3.6 Egyptian Culture Beliefs and Values

The most important thing you can do to understand Egyptian architecture, sculpture, and artifacts is to compile a list of the beliefs and values that influenced their culture and learn to apply them to the art. To understand the values of any culture look at these ideas and see if you can find them in the work of art you are analyzing. You will not be able to see all of these ideas in every work of art.

Basic beliefs of Egyptian culture:

• Obsession with the afterlife. A person is accountable at the time of judgment for what they did during life on earth. If the king passes this judgment, he takes his place with the gods.
• Citizens will serve the king and the gods for eternity.
• Simplicity of form. The artist uses simple, clean horizontal and vertical lines and flat planes.
• Unity of heaven and earth. Egyptians saw their gods all aspects of life including the sun, the moon, and the Nile. The Nile is the goddess Hapi and is the giver of life.
• Permanence of medium. Stone and other hard materials are used because they are difficult to cut and shape, therefore they will last a long time.
• Wealthier patrons could afford to commission or purchase more expensive works of art for their tombs.
• Color is symbolic: green is the color of rebirth, red indicates a male, white indicates a female, black indicates divinity.
• Their art is mathematical, which makes it look rather stiff and formal.
• Freestanding human sculpture was intended to be seen from the front, so no effort was made to complete the back of the work.
• No effort was made to remove the extra stone between the legs or between the arms and the side of the body. The original shape of the stone block is still evident in the completed work.

Egyptian cultural values:

• Authoritarianism- The human authority figure is either divine or a sanctioned representative of the divine so his or her authority is immune to human judgment. The king either had total control or had to continually fight for it. The art includes huge stone sculptures to overwhelm the onlooker and large numbers of grave goods to show that they could afford to waste or use materials.
• Idealism-figures are erect and stiff but perfectly proportioned. During some periods of Egyptian history a canon or pattern was used to determine the proportions of the human form. Individualism is temporary. Only the canon, as a mathematical abstract is permanent and unchanging, and therefore perfect.
• Symbolism- Most early civilizations were illiterate and therefore depended on symbolic communication. (animals, colors, ceremonial objects, hand gestures, the eye)
• Mysticism- there is an ultimate reality hidden from the ordinary channels of knowledge which can be revealed only to an individual mind in certain moments of insight.