Ancient Egyptian culture

The Egyptian culture exists for more than 6000 years BC It is formed from the way of life, customs and traditions existing in the Egyptian society of Antiquity. It began in the Neolithic and evolved over 3,000 years, until Roman times, when it practically disappeared by adopting that of the Roman Empire, and especially Christian customs.

The history of Ancient Egypt as a unified state begins in the Neolithic, around the year 3150 BC. C., and is divided into three empires with intermediate periods of domination by foreign rulers and internal conflicts:

• The Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC) was characterized by the flourishing of the arts and the construction of immense pyramids. During the Middle Kingdom (2050-1800 BC), after a stage of decentralization, Egypt experienced a period of splendor in its economy.
• In the New Kingdom (1567-1085 BC), the Egyptian monarchy reached its golden age, conquering neighboring peoples and expanding its domains under the leadership of the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty.
• The decline of the pharaonic empire began around 1075 BC. C., as a result of diverse incursions of armies of other towns. Despite this, Egyptian culture maintained its fundamental characteristics until the Roman domination, and influenced the entire western Mediterranean.

The last priests of Isis, on the island of File, maintained their cult until it was prohibited by Justinian I, in 535 AD. C., and the language was preserved, with the logical evolution through the years, and evolved into the Coptic language used by the Coptic Church as a liturgical language.

Art

One of the characteristics of Egyptian art was the monumental works that generally had a symbolic, funerary or religious character. Although the concept of art is modern, it is perfectly usable in Egyptian architecture, sculpture, painting and jewelry, many of its achievements being authentic works of art and not simple works of classical craftsmanship.

Egyptian art was characterized by the fixing of pillars or constant motifs from the beginning of the history of unified Egypt until the end of Roman domination. This period of almost three thousand years involved a development in artistic patterns, motifs, figures and forms of expression, with breaks or revolutionary innovations such as the Amarna period, where art would be totally innovative with respect to its centuries-old artistic heritage.

The knowledge we have of Egyptian art is mainly due to the materials used, be it stone (limestone, sandstone or granite), metals (gold, electrum, copper and bronze), wood (ebony and cedar) and others no less valuable such as ivory, faience and glass.

One facet that characterizes Egyptian culture is the constant effort to convey a concept of tradition. This effort translates into the adoption of certain models or images as icons that are repeated in the succession of pharaohs. So even though Egyptian history can be classified into major stages such as the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, many of these art forms can be repeated as they have been transformed into icons.

Art as an expression of political power

It is one of the first bindings since the beginning of the story. The ideas and the current political positions would give the main reason for the elaboration of a number of artistic works with a clear idea of ​​propaganda.

Under this approach, the main axis is the reason for the work. Said motif is the fundamental pillar of it and determines its parameters: the distribution of the images on the plane (or surface) to be used, the sizes of the images to be represented according to an order of priority based on the importance of the characters, and the use of certain forms as a synthesis of the concept to be transmitted.

The use of art in clearly propagandistic works was a common element. During the New Kingdom it was common for military campaigns to Nubia, Syria and Canaan to be represented in successive additions to the temples of Amun at Karnak. Thus, the consecutive pylons of such temples were adorned with multiple reliefs where the reigning pharaoh was battling against Asian or Nubian enemies.

In Egyptian architecture, adobe was identified as the most used material in its buildings, both in palaces for people with good economic position and for poor people in towns. The difference between the upper social class in Egyptian architecture and the lower social class was the number of rooms in the house, such as bathrooms, utility rooms and a large courtyard, the interior adorned with endless monuments, ornaments and decorations. murals painted in various kinds of colors, while the house of the people of the lower social class had only one room. It is also mentioned that the roofs were used as bedrooms, due to the excessive heat in the area. Both houses were characterized by having very few and small windows, also due to the climate of the region.

Art as religious expression

Ancient Egyptian spirituality greatly influenced everyday life. The symbiosis of art and religion was observed throughout almost the entire history of Egyptian art. In the religious aspect, the multitude of deities also meant a need to identify them. Art helped this need by conceptualizing and synthesizing each deity with certain elements that were clearly attributed to them. Thus, each representation of a god necessarily had a set of elements that made it possible to identify it both in images of reliefs or paintings and in sculptures: Amun with the two ostrich feathers as a headdress, the image of Osiris wrapped in white, a simile mummy, Horus with his classic falcon head, Toth with that of the ibis, etc.

One of the main edges occurs in the plane of the sculptures. The statues of the gods not only represented them, but were clear elements for worship in the temples, called "the Mansions of the god". In the most remote of the temples the statue of the god was located, which was worshiped and cared for as a living being. In fact, the sculptures were cleaned, dressed and perfumed as if they were the god himself, since, within the Egyptian worldview, the gods nested within the very body of the sculpture. These could be modeled in stone, metal (usually gold) or wood.

Art in everyday life

It is clear that the artistic works that have managed to reach today are mostly an expression of the political and religious order. The possibility of defraying the costs of its creation was limited to the pharaoh and the main temples, since they could count on the necessary resources to pay the artisans and merchants. As Egyptian civilization advanced over time, the nobility and high officials acquired part of the wealth, which made it possible for those subjects with a more comfortable economic position to also have access to artistic works that were generally intended for funeral services, given the importance of the cult of the Beyond.

Thus, the tombs were decorated with religious images such as extracts from the Book of Amduat, events that occurred during the life of the deceased (in the case of those who held a position within the state bureaucracy) and images of the daily life of the Egyptian. In this way, scenes of hunting, agricultural harvesting, music, etc. They were very common on the walls of tombs.

Ostraca have also survived, such as those found in Deir el Medina, with caricatures and humorous satires.

Architecture

The architecture of Ancient Egypt is characterized by creating a constructive system in its monumental buildings, with the use of carved ashlars in large blocks, and solid columns.

To understand its magnificence, the following ideological conditioning factors must be taken into account: strongly centralized and hierarchical political power; and the religious concept of immortality of the pharaoh in the "afterlife". As for the technical constraints: mathematical and technical knowledge, sometimes disconcerting for the time; the existence of highly experienced artists and craftsmen; abundance of easily carved stone.

The most original constructions of monumental Egyptian architecture are the "pyramid complexes", the temples and the tombs (mastabas, speos, hypogea and cenotaphs), whose grandeur depended on the social class of the character to be buried. The tombs of various pharaohs were built as pyramids and the largest are those attributed to Seneferu, Khufu and Khafre. The only one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World that still survives, the pyramid of Khufu, is a good example of the degree of perfection reached in applied sciences.The Egyptians built monumental temples dedicated to the gods, such as those of Karnak or Abu Simbel, highlighting in them their great symbolic impact, the size and the great harmony and functionality of their spaces. The royal architects, with their knowledge of physics and geometry, erected monumental buildings and organized the work of massive groups of artists, craftsmen and workers. The carving, transportation from the Aswan quarries, and placement of heavy monolithic granite obelisks or colossal statues, involves a high level of skill. They also built great palaces for the comfort of the [Pharaoh], but the earthly life was less important than the afterlife, so they were not made of stone and have not lasted as long as tombs and temples.

Sculpture

Sculpture was practiced in Ancient Egypt since the Predynastic period, with admirable perfection in statuary and bas-reliefs, conserving thousands of carved objects in wood, ivory, bronze (sometimes gilded and inlaid with gold and silver), faience and above all in stone, sometimes of great hardness. The statues generally represent divinities, pharaohs, important figures and sometimes anonymous busy figures, as well as models of homes or workshops whose destination was a tomb, where they represented the possessions of the deceased. During the reign of Akhenaten, a certain realism prevailed, as opposed to the traditional hieraticism.

Sphinxes

The sphinxes were one of the sculptural representations of the Egyptians.

With the body of a lion and a human head, they were a symbol of royalty and their head used to be that of the reigning pharaoh, although they also represented the gods, in this case with animal heads. They were placed in various places, but above all flanking the avenues to the temples.

The Great Sphinx of Giza is a large monument located on the west bank of the Nile River. It was possibly built during the fourth dynasty. The head could represent Pharaoh Khafre (Khafra), having a body in the shape of a lion, or as some claim, it could have had the head of an animal (such as a wolf), and was later altered. It was made by carving a natural mound of limestone rock on the Giza Plateau. Originally it was painted in bright colors: red on the body and face, and the nemes that covered the head with yellow and blue stripes. Its main dimensions are: about 72 meters long, twenty meters high and fourteen meters wide, with the face measuring around five meters. Although this has many meanings besides mystery to be built with the head of a human which is perfectly designed.

Paintwork

The Egyptians used painting from the first dynasties not only to decorate burial chambers, temples and palaces, but also to achieve greater realism in statues and bas-reliefs, in mummies and coffins, and to embellish pottery and papyrus scrolls.

Its main characteristics are:

• use of the profile canon,
• lack of perspective
• use of flat colors

Craftsmanship

Ceramics

Beautiful ceramic objects corresponding to different times have been found, since the dawn of its civilization. Representations of potters modeling pots on the wheel have been discovered in their burial chambers dating back to at least the 4th dynasty. However, ceramics were in common use, other materials were used for luxury objects: this has as a consequence the lack of decorations and paint in most of those found.

Glazed pottery was used as early as in the decoration of the underground storage passageways of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara (c. 2650 BC); vessels of the same material date back to the twelfth dynasty (c. 2000 BC).goldsmith

From predynastic times, gold was widely used in valuable utensils, and also to cover or plate others made of bronze, stone or wood. The copper mines of the Sinai Peninsula were exploited already at the time of the first dynasties, as well as those of precious stones.

The vessels of daily use in temples and palaces were made of gold with reliefs and engravings of figures arranged around them. In gold, gilt bronze and ivory (rarely in silver, very scarce in Egypt) many statuettes were carved in honor of divinities and high personages. Likewise, furniture, bracelets, necklaces, rings, etc. were adorned with precious stones. The doors of the temples, the stone reliefs and even the most esteemed plinths and obelisks were covered with gold or electrum plates. Bronze was used as an ordinary material in domestic utensils and statues, sometimes adorning them with gold and silver inlays.Glass

Glass has been used since ancient times to make beads for necklaces and bracelets, eyes for statues, figurines and various amulets, inserts for furniture decoration, imitation of fine stones and as vases and small statues of different colors.

The first vessels were made during the reign of Thutmose III (1500 BC), and the technique of molding on a clay core was used. They are usually cylindrical jars and elongated and narrow amphorae, often decorated with multicolored stripes, sometimes with figures and imitations of filigree or other ornaments. They have been found in tombs, and almost always offer little transparency and curious iridescence on the surface, breaking down into flakes when touched: all this is due, in part, to impurities.

Colorless and transparent glass began to be used in the Saite period (26th dynasty, 7th century BC).

Music

Music in ancient Egypt was not only what we understand by it: sounds ordered in a certain way, but it was also the representation of knowledge that was part of cultural thought.

For the study of music, it is essential to study the musical instruments preserved in museums, the musical iconography of tombs, Egyptian sources and ethnomusicology.

Both the dance and the song were of a melodic type; they can be reconstructed with the help of texts, and, in the case of dance, by the choreographies represented in paintings and reliefs.

The love of the Egyptians for music can be measured by the fact that the hieroglyph with which they designated it was the same as for the word wellness, in addition to considering it such an important science that it was studied by the priests.

Literature

Hieroglyphs were a writing system invented and used by the ancient Egyptians from predynastic times to the fourth century. The Egyptian writing system comprises three basic types: hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic, the latter corresponding to the late period of Egypt. The oldest known writing documents were found in the burial of the predynastic sovereign Horus Scorpion, found in 1997, in Umm el-Qaab, Abydos, dated by carbon 14 from 3300 to 3200 BC. c.

Egyptian literature reached its zenith with the Story of Sinuhe and the Coffin Texts.

Libraries

There were libraries in the temples, specifically the so-called houses of life, where knowledge was kept.

One of the largest libraries in ancient Egypt was the Library of Alexandria, which had between 400,000 and 700,000 handwritten scrolls, at the time the largest library on the planet. It was founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC. C., during the reign of Ptolemy II, after his father had created the Temple of Meditations or Museum. The initial organization is attributed to Demetrius Phalereus, but he is hardly known, of so many volumes we only have titles left that indicate how much was lost. In the study center of Alexandria, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, was elaborated.

Diodorus of Sicily refers to the existence of the library of a pharaoh that he calls Osymandyas (probably Ramses II), who was in the city of Luxor, where the explorers Champollion and Wilkinson discovered signs of a library that must have existed in the fourteenth century to. c.

Science

Science in Ancient Egypt enjoyed great prestige since ancient times. It is enormously significant the high level that this civilization developed and the breadth of knowledge that they came to dominate. Tradition reflects that the wise men of ancient Greece had gone to learn in Egypt, where there was a venerable science and a high level of scientific knowledge, although sometimes mixed with magical practices.

The sciences in Ancient Egypt were dominated by empirical knowledge organized by priests and recorded by educated scribes. The population as a whole lived to the rhythm of the floods of the Nile, destroyers and generators of the wealth of the country, which needed a precise calculation for its forecast and the subsequent restoration of the cultivated land after the floods. For this, the Egyptians were able to devise practical mathematics, useful measuring instruments, effective tools and a technology that made it possible to organize and carry out pharaonic canal works and erect monumental constructions.In any case, it is necessary to indicate that there was no science or scientific method in the

modern sense of the term, but rather a set of rules and instruments that were used empirically, although many of its achievements were not surpassed by

Western culture until well into the past. entered the eighteenth century.

Egyptian mythology

Egyptian mythology is the name of the set of beliefs held by the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt, whose practice was prohibited in the time of Justinian I, in 535 AD. C., with the imposition of Christianity. The span of its development is more than three thousand years, varying these beliefs over time, although they were the basis of the entire organization of society: from the power of the pharaoh to the form of burial, all customs were a consequence directly from the religious conception of the world that they had.

Their main gods were: Ra, Amun, Anubis, Aten, Horus, Osiris, Hapy, Atum, Bes, Ptah, Seth, Tot, Apis, Bastet, Hathor, Isis, Maat, Nephthys, Tefnut.