Ancient Egyptian and Greek Art

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 un

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t al, note: The Greeks had adopted the outward appearance of the erect male figure from the Egyptians. But in their free pose that dispenses with any outside support, the vigorous tension of the limbs and the coherence of all the parts within the framework of a closed whole, the early Greek youths are essentially different from any Egyptian work. They are purely Greek, the earliest no less than the later (15). The distinction lies not only in the artistic styles used to express similar forms but also in the inherent cultural differences between the two societies. As Carpenter writes, ôJust as there could be no distinction between Greek secular and religious art, so too there could be no diversion of art to magical or mystical purposes, as in Egypt and elsewhereö (18). Many Egyptian sculptural figures were designed for funerary purposes, to accompany the dead into the afterlife, or to chronicle the connections between this life and the next. Even depictions of important, specific people were usually not attempts to reconstruct the individual being portrayed but were instead more general representations of the human form. Carpenter argues, ôTo a Greek mind such memorial images could not have possessed any of the magical
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1579
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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