| Ancient Egypt Essay, Research Paper
One of the greatest and most enduring human civilizations
established itself in the Nile Valley. Over thousands of years
the Egyptians shaped their civilization and have portrayed their
canonical nature within their art, literature, and architecture.
The Egyptians adhered to their rules and their standards of
belief and behavior in their daily lives. The artistic canon is
well represented in Egyptian tomb paintings. For the Egyptians,
art was made to serve a particular purpose, usually a religious
one. Religious beliefs largely dictated what artists created,
especially the paintings that filled Egyptian temples and tombs.
Temples were decorated with paintings and filled with statues of
gods and kings in the belief that doing this served the gods,
showed devotion to the king, and maintained the order of the
universe. The Egyptian belief in life after death was perhaps
the most important part of their culture and probably helped to
stabilize their society for so many centuries. The laws and rules
of code the ancient Egyptian’s lived by daily also helped them to
understand the seemingly ambiguous nature in The Tale of Sinuhe
(1875 BC). The Egyptian pyramids were royal tombs for pharaohs.
The Great Pyramid is considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World. The pyramids are said to have built Egypt by
being the force that knit together the kingdom’s economy. These
building projects took a high degree of architectural and
engineering skill, and the organization of a large workforce
consisting of highly trained craftsmen and laborers. Ancient
Egypt has captured the imagination of scholars and laymen alike
because of the canonical nature which surrounds its art, its
literature, and its monumental architecture.
In ancient Egypt, there was a strong belief in the
afterlife. Death was considered a necessary transition to the
next world where the dead would lead a life similar to life as
they knew it. This belief was the reason for the embalming of
bodies, the abundance of funerary offerings, the statues, the
relief carvings, the inscriptions and, of course, the paintings.
The relief painting “Ti Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt” was painted
in the year 2400 BCE. This was during the time of the Old
Kingdom ( Dynasty V), when Egyptians were constructing their
mastabas (or tombs) out of limestone (Lesko). The Egyptians
built their mastabas as comfortable homes for the dead to live in
during the afterlife. These tombs were filled with many
treasures, paintings and messages. The painting “Ti Watching a
Hippopotamus Hunt” is from one such tomb at Saqqara; The Mastaba
of Ti. Ti was the royal hairdresser during the early V Dynasty,
as well as the controller of the farms and stock that belonged to
the royal family. In the tomb paintings, the important people
portrayed were given a large, out of scale size. The overlapping
of outlines was avoided and all parts of the body were
represented as flatly as possible. By portraying the Egyptians
in this way [Profile of the face, frontal view of the eye,
frontal view of the upper body, arms - one in front, one at the
side, and a profile of the legs] all the body parts needed in the
afterlife would be properly expressed and thus, available to the
deceased (Lesko). The consistency of ancient Egyptian funerary
traditions as well as the consistency within the tomb paintings
clearly define the artistic canon found in ancient Egyptian
culture.
Egyptian writers created many stories that featured
imaginary characters, settings, or events. The Tale of Sinuhe
(1875 BC), has been acclaimed as the masterpiece of Ancient
Egyptian poetry and a passionate probing of its culture’s ideals.
Written by an anonymous author in the form of an autobiography
the tale tells how the courtier Sinuhe flees Egypt at the death
of his king. Sinuhe was an official of the harem maintained for
Amenemhet I by his queen. While on an expedition to Libya he
learned of the king’s assassination (1908 BC) and fled, either
from fright or because of his complicity. In his reply to the
decree sent by King Senusret he states, “I do not know what
separated me from my place. It was like some sort of dream, as
when a man of the Delta marshes sees himself in Elaphantine, or a
man of the northern swamps in Nubia. I did not take fright, no
one was pursuing me, I had heard no reviling word. My name had
not been heard in the mouth of the herald.”(Legacy) He intended
to travel southward but was blown to the north while crossing the
Nile, and he passed into Palestine. After much wandering in
Palestine and Lebanon, he was invited to settle with a chieftain
of southern Syria, who adopted him and married him to his eldest
daughter. In that land he raised a family and became a
patriarch. He defended his father-in-law’s territory and
entertained emissaries traveling to and from Egypt. The pharaoh
Sesostris I invited Sinuhe to return to Egypt and Sinuhe
accepted. The king forgave him his real or imagined crimes and
welcomed him with rich gifts; thereafter Sinuhe remarried in his
homeland, while the pharaoh ordered a tomb be built for him.
While this story may seem ambiguous and obscure, the Egyptians
rules and codes for daily life may have helped them to understand
why Sinuhe fled. The canonical nature and way of life of the
Egyptians helped them to perceive the author’s intended messages.
The Ancient Egyptians canonical nature is depicted well in
the design, construction and the functions of the pyramids. The
Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest monument of the Seven Ancient
Wonders. The monument was built by the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu of
the Fourth Dynasty around the year 2560 BC to serve as a tomb
when he died. The tradition of pyramid building started in
Ancient Egypt as a sophistication of the idea of a mastaba or
“platform” covering the royal tomb. The Great Pyramid is believed
to have been built over a 20 year period. Several theories have
been proposed to conclude how the blocks were put in place for
the pyramid. One theory involves the construction of a straight
or spiral ramp that was raised as the construction proceeded.
This ramp, coated with mud and water, eased the displacement of
the blocks which were pushed into place. A second theory suggests
that the blocks were placed using long levers with a short angled
foot (Clare). When it was built, the Great pyramid was 481 ft
high. Each side is carefully oriented with one of the cardinal
points of the compass. The horizontal cross section of the
pyramid is square at any level, with each side measuring 751 ft
in length. The structure consists of approximately two million
blocks of stone, each weighing more than two tons. The
overwhelming scientific and historic evidence still supports the
conclusion that, like many smaller pyramids in the region, the
Great Pyramids were built by the Ancient Egyptian civilization
off the West bank of the Nile as tombs for their Kings; Tombs
where Khufu, Khefre, and Menkaure could start their mystic
journey to the afterlife. After a ruler died, his or her body
was carefully treated and wrapped to preserve it as a mummy.
According to ancient Egyptian belief, the pyramid, where the
mummy was placed, provided a place for the monarch to pass into
the afterlife. In temples nearby, priests performed rituals to
nourish the dead monarch’s spirit, which was believed to stay
with the body after death. In the Old Kingdom, Egyptian artists
painted and carved on the walls of the burial chamber, designed
to safeguard the dead monarch’s passage into the afterlife
(Macaulay). All the pyramids were aligned to the cardinal
directions, meaning that their sides ran almost exactly due
north-south and east-west. Most pyramids rose from desert
plateaus on the west bank of the Nile River, behind which the sun
set. The Egyptians believed that a dead monarch’s spirit left
the body and traveled through the sky with the sun each day.
When the sun set in the west, the royal spirits settled into
their pyramid tombs to renew themselves.
The Egyptians canonical nature was well represented in their
art, literature, and clearly in the pyramids. The methods used
to create the Egyptian tomb paintings as well as the messages
embedded within them are excellent representations of the
artistic canon in Egyptian life as well as Egyptian after-life.
The seemingly ambiguous “Tale of Sinhue” may have been much less
ambiguous to the ancient Egyptian civilizations due to their
daily rules and codes to which they firmly abided by. The design
and construction of the Great Pyramid clearly portray the
canonical nature of the ancient Egyptians. The Ancient Egyptian
civilization that inhabited the Nile Valley clearly adhered to
their canonical nature in their daily lives.
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