University of the Ozarks
HUM 2013: Humanities I

Sample Writing Assignments

Below is a sample of the kind of writing that is expected in this class.

Folder assignment

Analysis Paper

Ancient Egyptian Art and Architecture

by Sharon L. Gorman

Unlike art in modern Western cultures, most ancient Egyptian art was not created out of an impulse for self-expression or as a vehicle for casual entertainment. Formal art—that found in public buildings and commissioned for ceremonial use—had a serious religious function. Egyptians used art primarily as a tool for achieving spiritual ends, in particular to depict visually the power and prestige of their pharaoh—and so reinforce his connection with the gods—and to aid individuals (especially the pharaoh) in attaining the afterlife. A large proportion of the surviving artifacts from ancient Egypt were found in tombs and mortuary temples; some of the most famous of these—the pyramids at Giza—were themselves burial structures. Both the choice of subject matter and the very artistic code employed by Egyptian artists reflect this preoccupation with matters of religion, death and the afterlife. This essay examines the traditional canon or set of rules for Egyptian art as it applies to sculptures, wall paintings, carvings and funerary masks.

Sculptures of human figures were subject to a rigid set of rules, all of which are exemplified in the statues of King Menkaure and his Queen, artifacts from the Old Kingdom (see figure 1). Menkaure is portrayed in the traditional stance of power and royalty—rigid, frontal stance, clenched fists and left foot placed forward—with the queen positioned to his left (inferior) side. Both figures possess youthful physiques with ideal proportions and perfectly composed, serene faces; the queen’s hair is precisely coutured and her arm is wrapped around his waist to signify her support of his position. Although the two figures here are of about the same size, normally male figures were presented in larger sizes than women to indicate their inherent superiority; the same was true for the relative sizes of royalty to commoners—the royalty would always loom over the other figures. Moreover, it was important to show the pharaoh, not precisely as he actually looked in real life, but as an ideal representation without flaws—after all, the pharaoh was considered a god or semi-god and thus could show no imperfection. Even statues commissioned in the pharaoh’s old age ordinarily displayed no wrinkles, paunches, bad teeth or stooped posture.

Figure 1.
“MFA Boston Collection Highlights.” http://www.mfa.org/egypt/coll_high/01.html (9/27/00).

There was only one period in ancient Egyptian history when this strict canon was not followed and that was during the reign of the New Kingdom pharaoh, Akhenaten. Akhenaten rejected the dominant polytheistic religion of his time and insisted on the worship of a single god, the sun disk Aten, a god of compassion and blessing. In this atmosphere of gentler, more personal worship, he insisted on a more naturalistic, realistic portrayal of himself and his family, rather than the traditional idealized style. His official portraits—both sculptures and carvings—show him with elongated face, toes and fingers, as well as wide, womanish hips and big lips, all apparently faithful to his true appearance, conditions caused by what some modern scholars believe was a connective tissue disease called Marfan’s Syndrome (Lorenz). In the carving below (see figure 2), Akhenaten is shown in a relaxed pose, he and his wife playing affectionately with his daughters, beneath the sacred rays of Aten. In no other royal portraits of earlier dynasties would such poses have been acceptable.

Figure 2.

“The Art of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s Reign.” http://www.heptune.com/art.html (9/27/00).

The wall painting is another type of art that reveals a great deal about the religious beliefs of ancient Egyptian society. Such paintings were created on the walls of tombs in order to assist the deceased in his/her afterlife. In some of these paintings the scenes depicted were drawn from daily life—hunts, farming, craft-making, food preparation, dancing and music-making, banquets, etc. (see Figure 3).

Figure 3.
“Ancient Egypt.” http://www.wsu.edu/~wldciv/brians_syllabus/5a.html#web (9/27/00).

These drawings were created to insure that such activities and resources—in the drawing in Figure 3 specifically agricultural and herding activities and the abundant food supply they produced—would continue in the afterlife of the deceased. Sculpted models were also placed in tombs for this purpose—miniature models of granaries, ships, and various types of servants as well as jewelry, food, furnishings, and other items needed for the afterlife, are commonly found in ancient Egyptian tombs. There was a strict canon for this type of art, comparable to that for sculpture. Figures were almost always shown with faces in profile but bodies oriented frontally and all limbs visible. Like sculpted figures, painted characters had rigid poses and were drawn as ideal, abstract examples rather than as discernible individuals; clothing and jewelry were beautiful and not a hair was out of place. Often the people are all of roughly the same size—except for important figures like nobleman or pharaohs, who were larger to indicate their greater status. No attempt was made at realistic perspective but all figures were drawn using a grid system to assure perfect proportions.

Illustrations from “The Book of the Dead” found painted on tomb walls, like the paintings of domestic scenes, also represented a serious effort to influence the afterlife. In fact, the illustrations, along with the hieroglyphs indicating the proper spells to intone and the correct responses to the gods’ questions, were to help guide the deceased through the judgment process preparatory to the afterlife. In Figure 4 below, this process is clearly depicted.

Figure 4.
“Ancient Egyptian Art: An Introduction.” http://www.shira.net/ancient-scenes.htm (9/27/00).

The scene shows Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead, conducting the deceased to the “weighing of the heart” ceremony, where the person’s heart is weighed against a feather to determine if he/she is righteous and deserving of an afterlife. The god of justice, Thor, records the verdict, then Horus presents the deceased to Osiris, king of the underworld, who is seated with the crook and flail symbolic of kingly power in Egypt, attended by his wife-sister Isis. The figures across the top panel represent the many gods involved in the judgment process; each asks the deceased whether he has committed a particular sin; the hieroglyphics are a “cheat-sheet” to help the person give an answer that will convince each god of his righteousness even if, in fact, he is guilty of the sin. All gods are portrayed in a standardized, traditional manner, each identified with a particular animal or a specific type of headdress. As noted above, Anubis was depicted with a jackal’s head. Horus wore a falcon’s head; Bastet had the head of a cat; Thor was associated with the ibis.

Another piece of funerary art essential to assuring the afterlife was the representation of the deceased painted or sculpted onto the coffin and/or the mask placed on the mummy itself. The most famous surviving mask is that of King Tutankhamon (see Figure 5). Made of gold, the face that stares back from the mask is perfect in every way, executed according to the standards discussed above for sculpting pharaohs’ images. This likeness of the deceased placed on or close to the body was necessary to assure that the person’s spirit or “ka” would be able to recognize its body after death. One could not be resurrected without the presence of the ka.

Figure 5.
“King Tut-Ankh-Amun.” http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/2815/tut.html (9/27/00).

Ancient Egyptian art, then—whether in painting, carving or sculpture—was highly formal and stylized in keeping with their desire to portray life in the ideal fashion they envisioned as associated with the gods and in the manner they hoped and dreamed would exist in the afterlife. In the process, these artists have provided us with an invaluable glimpse into the heart of their culture and given us beautifully crafted artifacts that we can enjoy purely for their artistic value, even if the ancient Egyptians did not view them as art for art’s sake.

SOURCES CONSULTED

“Ancient Egypt.” http://www.wsu.edu/~wldciv/brians_syllabus/5a.html#web (9/27/00).

“Ancient Egyptian Art: An Introduction.” http://www.shira.net/ancient-scenes.htm (9/27/00).

“The Art of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s Reign.” http://www.heptune.com/art.html (9/27/00).

“Egyptian Book of the Dead.” http://members.aol.com/egyptart/hall.html (9/27/00).

“King Tut-Ankh-Amun.” http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/2815/tut.html (9/27/00).

Lorenz, Megaera (1996). “The Mystery of Akhenaten: Genetics or Aesthetics?”

http://www.heptune.com/Marfans.html (9/27/00).

“MFA Boston Collection Highlights.” http://www.mfa.org/egypt/coll_high/01.html (9/27/00).

Silverman, David P., editor. Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Research Assignment

Flood Myths in Ancient Cultures

The Epic of Gilgamesh contains a myth about a Great Flood that at first reading is surprisingly similar to the Biblical account of Noah’s ark. In fact, however, many cultures have such myths; there are flood myths from India, Hawaii, Greece, and Egypt, as well as Native North and South America. Each myth is shaped by the conditions unique to each culture, but certain universal ideas and experiences pervade these flood myths, despite the geographical and chronological distances between them.

Most flood myths feature the redemption of a single righteous man or couple through the intervention of a supernatural being, the building of a ship, and ultimate safety on a mountaintop. In one Indian flood myth, a man was instructed by a big fish (a ghasha) to build a ship; when the rains began he tied the rope to the ghasha and was guided safely through the rising waters to a mountaintop. In Hawaiian mythology two human beings were preserved from the flood because they were on a peak called Mauna Kea (although only in the later, missionary-inspired version of the myth do they build a ship—obviously influenced by Christian proselytizing). In the Aztec version, the angry god of rains, Tlaloc, spares one devout couple by instructing them to hollow out a great log and take two ears of corn with them. The Greek Titan, Prometheus, saved his human son and his wife from Zeus’s flood by placing them in a wooden chest that ultimately landed on Mount Parnassus. One North American tribe has a myth about “the big canoe” from which men were saved from the flood; other tribes feature stories in which animals--birds, dogs, e.g.--instruct their human brothers to build boats in advance of a deluge.

As noted above, the common thread that runs through all these stories is the warning given to a few special human beings by a friendly god or animal to build a great ship of some sort as protection against an impending, watery disaster. Usually the flood is some kind of retribution for the evils of humanity. There is also a tendency in many of the tales for the survivors, as the waters subside, to land on a mountaintop somewhere and most include an injunction to save the animals and plants necessary to begin life anew after the flood.

These similarities would seem to suggest some kind of collective coping mechanism for dealing with and explaining a universial human experience of catastrophe. According to Robert Best (Noah’s Ark), there is confirmed archeological evidence for a devastating flood in Mesopotamia around 2900 B.C. that accounts for six similar flood myths from that region. He even theorizes that the various versions resulted in part from mistranslations of the original source. This does not, of course, explain the similarities between myths from cultures that are geographically and chronologically distant. Yet, if one looks closely at the conditions surrounding most early civilizations, it is not surprising that flood myths should be so plentiful. Most early cultures grew up around great water systems—as, for example, the Mesopotamians around the Tigris and Euphrates River and Egypt around the Nile. The water needed to sustain crops—and therefore, life—would have been invested with sacred meaning. Also common to such regions would be occasional catastrophic events involving water; no doubt stories of great floods survived for hundreds or years in the cultural memory of a people. In cultures that were still close to nature and prone to explaining natural events in supernatural terms, it would be amazing if myths did NOT arise to explain the meaning of such important cosmic events. That most flood myths end with salvation atop a mountain is also explainable in these terms. Mountains are impressive natural monuments often associated with the gods: unreachable, mystical, and awe-inspiring, the perfect setting for redemption.

Flood myths, then, seem to be a staple of human mythology, a means of explaining unexplainable catastrophes, giving some spiritual purpose to human suffering and activity. Yet each myth has something more specific to say about each culture’s priorities, what they value and esteem. For example, in the Aztec myth, corn—their most precious food staple—is carried in the boat. Native American myths reveal a close connection with animals which underlies their spirituality, an approach that stresses connectedness to all creation, one that views animals as “brothers” and “helpers,” not inferior creatures viewed just as food sources or pests—the more prevalent attitude in Western cultures.

In short, then, the flood myth itself is a universal among human cultures and it is not surprising to find similarities in the general outlines of these myths even among geographically and chronologically distant cultures. The specific details, however, of individual myths give us great insight into the cultures that created them and are an invaluable resource in the study of ancient cultures.

SOURCES CONSULTED

Bierlin, J. F. Parallel Myths. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993. Pages 121-135.

Best, Robert. “Noah’s Ark.” http://www.flood-myth.com/ (9/24/00).

“Creation/Flood Myths of the World.” http://templar.bess.net/Comp_names/

bookofgods/cretion3.html (9/24/00).

“Flood Myths.” http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/titania.htm#MAY (9/24/00).

“Flood Myths.” http://www.neopage.com/know/flood_myths.htm (9/24/00).

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