only in the king's sanctuary, not in public.
One aspect of the social function of religious art, as Baines points out, is that some religious art, however geared for the aggrandizement of the elite, could not be ignored, irrespective of the esoteric nature of some religious ritual: "The scale of some artistic undertakings was so great that a large proportion of the population must have been affected by them." Pyramids, inscribed obelisks, and temples are the most obvious examples of this category of art. Baines speculates that, despite their being largely excluded from observant rites or other forms of participation in the aesthetic culture of ancient Egypt, the common people must have more or less acquiesced in the social conventions implied by the monumental art: "[T]o a considerable degree they must have accepted the importance of what was done. . . . To that extent, the works and the institution of art will have exerted persuasive power over everyone." In other words, a principle of social organization rather than social chaos would have been in the background of the sheer achievement of line and scale. Whether the great mass of people would have experienced this persuasive power as religion, aesthetics, or the facts of social experience cannot be determined. However, the very scale of the art speaks to its undoubted importance in the scale of social value in Egyptian antiquity.
Prereligious iconography. Some images and symbols that possess a degree of religious significance in Egyptian culture are notable for the fact that they do not appear to have been constructed in the context of well settled religious belief. Rather, they can be interpreted as a response forms of social organization that were nevertheless infused with what would come to be identified with religious sensibility and various cultic or institutional religious symbols. At the same time, they can be interpreted as precursors of organized religious observan...