Ancient Egypt – Hieroglyphs and Art

The art of ancient Egypt reaches back to the very first pharaohs, as does the hieroglyphic writing that is generally associated with it.

Hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs were a form of writing used by the ancient Egyptians throughout their long history. They were a combination of pictograms and symbols that, when put together, produced one of the earliest forms of writing in the world.

It was not until the early 1800s that hieroglyphs first began to be understood though. The discovery of the famous Rosetta stone during Napoleon’s Egyptian expeditions allowed the world renowned French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion to make the breakthrough that various scholars had been searching for.

The Rosetta stone contains a tract of writing that is repeated three times, once in hieroglyphs, once in demotic and once in Greek. By comparing the Greek version to the unknown hieroglyphs, Champollion came to realise that the names of the kings were contained in what he called cartouches. When he later compared the hieroglyphs that formed the names of the separate kings he was able to figure out what they meant.

His biggest discovery that helped him to decipher all hieroglyphs however was when he realised that one hieroglyph could have two meanings; it could convey an idea, i.e. when the hieroglyph of a hand actually represented a hand, or it could also be used to spell a sound i.e. the ‘hand’ hieroglyph could also be used to spell the sound ‘d’.

Hieroglyphs were not used in everyday life in ancient Egypt though. Normal writing of letters, accounts and other such documents were written in a simpler form - hieratic. These symbols were more stylized and cursive than hieroglyphs and so they could be written more easily and a lot quicker.

Hieroglyphs were written specifically to accompany sacred art and to dictate the portions of the Book of the Dead that an individual wanted on the walls of his tomb or on his coffin. There were very few scribes in ancient Egypt that were competent in writing hieroglyphic forms and so the title of ‘scribe’ was one of great importance.

Art

The first examples of art in ancient Egypt come from Pre-dynastic caves and show simple line diagrams of animals and the sport of hunting. However the first true art dates back to the Old Kingdom when it was painted onto or sculpted into a rock face using an established grid system. This guaranteed that figures and other objects that were commonly used were universal in their appearance and the images of the gods and the pharaoh remained constant.

The tombs of the pharaohs and the royal family, and also those of important people such as the vizier and the chief commander of the army were richly decorated with scenes from the Book of the Dead that showed the owner of the tomb in the Afterlife. These scenes were accompanied by spells and incantations that helped the tomb owner to gain access to the Afterlife.

The art forms stayed constant throughout most of the history of ancient Egypt and only changed in the Amarna Period when Akhenaten is thought to have personalized the grid system to make the figures of him and his family look less perfect and more human-like. Prior to this period and similarly after it, art never showed a person’s defects and so always depicted the people in scenes as being perfect specimens of the Egyptian race, even the servants and lower classes.

Art was the ancient Egyptians’ way of showing their ideal world with perfect people, especially in regards to the Afterlife. When combined with the words of hieroglyphs they believed they could write and draw what they wanted to happen in their Afterlife and with the magic of the gods it would come true. This train of thought lasted throughout the dynastic period and only ended with the line of the Egyptian pharaohs.

For more information regarding hieroglyphs in Ancient Egypt I recommend An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs