27 & Plato’s Cave Temple of Amen-Mut-Khonsu Luxor, 1390-53 BCE & 1290-1224 BCE

The temple of Amen-Mut-Khonsu at Luxor, a few miles to the south, at Luxor, reveals some of the way in which such temples developed. The original structure was created by Amenhotep III, in the 14th century BCE. Ramses II, who came along later, in the 13th, extended the temple by walling in the colonnade fronting Amenhotep’s temple and adding an outer courtyard and a great pylon and a pair of obelisks out front.

The interesting shift off the usually rigid axial grid in the added courtyards is explained by two historical factors. The first is the small preexisting temple of Thutmose III that Ramses designer’ wanted [needed?] to incorporate within their own. The second is their desire to face the entire complex more directly toward the Karnak complex as processions moved between the two. Both complexes were situated in relation to the Nile at Thebes, where it runs in a northeasterly direction and so takes all the grids off the more usual cardinal axes seen at Saqqara and Gizeh.

Pylon entrance of Amen-Mat-Khonsu, 1290-1224 BCE
The pylon at Amen-Mut-Khonsu shows the archetypal Egyptian entrance gateway form. Two great masses flank a slightly lower entrance passageway. They are banked, possibly in stylistic memory of earlier mud and brick fortifications, both on their sides and their faces. The distinctive incline takes advantage of the natural parallax inherent in parallel lines converging as they move away from the viewer, to make the pylons seem a bit taller even than they are. Their edges are articulated by an enclosing sculptural lip. Two either side Ramses placed gigantic portraits of himself and a pair of tall obelisks.

We can trace the steps of the ritual procession in their symphonic passage of the living god, the Pharaoh towards the images of his eternal identity. First there is a majestic approach up to and through the great pylons that give a triumphal entrance into the first courtyard. There we find ourselves in the open square of Ramses II’s court, surrounded by lotus bud capitaled columns. If only a limited number of court officials were allowed into the Pharaoh’s procession to enter the temple’s gateway, most of those would remain here, as only the most important would be allowed to continue into the long colonnade tall, papyrus capitaled columns on the way to Amenhotep’s courtyard. Here they would have been surrounded by bundled papyrus columns with bundle budded capitals. Here most of the few still accompanying the pharaoh would be left while only a diminishing few would be able to move through the last stages, until the pharaoh and his chief priests stood in the innermost of sanctums, the living god face to face with the images of the eternal gods. The last few stages were plunged in interior darkness.

Obelisks of Amen-Mat Khonsu on site and in Paris
Over the years various conquerors have taken home trophies from the amazing stones they have found in Egypt. First there was the Roman Empire. Dozens of Obelisks are found in Rome, most now incorporated in the great Christian sites there, such as those in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral and the one in front of the Pantheon, a few blocks from the rooms of the College of Design’s Rome Program.

The missing pair to the giant obelisk still standing before the pylons of Aman-Mut-Khonsu was taken by Napoleon Bonaparte at the beginning of the 19th century, and can be seen at the center of the Place de la Concorde today, marked by imagery depicting its transfer.

28 Pylon, Temple of Horus Ptolemaic (Greek) Period,
237 - 47 BCE, Edfu
Here is another, much later pylon, showing how long the form continued in Egyptian tradition. The major difference between this and the earlier ones, in the time of Ramses II is the use of monumental reliefs on its outer service. The deep vertical niches are emplacements for flag staffs.

30 Senmut with Princes Nefrua, 1470 - 1460 BCE, Thebes
Block images like this one became popular during the Middle Kingdom. Though once established forms lasted throughout the tradition, new forms were regularly appearing. Senmut, Hatshepsut’s chancellor, is shown here protecting her daughter. He holds her in his cloak, which is covered with inscriptions. Among other positions, Senmut was the princess’s tutor. Late in the reign he was deposed, perhaps for growing too powerful.

31 Fowling scene, Tomb of Nebamun (?), 1400-1350 BCE, Thebes
A great pleasure in the cave-like tombs in the Valley of Kings and the Valley of Queens across the river from Luxor is found in their paintings. Here is Nebamun, “scribe and counter of grain,” an accountant shown in the classic pose of the hunter, relaxing in the afterlife. Unlike Ti, shown in a static pose, Nebamun is shown actively striding forward, a throwing stick in his hands. He holds the birds of his catch in his hands. His wife accompanies him. Hierarchical scale is maintained. The symbols and formulas aren’t much different than before.

The technique is called fresco seco, it means painting with water soluble colors on a dry white plaster.

There is a free painterly style, much looser than the stone sculpture of earlier times. Different species are richly evoked and with careful observation.

Slatkin points out how important the gender distinctions are in these paintings. To begin with, The deceased to be entombed is almost exclsuively a male. But he is always shown with a consort, a complete male has a family. This hierarchy is stressed in the paintings by the distinctly smaller size of the females.

31 Musicians and dancers, Tomb of Nebamun (?)
1400-1350 BCE, Thebes

The tombs of the Valley of the kings are long, deep tunnels into rock of the plateau, with irregular and circuitous plans, made to confuse the grave robbers. They open up into finished rooms. All is cut from the living rock. The main rooms for the ka and the various surrogate bodies have quite magnificent, or sometimes rather prosaic combinations of all the things of daily life that the deceased wants to think they will have need of in their afterlife.

The scene of Musicians and Dancers stripped off the wall of Nebamun’s tomb and transported to the British Museum, offers a view of the entertainment he’d like to take with him. [If this idea of the afterworld seems at all unusual today, one need only think of the white-winged angels playing harps and walking around on streets of gold that some people seem to expect.]

Four noblewomen play music to which a pair of nearly nude dancers performs at Nebamun’s banquet. This is the funerary feast and a premonition of the feast he expected, or at least hoped for, in the afterlife. To the side are large provision jars.

“New Kingdom artists did not always adhere to the old standards for figural representation.” If we consider the variety of imageries seen here we will realize that despite the modern art-historical-stereotype of unchanging Egypt, there was indeed always change and development. Certainly less than in later times, but just as certainly. always and continually.

The dancers assume carefully developed poses in complicated combinations. They overlap each other. Overlaps are not everywhere, but you can see them in the tomb of Ti, already. It is mainly the authoritative figures who need to be in formula. There is observation and care.

The subject displays the luxury of the dominant class. The women enjoying the feast are elaborately dressed and larger. The dancers are shown at a smaller scale, even if youthful, they are not children. Their nudity is meant to be just as provocative and enjoyable as that of nude dancers anywhere today. In this case it is a clear indication of their low class status and their availability to the entertainment of the elite who commands them.

Slatkin tells us that “Nudity in Egyptian art is linked to both sex and class. Only lower-class women appear in representations without clothes. Men and elite women are never depicted nude.

The Amarna Period of Akhenaton or Iknatan (Amenhotep IV), 1353 - 1335 BCE
Akhenaton’s reign is known as the one great moment of rebellion from developed traditions in Egyptian history. He abandoned worship of all the Egyptian gods for just one, Aton, the universal sun god. He blotted out Amen’s name from his name and that of his father, where they appear in inscriptions. He moved his capital from Thebes to Tell el-Amarna down stream. He cut off funds to the existing great temples. He claimed for himself role as the sole son and prophet of Aton. And unlike earlier animal and human representations of the god, he chose only the sun’s disk and its rays.

Though there is an element of striking variation here, and may be stronger than any other known deviation from established tradition, it is at most a stronger variation than usual. Monotheists of our own day have made this more of a deviation than real, because they see some similarity there to their own happy vision, and its apparently similar rejection of polytheism. It is better, I think, to consider this a shift of power from one set of sun priests to another in the politics of the court and the temple, than some sort of revolutionary deviation. In any case it lasted only for the short reign of one man. In many ways it is no more or less revolutionary a development than Hatshepsut’s . It is just as significant a demonstration of how narrow were the normal run of variations.

32 Akhenaton, Temple of Amen-Re, 1353-1335 BCE, Karnak,
13’
The most striking result of the change, outside of the economic dislocation of the established priestly hierarchy, was the shift in visual style. This colossal portrait, toppled and buried after his rule came to an end, is a good example. It shows a stylized caricature that does deviate interestingly from the normal formula. The features of the face and the body are elongated and fit into a bulging oval ideal. The face is marked with stylized, heavy-lidded eyes and lips, accentuated by similarly rhythmical features in the headdresses. The body follows the same, attenuated toward the top and bottom and bulging in the middle, formula. The previous, more naturalistic formula is exchanged for a somewhat more caricatural one.

Gardner calls the image androgynous and a deliberate artistic reaction against the established style.

33 Queen Nefertiti, Thutmose Tell el-Amarna
This is the extremely famous bust portrait of Akhenaton’s queen, Nefertiti. [The image was in the news in July 2003 because of a playful body added to it by some contemporary performance artists.] The actual piece is not an independent work of design, but workshop prototype to guide artists in producing other works. On one hand it is a beautiful piece as it stands. On the other, one can see the same caricatural mode we’ve just noted in Akhenaton’s figure, though not quite so stylized. The neck is extended in contrast to the tall hat, chin narrowing and cheeks flaring. It is also “unfinished.” Though all I can see of that in pictures is the eye not inlayed on the left.

And we know the artist’s name. It is Thutmose, the queen’s official sculptor.

34 Queen Tiye, Amarna period, 3” Gurob
The piece is a composite of wood, inlayed with lapis, gold, alabaster and silver. Tyie is Akhenaton’s mother. So the book emphasized it is a picture of old age.

We should note that this could mean anything after 30 years of age in this period, when life expectancy, especially for women was not much more, even for a queen.

“Egyptians were a people of mixed race and frequently married other Africans”...

Again we have a modern interest. Egyptians certainly distinguished between darker and lighter peoples, from Upper and Lower Egypt and those from even further afield. Here is the Amarna stylization with what would today pass for handsome, sub-Saharan features.

35 King Semenkhare and Meritaten (?), Tell el-Amarna, 9”
Semenkhare was Akhenaton’s half-brother and co-regent. Here the formulas of the Amarna style are put into a scene, which is as casually different than the usual representation as the figure formula in general. The king leaning o a staff has no parallel in the ancient art of Egyptian royalty. And as Slatkin tells us, there is the unusual lack of scale caricature here, with Maritaten’s size being shown more realistically close to her husbands, rather than conventionally over-diminished.

A point as clear for us as the difference between this style and the standard style, is that it is both a definite variation on the traditional style, and that it is quite as rule defined. It differs in having a view distinctive rule changes. Elongated necks, elongated heads and protruding bellies, & etc.

It was once thought that this change in the arts expressed a revolutionary change in the culture. It is now recognized as a conscious rejection of standard themes, that lasted only as long as the generation that moved away from Thebes to Tel el-Amarna. With Akhenaton’s death, the court returned to Thebes and the art of the court returned to the models in the workshops there.

36 Tutankhamen’s innermost coffin, 1323 BCE, 6’ Thebes
The ruler following Akhenaton returned patronage to the workshops, he had left. Those works modified by Akhenaton were re-modified and much of his work was cast away. Tutankhamen came to the throne almost immediately after, and died after only a decade. The unique importance of the art of his reign is in his personal tomb’s somehow eluding the robbers, and so survived intact until archaeologists dug it up in 1922. This is his innermost coffin, stood up. It is gold with inlay of enamel, lapis, turquoise and other materials. . The luxury of the materials is overwhelming. But the imagery too is quite stirring. He is presented as the pharaoh. Tutankhamen was a son of Akhenaton’s.

37 Tutankhamen’s death mask, 1323 BCE, 1’ 9” Thebes
Here is the portrait mask that covered the body itself. Despite a little caricature in the enlarged eyes and prominent cheek bones, this is right back to the same ideal we can see in Menkaure. It is composed of gold and semiprecious stones. Here the nemes headdress and false beard are turned into wonderful visual forms.

Is it the luxurious materials, the gold and semi-precious stones inlayed side by side that makes this so striking? Is it the precise workmanship joining the regular strips of gold and royal blue in the menes or the gold lines around the turquoise patterns of the false beard? Or is the silhouette shapes, within which the patterns are gathered, that attract and hold our attention? Or is it the detailed refinement of the vulture and cobra heads projecting from the headdress? Or is it the subtle evocation of the humanity in the organic, but symmetrical curves of the face?

More likely it is not any one of these individual aspects of the design, but the unity of their combination that catches the eye, and moves the viewer’s humanity. The sharpness of articulation around the lips or eyes holds our attention, symmetry seems to be satisfying in itself, as is the recognition of forms of the living world in reproduction. Degrees of optical accuracy also have their own fascination. But what holds our attention and moves our emotions is the connection of the combination with our humanity.

38 Painted Chest, Tutankhamen’s tomb, 1’ 8” Thebes
The depiction of Tutankhamen as a conqueror on the wooden chest from his tomb certainly seems to show him in a role he never likely had the opportunity to play. The youthful king is shown in a war chariot pursuing enemies.

This may serve to remind us of the idealism and invention of subjects in most of the imagery we have seen. It is as unlikely that Hatshepsut had male anatomy, or that Ramses was 65 feet tall, seated, or for that matter that Narmer ever indulged personally in hand to hand combat.

The king is depicted conventionally. Here it is as a warrior. On the lid of the box it is as a hunter. Each shows the king in a chariot riding in the usual parallel plane driving his victims into the diagonal wedge of the composition before him. The entire composition is enclosed within a rectangular frame. It is a readable work of design, in part because it is a specific composition.

39 The Last judgment of Hu-Nefer, 1290-1280 BCE, Thebes
This is a very fine version of the famous utilitarian Book of the Dead that explained both the technical and the metaphysical process that took the Egyptian elite into the afterworld. The entire book, in this case is a papyrus scroll dozens of feet in length. This one is a foot and a half tall. The combination of hieroglyphic text and pictures here shows Hu-Nefer, a royal scribe and steward, being led by Anubis, the jackal headed god of embalming into the hall of judgment. There the god is shown adjusting the scales in which his heart is to be measured against the feather of the goddess Maat. The monstrous Amit waits to see the outcome. If the heart is found lacking he will devour it. The ibis headed Toth waits to record the verdict. Then, having survived the test Hu-Nefer is led by the falcon headed Horus up to Osiris himself, to receive his reward of eternal life.

The scroll depicts the patrons desires as clearly as the Neolithic painters depicted the animals they wanted to understand and control. It is a projection of its creators interests and desires. If some of the subjects are fantastic, some remind of our own lives and hopes and desires. However improbable the hybrid animal human deities, we recognize the desire for an afterlife and speculation about supernatural beings judging our humanity as prices of entrance found in later religions.

40 Mentuemhet Late Period, c 650 BCE, 4’ 5” Karnak
Summing up their consideration of Hu-Nefer’s Book of the Dead, our authors point out how there is a formal version of the style that existed before the Amarna period deviations and no trace of deviation left. This indicates how strong the established tradition was. And we can take their word for the work’s being typical. “The return to conservatism was complete. So, in essence, it remained through the last centuries of ancient Egyptian figural art.” (XI ed. p. 74) “During this time Egypt lost the commanding role it once had played in the ancient Near East. The empire dwindled away, and foreign powers invaded, occupied, and ruled the land, until it was taken over by Alexander the Great of Macedon...”

This is a major art & historical conclusion of the chapter, if not the major point. Egypt’s art was conservative and unchanging and Egypt fell from its imperial height under the power of others. The point is then nailed home in its last example.

Mentuemhet was the chief ruler of the city of Thebes and Fourth Priest of Amen at Karnak in the XXVIth Dynasty, and here we see his funerary portrait in almost life sized, very hard stone. It is an important example of the type at the end of the period of Egyptian power and independence. Our authors say, it “easily could be mistaken for an Old Kingdom work. The venerable formulas, conventions, and details of representation are all here in summary. The rigidity of stance, frontality, and the spareness of silhouette with arms at the side and left leg advanced all recall Old Kingdom statuary. Only the double wig, characteristic of the New Kingdom, and the realism of the head, with its rough and almost brutal characterization, differentiate the work from that of the earlier age.”

If we put the piece against the Menkaure of two millenium earlier we must see this traditional conservatism.

“The Late Period pharaohs deliberately referred back to the art of Egypt’s classical phase to give their royal image authority.” “The ancient Egyptians’ resistance to significant change for almost three millennia is one of the marvels of the history of art. It testifies to the invention of a pictorial style that proved so satisfactory that it endured in Egypt, while everywhere else in the ancient Mediterranean, stylistic change was the only common denominator.”

The conclusion of our chapter is the historical judgment that is the hegemonic vision of East and West. Egypt here represents the East and the rest of the Mediterranean, which we will not turn to only in terms of Greeks and Romans (omitting the Palestinians, Syrians, Turks, and all North Africa) are the traditional “West.”

And the point? The East is conservative and unchanging and so succumbs to the West, where “change was the only common denominator.”

We will have to go on to see if this is true in the following chapters, but first we should look back to see how the unchanging East has been crafted here. The comparison between Menkaure and Mentuemhet is striking, but it covers 2,000 years, not 3. Comparison with Narmer is less close. The question of whether or not the choice of items may be important too. Royal portraits everywhere like deity portraits are amazingly unchanging. think of the Crucifix over the fifteen hundred years of its existence.

Or consider the difference between Narmer as a conqueror on his Palette and Tutankhamen as a conqueror on his wooden chest. Here there is a great difference and it is the difference that was developed in the styles over the years.

Conclusions:
We must learn to read history respectfully but critically. And reading art history means looking carefully at the images being discussed to measure the cogency of the arguments. Our culture has labored long and with care to come up with its current generalizations. We can’t overthrow them with impunity and we shouldn’t. But if we are to move ahead to a better world than the one we now have, if there can be progress in society, it will come only if we are effective in understanding what our society has learned and as careful in refining it.

The hegemonic conclusion about Eastern art and culture in general , and Egyptian art and culture in particular. is that they have been less progressive and so mark their cultures failure to keep up with the Western culture that has been change oriented. A multicultural critique of that conclusion begins with the suggestion that there is no distinct West or East here, but that the older and more conservative cultures are labeled Eastern here, and later ones Western. Before we are done we will see the Greek culture of the Byzantine empire taken as Eastern, when it is compared to the more Western Roman and European cultures that succeeded it.

The multicultural critique goes on to suggest that conservatism may be as common in the official West as anywhere else.