Art Through the Ages

One of the cradles of human civilisation, Egypt has been an artistic centre since time immemorial.

Words: LAUREN KEITH

Some of the most recognisable pieces of art in the world, such as the 10kg solid gold death mask of Tutankhamun, grew from the minds of the people of Egypt. The distinctive style of ancient Egyptian art hardly changed in more than 3000 years, and remarkable past achievements in architecture and art still show their influence today. Though art styles have changed significantly over thousands of years of prosperity, colonisation and revolution, Egypt remains an important conservator and breeding ground for beautiful and evocative work today.

The art of Ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom

Seen as the peak of ancient Egypt’s empire, the New Kingdom was a golden age of creativity. Modern historians divide the timeline of ancient Egypt’s lengthy pharaonic history into three kingdoms (Old, Middle and New), which are bookended by ‘intermediate periods’ marred by war and foreign invasion. Times of peace and prosperity were creative highpoints in ancient Egypt. During the New Kingdom, which lasted from the 16th to the 11th century BC, the country was reunified and expanded its boundaries into Palestine and Syria, allowing the accumulation of wealth and the opening of trade routes. While many visitors to Egypt might not have heard specifically of the New Kingdom, some of this era’s pharaohs are widely known names, including Tutankhamun, Ramses II and Akhenaten.

Ancient Egyptians did not make art for admiration or public display but to perform a religious or funerary task – it’s thought that they didn’t even have a word for ‘art’. The immaculately painted tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor would have been seen only by a select few, such as priests and members of the royal family, and many of the unearthed treasures that are lauded today, such as Tut’s golden mask, were created to be sealed in a sarcophagus.

The scenes that decorate tombs are of a religious nature, often depicting the pharaoh making offerings to the gods or funerary texts, such as the Book of the Dead, a collection of magic spells intended to help the deceased navigate the afterlife.

The most superlative tomb in the Valley of the Kings is that of Seti I, a 19th Dynasty pharaoh, whose burial place is the longest, deepest and most highly decorated of any in the valley – or the entire country. It was the first tomb with a vaulted ceiling and also the first to be painted with the full collection of funerary texts. As you descend into the tomb, you pass beneath colourful ceilings painted with cobra-headed vultures and child-like stars. Walls show Seti I making offerings to the sun god Ra-Horakhty before being presented to Osiris, god of the afterlife.

The construction and decoration of the pharaohs’ tombs took place throughout their life over many decades, and just how long this process took is particularly evident in the tomb of Tutankhamun, who died prematurely at 18. The tomb he was buried in – the most famous in the valley after Howard Carter’s surprise excavation 100 years ago – is thought to have been started for a non-royal burial and was then taken over for Tutankhamun at his sudden death as the original tomb slated for Tut was far from finished. Most walls were left undecorated, except for those in the burial chamber, which show common motifs of the deceased with deities, spells from the Book of the Dead and scenes from the Opening of the Mouth ritual, which reanimated the mummy with their senses so that he could see, hear, eat and breathe in the afterlife. The paint was applied to the walls so hastily that it grew spots of mould, indicating that the workers didn’t let it dry fully before sealing the tomb.

The occasionally strange look of figures in ancient Egyptian art – with limbs coming from odd angles and stacks of people and offering pots – was intentional. Art provided permanence: what was displayed in this art is what would appear in the afterlife. With so much wealth and time poured into decorating and building tombs, it would seem that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death, but in actuality they loved their lives on earth and wanted to make sure they continued for eternity. This veneration of the afterlife continued after Alexander the Great took control of Egypt from the Persians, as well as when Rome came knocking after the defeat of Cleopatra and Marc Antony.

The influence of Greece and Rome

The ancient Egyptians saw the Greek Ptolemies as liberators from the Persians, and the Ptolemies sought to legitimise their place in power by adopting aspects of Egyptian culture, including using the title of ‘pharaoh’ and building monumental temples in traditional designs. Some of ancient Egypt’s most beautiful and impressive temples, such as those in Edfu and Esna, are actually Ptolemaic-era constructions and not quite as ancient as you might think at first glimpse. These landmarks do have a distinctive Greek flavour, with elaborate capitals on the columns and pillared porticos, showing just how thoroughly blended hieroglyphs and Hellenistic style became.

The depiction of people in art during Egypt’s Greco-Roman era found a more life-like classical form, but revered Egyptian gods often still made an appearance on funerary goods. Funerary art also became more democratised and available to commoners instead of only the crowned. Anubis, the jackal-headed god of mummification, was painted on some Greco-Roman coffins, and Horus, the sky god with the head of a falcon, was sometimes shown as a Roman army officer.

While Rome was initially fascinated by Egyptian gods and traditions, the arrival of the Roman Empire spelled the end of ancient Egypt. Instead of combining cultures, the Romans looked to conquer, converting temples into churches with the rise of Christianity and ending the use of hieroglyphic script. In the subsequent centuries, Egypt was further conquered by the Arabs, the Ottomans, the French and the British.

21st-Century Creativity

Since shaking off the shackles of colonialism in the 1950s, Egypt has used art as an avenue of finding its identity, reckoning with national political and religious issues, and seeking greater freedom. Street art saw a meteoric rise during the 2011 Arab Spring protests and their aftermath as ‘artivism’ and a way to express ideas without government censorship. Many pieces had unfiltered political commentary or were portraits of people who had been killed by police and government security forces.

The centre of the uprising in Cairo was Tahrir Square, and the nearby street of Mohamed Mahmoud became something of an open-air art gallery. Famous pieces included Ganzeer’s Martyr Murals, Omar Fathy’s Illi Kalif Ma Matsh (‘The one who delegates doesn't die’), a painting of deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who became the de facto head of state after Mubarak’s ouster, as two sides of the same face, and Alaa Awad’s Marching Women, painted in a neo-pharaonic style with rows of women holding papyrus scrolls of knowledge and other female figures climbing a ladder that symbolises the revolution.

However, laws enacted since the uprising have quashed street art in the capital, and the vibrant murals have been scrubbed away, painted over or demolished, living on only in books and blogs. Both famous pieces mentioned above were removed in 2012, and though street artists came back with tongue-in-cheek tags (‘Congratulations on the new paint’), today many of them fear arrest, imprisonment or worse.

The most iconic large-scale work in Cairo now is Perception by French-Tunisian ‘calligraffiti’ artist El Seed, who blends Arabic calligraphy with street art. The piece shares an important but different message. It’s painted across 50 buildings in the neglected neighbourhood of Manshiyat Nasr, derided as ‘Garbage City’ for the community of informal rubbish collectors who live here. The artwork is visible as a whole only from a specific viewpoint on Mokattam Mountain in this district, and the scrawled words are from the Coptic Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, who said, ‘Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first’.

Cairo’s contemporary galleries channel this lively, youthful spirit. In the upscale Nile-side district of Garden City, the dynamic Medrar for Contemporary Art often showcases work by young, boundary-pushing Egyptian artists. The Nile island of Zamalek also has a particularly dense concentration of galleries. Seek out vibrant paintings at the family-run Picasso Art Gallery, see the latest creations at Ubuntu and discover the up-and-coming names of the Egyptian art world at Safarkhan.