Canonical Nature Of The Ancient Egyptians example essay topic

One of the greatest and most enduring human civilizations established itself in the Nile Valley. Over thousands of years the Egyptians shaped their civilization and have portrayed their canonical nature within their art, literature, and architecture. The Egyptians adhered to their rules and their standards of belief and behavior in their daily lives. The artistic canon is well represented in Egyptian tomb paintings. For the Egyptians, art was made to serve a particular purpose, usually a religious one. Religious beliefs largely dictated what artists created, especially the paintings that filled Egyptian temples and tombs.

Temples were decorated with paintings and filled with statues of gods and kings in the belief that doing this served the gods, showed devotion to the king, and maintained the order of the universe. The Egyptian belief in life after death was perhaps the most important part of their culture and probably helped to stabilize their society for so many centuries. The laws and rules of code the ancient Egyptian's lived by daily also helped them to understand the seemingly ambiguous nature in The Tale of Sinuhe (1875 BC). The Egyptian pyramids were royal tombs for pharaohs. The Great Pyramid is considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The pyramids are said to have built Egypt by being the force that knit together the kingdom's economy.

These building projects took a high degree of architectural and engineering skill, and the organization of a large workforce consisting of highly trained craftsmen and laborers. Ancient Egypt has captured the imagination of scholars and laymen alike because of the canonical nature which surrounds its art, its literature, and its monumental architecture. In ancient Egypt, there was a strong belief in the afterlife. Death was considered a necessary transition to the next world where the dead would lead a life similar to life as they knew it. This belief was the reason for the embalming of bodies, the abundance of funerary offerings, the statues, the relief carvings, the inscriptions and, of course, the paintings.

The relief painting "Ti Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt' was painted in the year 2400 BCE. This was during the time of the Old Kingdom (Dynasty V), when Egyptians were constructing their mastabas (or tombs) out of limestone (Lesko). The Egyptians built their mastabas as comfortable homes for the dead to live in during the afterlife. These tombs were filled with many treasures, paintings and messages. The painting "Ti Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt' is from one such tomb at Saqqara; The Mastaba of Ti. Ti was the royal hairdresser during the early V Dynasty, as well as the controller of the farms and stock that belonged to the royal family.

In the tomb paintings, the important people portrayed were given a large, out of scale size. The overlapping of outlines was avoided and all parts of the body were represented as flatly as possible. By portraying the Egyptians in this way [Profile of the face, frontal view of the eye, frontal view of the upper body, arms – one in front, one at the side, and a profile of the legs] all the body parts needed in the afterlife would be properly expressed and thus, available to the deceased (Lesko). The consistency of ancient Egyptian funerary traditions as well as the consistency within the tomb paintings clearly define the artistic canon found in ancient Egyptian culture. Egyptian writers created many stories that featured imaginary characters, settings, or events. The Tale of Sinuhe (1875 BC), has been acclaimed as the masterpiece of Ancient Egyptian poetry and a passionate probing of its culture's ideals.

Written by an anonymous author in the form of an autobiography the tale tells how the courtier Sinuhe flees Egypt at the death of his king. Sinuhe was an official of the harem maintained for Amenemhet I by his queen. While on an expedition to Libya he learned of the king's assassination (1908 BC) and fled, either from fright or because of his complicity. In his reply to the decree sent by King Senusret he states, "I do not know what separated me from my place.

It was like some sort of dream, as when a man of the Delta marshes sees himself in Elephantine, or a man of the northern swamps in Nubia. I did not take fright, no one was pursuing me, I had heard no reviling word. My name had not been heard in the mouth of the herald. ' (Legacy) He intended to travel southward but was blown to the north while crossing the Nile, and he passed into Palestine.

After much wandering in Palestine and Lebanon, he was invited to settle with a chieftain of southern Syria, who adopted him and married him to his eldest daughter. In that land he raised a family and became a patriarch. He defended his father-in-law's territory and entertained emissaries traveling to and from Egypt. The pharaoh Sesostris I invited Sinuhe to return to Egypt and Sinuhe accepted. The king forgave him his real or imagined crimes and welcomed him with rich gifts; thereafter Sinuhe remarried in his homeland, while the pharaoh ordered a tomb be built for him. While this story may seem ambiguous and obscure, the Egyptians rules and codes for daily life may have helped them to understand why Sinuhe fled.

The canonical nature and way of life of the Egyptians helped them to perceive the author's intended messages. The Ancient Egyptians canonical nature is depicted well in the design, construction and the functions of the pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest monument of the Seven Ancient Wonders. The monument was built by the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty around the year 2560 BC to serve as a tomb when he died. The tradition of pyramid building started in Ancient Egypt as a sophistication of the idea of a mastaba or "platform' covering the royal tomb. The Great Pyramid is believed to have been built over a 20 year period.

Several theories have been proposed to conclude how the blocks were put in place for the pyramid. One theory involves the construction of a straight or spiral ramp that was raised as the construction proceeded. This ramp, coated with mud and water, eased the displacement of the blocks which were pushed into place. A second theory suggests that the blocks were placed using long levers with a short angled foot (Clare).

When it was built, the Great pyramid was 481 ft high. Each side is carefully oriented with one of the cardinal points of the compass. The horizontal cross section of the pyramid is square at any level, with each side measuring 751 ft in length. The structure consists of approximately two million blocks of stone, each weighing more than two tons.

The overwhelming scientific and historic evidence still supports the conclusion that, like many smaller pyramids in the region, the Great Pyramids were built by the Ancient Egyptian civilization off the West bank of the Nile as tombs for their Kings; Tombs where Khufu, Khe fre, and Menkaure could start their mystic journey to the afterlife. After a ruler died, his or her body was carefully treated and wrapped to preserve it as a mummy. According to ancient Egyptian belief, the pyramid, where the mummy was placed, provided a place for the monarch to pass into the afterlife. In temples nearby, priests performed rituals to nourish the dead monarch's spirit, which was believed to stay with the body after death.

In the Old Kingdom, Egyptian artists painted and carved on the walls of the burial chamber, designed to safeguard the dead monarch's passage into the afterlife (Macaulay). All the pyramids were aligned to the cardinal directions, meaning that their sides ran almost exactly due north-south and east-west. Most pyramids rose from desert plateaus on the west bank of the Nile River, behind which the sun set. The Egyptians believed that a dead monarch's spirit left the body and traveled through the sky with the sun each day. When the sun set in the west, the royal spirits settled into their pyramid tombs to renew themselves.

The Egyptians canonical nature was well represented in their art, literature, and clearly in the pyramids. The methods used to create the Egyptian tomb paintings as well as the messages embedded within them are excellent representations of the artistic canon in Egyptian life as well as Egyptian after-life. The seemingly ambiguous "Tale of Sinhue' may have been much less ambiguous to the ancient Egyptian civilizations due to their daily rules and codes to which they firmly abide by. The design and construction of the Great Pyramid clearly portray the canonical nature of the ancient Egyptians. The Ancient Egyptian civilization that inhabited the Nile Valley clearly adhered to their canonical nature in their daily lives.