Читать книгу A History of Ancient Egypt - Marc Van De Mieroop - Страница 52

State formation and the imposition of a common rule over the entire country came with a reform of artistic practices that applied to all official art and remained the canon throughout Egyptian history into Roman times. The imposition of these rules was absolute. Even carvings on rock surfaces in the desert conformed to the new iconography of the state, which focused on the king. From the Early Dynastic Period on, all formal monuments – reliefs, paintings, and statues – adhered to the same principles.

Figures were firmly placed on a level horizontal base line and the representation of the rest of the body started from that line. In the Middle Kingdom a grid with 18 equidistant horizontal lines contained the body up to the hairline: six lines for the distance from the soles of the feet to the knees, nine to the buttocks, 10 from the knees to the neck, and two from the base of the neck to the hairline. A vertical line from the ear down bisected the torso. Various periods used somewhat different proportions, and figures could be squatter or more slender, but the basic ideas remained the same.

Egyptian artists aimed to show as much as possible of the human body. In relief sculptures they depicted a person in profile, but represented certain elements in full view forward so they could be seen clearly. They showed the chest frontally and placed an enlarged eye near the side of the head. They attached a woman’s breast in profile to the frontal chest. A man’s legs were set apart so that the one farthest from view was visible; a woman’s legs were together.

Artists represented elite members of society in select poses only and in perfect physical condition and of an ideal age. For men the age was full‐grown, either youthful or more mature; for women it was youthful only. In some periods men appeared with signs of fatigue or old age on their faces, but that is rare. The flesh was painted in conventional colors: men, who spent time outdoors, were red‐brown; women, who stayed indoors, yellow. Non‐elites appeared in more varied poses – doing manual labor, for example – but with the same skin colors and proportions. Foreigners were shown as caricatures almost: Syrians had pointed beards, Nubians curly hair, and so on.

The aim of the artists was not to present a portrait of the person but an idealized form without a specific visual identity. The inscription on the representation stated who it was. It was thus easy to usurp an image: one could just remove the existing name and replace it with one’s own.