Ancient Near Eastern and ancient Egyptian art

1. Ancient Near Eastern and ancient Egyptian art Module One - Review Art 1010 – TICE Wasatch High School

2. Maps of ancient near east and ancient egypt

3. Key works • Victory Stele of Naram-Sin (Ancient Near East) • Stele of Hammurabi (Ancient Near East) • Ziggurat of Ur (Ancient Near East) • Seated Scribe (Ancient Egypt) • Seated Ramses II (Ancient Egypt) • The Last Judgment of Hunefer (Ancient Egypt) • Colossal head of Olmec

4. Major points • Mesopotamian and Egyptian artists represented the human body in a stylized fashion, often forcing the feet, torso and head into their most recognizable point of view. • Mesopotamian people, who were mainly engaged in agricultural and merchant vocations, lived close to the natural world and depicted animals in a more naturalistic fashion than humans. • Mesopotamian people invented writing, although the majority of people were illiterate. Art was often used to record important events or representations of important concepts. Mesopotamian people used art to teach about their belief in the divine power of their kings and to instill a uniform code of laws. • Mesopotamian and Egyptian patrons, who paid artists to make art, were wealthy members of the nobility and/or religious elite. • Many works of Egyptian art show the religious and political power of the pharaohs. Ancient Egyptians thought of the pharaohs as living gods. The Egyptian artistic tradition had specific rules about representing pharaohs that emphasized their perfect unchanging nature. Representations of ordinary people were more flexible and varied

5. Naram-Sin of Akkad reigned ca. 2254–2218 BCE he was the first Mesopotamian king known to have claimed divinity for himself controlled a large portion of land along the Persian Gulf founder of the Akkad Dynasty that was headquartered in Akkad, a city somewhere in northern Babylonia

6. King became god • After a major military victory the king is portrayed, bow in one hand, arrow in the other, climbing a mountain which was strewn with the corpses of his fallen enemies. • The figure of the king in this sculpture is not only much larger than all the others but he is shown crowned with a horned helm, the symbol of divinity. • In the sky above Naram-Sin are two stars representing the gods; who have now taken on a supporting role to the king. • What makes this king different from his predecessors in Mesopotamia is this king's clear historical record and the unmistakable references to his divine status

7. NARAM-SIN OF AKKAD

8. Victory Stele of Naram-Sin A stele is a monument composed of a single column or shaft typically erected to commemorate an important event or person. Naram-Sin's title was "King of the Four Quarters" meaning "Ruler of the World.“ Damaged on both the top and bottom, Naram-Sin's stele depicts the king's defeat of the Lullubi peoples of present-day Iran.

9. Victory stele of naram-sin

10. Victory stele of naram-sin Victory Stele of Naram-Sin, Akkadian, pink limestone, 2254-2218 B.C.E. (Louvre, Paris)

11. Law code of hammurabi • is a well-preserved Babyloian Law Code, dating back to about 1772 BC • It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world • The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay tablets. • The Code consists of 282 laws, with scaled punishments, adjusting "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth“ as graded depending on social status, of slave versus free man

12. Law code of hammurabi 1792-1750 BCE

13. Ziggurats • Ziggurats were massive structures built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau • Ziggurats are, architecturally, the Mesopotamian equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids: large artificial square mountains of stone. They are equally ancient. But there are two differences: a ziggurat was not a tomb but a temple • They were always built by kings. In third millennium BCE Mesopotamia, there was a conflict between the two great organizations, the temple and the palace. By building ziggurats, the king showed that he could perform more impressive religious deeds than the priesthood.

14. Ziggurat of ur • The Ziggurat at Ur, a massive stepped pyramid about 210 by 150 feet in size, is the most well-preserved monument from the remote age of the Sumerians • The ziggurat was part of a temple complex that served as an administrative center for the city • The ziggurats were meant to be meeting places between heaven and earth and thus, the stairs that came about as a result of construction were able to be traversed by humans. • Around 2100 B.C., southern Mesopotamian cities came under the control of Ur-Nammu, ruler of the city of Ur.

15. Ziggurat of ur

16. Ancient egyptian art The Book of the Dead The Last Judgment of Hunefercirca 1275 BC

17. Book of the Dead • Modern name of an ancient Egyptian funerary text • Text consists of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person’s journey through the underworld and into the afterlife • The path to the afterlife as laid out in the Book of the Dead was a difficult one. The deceased was required to pass a series of gates, caverns and mounds guarded by supernatural creatures

18. Ramses II

19. Ramses II • He was considered the greatest, most celebrated, and the powerful pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire • Ruled Egypt from 1279 BC to 1213 BC • The early part of his reign was focused on building cities, temples and monuments • Ramses erected monuments up and down the Nile river in tribute to his victory over the Sumerians

20. Abu simbel

21. The Seated Scribe

22. The Seated Scribe • About 4,600 years old • Very informal sculpture, not rigid • Not a king, but extremely important because he could write • Meant for the interior of a tomb – the afterlife • The sculpture was discovered in 1850 and dated to the period of the 4th Dynasty, 2620–2500 BCE. It is currently part of a permanent collection of Egyptian antiquities in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

23. Olmec Head – la venta • The Olmec was one of the earliest civilizations to develop in the Americas. • The most famous of the La Venta monumental artifacts are the four colossal heads. Seventeen colossal heads have been unearthed in the Olmec area, four of them at La Venta – they measure 9 feet tall • Made out of stone and weighing several tons, there is great speculation on how the Olmec moved them (it was 3,000 years ago)

25. My photos of egyptian art at the Louvre, Paris

30. Amenophis IV 1353 – 1337 BC, Egypt The Seated Scribe 2620 – 2500 BC, Egypt