The establishment, development, and prominence of Ancient Egypt roughly coincided with the rise of the Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations. Like the kingdom of Babylonia, Egypt would have a lasting and decided influence on later cultures, developing technology, writing, agriculture, science, and art. We are fortunate to have extensive records and artifacts from this great civilization that illuminate many aspects of this culture. Indeed, research into the details of this period is an ongoing project involving hundreds of scholars over hundreds of years. The history of this period is wonderfully complicated. For our purposes, we will divide its history into three broad categories: Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom. Due to the Ancient Egyptian belief that art came from the gods, the style remains fairly consistent throughout its early history. This change led to a significant upheaval of Egyptian culture in the New Kingdom period with the ascension of Amenhotep IV, who later changed his name to Akhenaten. Let's take a look at the stylistic differences between traditional Egyptian and the art that developed during the reign of King Akhenaten. 

Art of the Old and Middle Kingdom 

To understand Ancient Egyptian art, you must view it from the standpoint of the ancient Egyptians themselves. The somewhat static, usually formal, strangely abstract, and often blocky nature of much Egyptian imagery has, at times, led to unfavorable comparisons with later, and much more "naturalistic," Greek or Renaissance art. However, the art of the Egyptians served a vastly different purpose than that of these later cultures.

While today we marvel at these glittering treasures, it is imperative to remember that the majority of these works were never intended to be seen—that was simply not their purpose. Most commonly, these images, whether statues or reliefs, were designed to benefit a divine or deceased recipient. Statuary provided a place for the recipient to manifest and receive the benefit of ritual action. Most statues show a formal frontality, meaning they are arranged facing straight ahead, because they were designed to face the ritual being performed before them. Many statues were also originally placed in recessed niches or other architectural settings—contexts that would make frontality their expected and natural mode.

Statuary, whether divine, royal, or elite, provided a kind of conduit for the spirit (or ka) of that being to interact with the terrestrial realm. Divine cult statues (few of which survive) were the subject of daily rituals of clothing, anointing, and perfuming with incense and were carried in processions for special festivals so the people could "see" them—they were almost all entirely shrouded from view, but their "presence" would have been felt.

Royal and elite statuary served as intermediaries between the people and the gods. Family chapels with the statuary of a deceased forefather could serve as a sort of family temple. There were festivals in honor of the dead, where the family would come and eat in the chapel, offering food for the afterlife, flowers (symbols of rebirth), and incense (the scent of which was considered divine). Preserved letters let us know that the deceased was actively petitioned for their assistance, both in this world and the next. One of the most remarkable works that fit this description is the funerary statue of King Menkaure and Queen.

King Menkaure (Mycerinus) and Queen

Serene, ethereal beauty, raw royal power, and evidence of artistic virtuosity have rarely been simultaneously captured, as well as in this breathtaking, nearly life-size statue of the pharaoh Menkaure and a queen from ca. 2490–2472 BCE. Smooth as silk, the meticulously finished surface of the dark stone captures the physical ideals of the time and creates a sense of eternity and immortality even today.

Undoubtedly, the most iconic structures from Ancient Egypt are the massive and enigmatic Great Pyramids that stand on a natural stone shelf, now known as the Giza plateau, on the southwestern edge of modern Cairo. The three primary pyramids at Giza were constructed during the height of the Old Kingdom and served as burial places, memorials, and places of worship for a series of deceased rulers—the largest belonging to King Khufu, the middle to his son Khafre, and the smallest of the three to his son Menkaure.

The Excavation

On 10 January 1910, excavators under the direction of George Reisner, head of the joint Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Expedition to Egypt, uncovered an astonishing collection of statuary in the valley temple connected to the Pyramid of Menkaure. Menkaure's pyramid had been explored in the 1830s (using dynamite, no less). His carved granite sarcophagus was removed (and subsequently lost at sea), and while the Pyramid Temple at its base was in only mediocre condition; the valley temple was—happily—basically ignored. 

Reisner had been excavating on the Giza plateau for several years at this point; his team had already explored the elite cemetery to the west of the Great Pyramid of Khufu before turning their attention to the Menkaure complex, most particularly the barely-touched valley temple.

In the southwest corner of the structure, the team discovered a magnificent cache of statuary carved in a smooth-grained dark stone called greywacke or schist. There were a number of triad statues—each showing three figures: the king, the fundamentally important goddess Hathor, and the personification of a nome (a geographic designation, similar to the modern idea of a region, district, or county). Hathor was worshipped in the pyramid temple complexes along with the supreme sun god Re and the god Horus, who was represented by the living king. The goddess's name is actually 'Hwt-hor,' which means "The House of Horus," and she was connected to the wife of the living king and the mother of the future king. Hathor was also a fierce protector who guarded her father, Re. As an "Eye of Re" (the title assigned to a group of dangerous goddesses), she could embody the intense heat of the sun and use that blazing fire to destroy his enemies.

In addition to the triads, Reisner's team also revealed the extraordinary dyad statue of Menkaure and a queen that is breathtakingly singular.

An Unfinished Sculpture?

The dyad was never finished—the area around the lower legs has not received a final polish, and there is no inscription. However, despite this incomplete state, the image was erected in the temple and was brightly painted; there are traces of red around the king's ears and mouth and yellow on the queen's face. The presence of paint atop the smooth, dark greywacke on a statue of the deceased king that was originally erected in his memorial temple courtyard brings an interesting suggestion—that the paint may have been intended to wear away through exposure and, over time, reveal the immortal, black-fleshed "Osiris" Menkaure.

Unusual for a pharaoh's image, the king has no protective cobra (known as a uraeus) perched on his brow. This notable absence has led to the suggestion that both the king's nemes and the queen's wig were originally covered in a sheath of precious metal and that the ubiquitous cobra would have been part of that addition.

Art of the New Kingdom

Three-dimensional artistic representations in Ancient Egypt often tended toward naturalism, a depiction of how an object might appear in the physical world. Two-dimensional works, however, differed significantly. Egyptian artists embraced two-dimensionality and attempted to provide the most representational aspects of each element in the scenes rather than attempting to create vistas that replicated the real world. Artists throughout the entire history of Ancient Egypt use both of these approaches to representation.

Each object or element in a scene was rendered from its most recognizable angle, and these were then grouped together to create the whole. This is why images of people show their face, waist, and limbs in profile, but eye and shoulders frontally. These scenes are complex composite images that provide complete information about the various elements, rather than ones designed from a single viewpoint, which would not be as comprehensive in the data they conveyed. 

These features are readily identifiable in the "Fowling Scene" below, a piece of a wall painting from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun, a scribe and grain accountant of the New Kingdom. 

Often, scenes were ordered in parallel lines, known as registers. These registers separate the scene and provide ground lines for the figures. Scenes without registers are unusual and were generally only used to specifically evoke chaos; battle and hunting scenes will often show the prey or foreign armies without groundlines. Registers were also used to convey information about the scenes—the higher up in the scene, the higher the status; overlapping figures imply that the ones underneath are further away, as are those elements that are higher within the register.  

Difference in scale was the most commonly used method for conveying hierarchy—the larger the scale of the figure, the more important they were. Kings were often shown at the same scale as deities, but both are shown larger than the elite and far larger than the average Egyptian. 

One important work that employs this hierarchy of scale, and is an excellent example of a stylistic break from the Old and Middle Kingdoms, is the House Altar of Akhenaten. 

House Altar depicting Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Three of their Daughters

Artists during this period made conscious stylistic departures in their work in order to reinforce the religious changes instituted by Akehnaten.