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Tomb Paintings

Although tomb paintings are the major source of information about life in ancient Egypt and the principal source of such information about ancient Etruria, the types of data they provide differ somewhat. For nearly 3,000 years Egyptian tombs were the resting places of the semi-divine pharaohs and members of their families and entourages. Depictions of life in the tomb paintings provide an enormous number of details of Egyptian life. Even though the activities depicted were the usually ritualistic behavior of divine beings rather than ordinary life, the position of the pharaohs as the guarantors of the continuity of the state, and of the very cycle of life itself, meant that everything fell within their sphere of influence. All manner of activities were, therefore, depicted in their tombs--whether they were part of the elaborate funerary processes or simply facets of the pharaohs' rule. In the much shorter-lived Etruscan civilization, the wealthy citizens of the various semi-independent cities were buried in tombs where their way of living--far closer to the ordinary behavior of common people--was depicted in wall paintings. But their activities were necessarily far more limited in scope than those taken in by the all-powerful heads of a centralized, hieratic, all-providing state. Egyptian paintings celebrated and perpetuated the powerful, centrally-organized state embodied in the pharaohs who were ultimately responsible for everything in the kingdom. The Etruscans, however, were, at best, a loosely organized confederation of city-states and their tomb paintings celebrated the wealth, power, and pleasures of individual families whose individual rise or fall had few broader implications.

The Etruscan civilization flourished in central Italy between 800 and 300 BC, at which time the various cities of Etruria were gradually incorporated into the aggressively expanding Roman state. Little is known about the Etruscans' origins e...

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Tomb Paintings. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:51, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1689520.html