This paper compares ancient Egyptian art with ancient Greek art and considers the ways in which the Greeks were influenced by Egyptian art. Egypt established a long and enduring artistic tradition. Greek art drew heavily on that background, using many of the same kinds of subjects and incorporating many similar symbols, but then reinterpreted them through very different eyes and a strikingly different cultural perception. Both visions continue to have a profound impact on artists in modern cultures, from their representation of everyday life to the varied perceptions of the importance and meaning life in general.
Catharine Roehrig, Egyptian Art Curator for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, observes, ôEgypt's Old Kingdom (Dynasties 3û6, ca. 2649-2150 B.C.) was one of the most dynamic periods in the development of Egyptian art. During this period, artists learned to express their culture's worldview, creating for the first time images and forms that endured for generationsö (1). According to Roehrig, Egpytian art served two primary functions, ôto ensure an ordered existence and to defeat death by preserving life into the next worldö (1).
The artistic style developed to serve these functions is graphically bold, visually striking, and intensely stylized. It uses balance and symmetry, multiple points of view within a single work, scale (often employed to show the relative societal importance of the figures depicted), and naturalistic details. Egyptian art aims at a uniformity of style, adhering to a set of exacting principles, such that art is not an expression of the individual creatorÆs personality but is instead an expression of the unity of a society as a whole and its way of making sense of the world.
In portraying the human figure, artists employed a style which art historians call ôfrontalism,ö showing the body and head in profile, but the eye full on, and one foot in front of the other. These drawings a...