Misha Desai

Posted at Sep 29/2008 07:26PM:
Misha Desai:

Art as a Reflection of Culture In Ancient Egypt

To the ancients, there was no distinction between a beautiful work of art and a symbol of religious significance. Art was beautiful and necessary because it honored the gods - this may explain much of the regal art that appears throughout antiquity in Egypt. It served a dual purpose of being both reverent and beautiful, though the Egyptians themselves perhaps did not feel that way. In Ancient Egyptian culture, the pharaoh himself was a living god, and he was honored in the same tradition as the gods. In the case of this “winged Isis pectoral,” the significance was its function as a charm to ward off evil spirits, on both the living and the dead (Wilkinson 52). It was usually placed on the chest (hence “pectoral”), worn as either an amulet or fitted onto a sarcophagus and sometimes the inner coffin as well. However, the spectators of this work are not ancient Egyptians, and therefore the work means very different things to us than it did to them. As scholars, it is hard to make a definitive statement about a work’s function without hard evidence to back it up.Therefore, a discussion of function is the very last issue that must be addressed when analyzing a work of art and it must include in its discussion both a study of the context of the piece and its cultural/religious significance. A thorough examination of the Isis pectoral reveals a religious significance that is common throughout many works in Egyptian antiquity, but it is not the full story.

The iconography of this particular piece is intriguing. The Isis pectoral is first an abstraction - that is, taking a recognizable subject from nature or everyday life and transforming it into something that does not appear in either. This work is clearly nonrepresentational, as it does not depict anything known. It is a work of imagination instead, and clearly has a purpose. Though the iconography suggests a religious purpose, that cannot be corroborated without examination in context and in comparison to other works. The wings used could either be those of a hawk or a falcon. Since Horus, the god most closely associated with kings has a falcon’s head, perhaps the wings are a connection with him, or perhaps, because the falcon flies the highest in the sky, it is associated with the gods (Shaw 75). Either way, the wings are significant in that they bestow a sense of divinity to the object.

The interpretation and statement of worth of a work of art should be carefully considered, as Egyptian aesthetic differs from the classical ideal of proportion and perfect symmetry. This is not to say that Egyptian artists did not have their own canon of proportions (Stokstad 54). They developed their own idea of how the drawn human form should look in the period of time known as the Old Kingdom (thus the style is known as the Old Kingdom standard grid). The Isis pectoral examined here was made in the Third Intermediate Period, which was about two thousand years after the style was invented. The style used here is a combination of the abstract style mentioned earlier and the linear style, which is easily seen in most Egyptian art. The face in profile, the straightness of the wings, and the clear delineation of the feathers in the wings all point to a linear style. These styles are characteristic of the larger Egyptian style, which focused on showing each part of the body the way it would be seen in real life. This was mostly adopted to solve the problem of depicting three dimensional objects in only two dimensions.

The Isis pectoral was probably constructed by a very simple method, but one that is still practiced very often today. The presence of glaze indicates that it is most likely a faience - that is, pottery that has been glazed over while being fired in a kiln. This would indicate that it is obviously made from clay, which is in plentiful supply on the floodplain of the Nile. The most likely tools used to craft the intricate wing and Isis designs were probably sharpened wooden tools that made the designs while the clay was still wet - that is, before it was fired and glazed. The method of glazing was probably tin-glazing (Stokstad xxii - xxiii). Tin-glazing works by coating a special layer of tin oxide on the clay before firing, and the subsequent process makes the clay extremely shiny. Tin oxide would be readily available, due to the fact that Egyptians used bronze tools - a mixture of tin and copper. The tin oxide would form near the top of tin deposits as a result of the heat of the desert.

Placed in context, this particular piece might have been fitted into a sarcophagus at some point. The wings and the body flush well enough and it seems to be nailed through in several places (specifically on each shoulder and near each hip). The wings appear to bear nail-holes as well. This symbol appears in tombs of all strata because of its significance as a charm. The symbol appears on regal sarcophagi as well as unmarked mastabas (Wilkinson 98). Sometimes there are even amulets that appear bearing this symbol. Isis also wears a crown in the sculpture, which in other works is referred to as the Headdress of Hathor (Wilkinson 97).

It is probably very easy for us to see the appeal in a work such as this. But to truly understand it, we must examine what this symbol meant to the Egyptians. Isis is the wife of the god of the dead, Osiris. Her prodigious magical power brought him back to life after he was killed by his evil brother Seth. The myth explains her origins but reveals fairly little about how we should perceive this work. Her power is equal to her beauty and she is seen as a guide, and a protector, hence her function in this work as a charm. In more than one representation she is depicted as having these same wings, suggesting that the symbol was common in the mythological representation of the goddess (Wilkinson 101).

In conclusion, this work and indeed all artwork reveals much more than meets the eye. Analyzation of art based solely on beauty leaves out the most of the actual story. It is strange to the modern mind to think of art as having a function, but Egyptians are believed to have thought this way, which is what makes it so hard for us to understand exactly what they thought about the works they created. There is little doubt that this pectoral is a religious symbol, designed to ward off evil spirits through the protective influence of the goddess Isis. But as to the specifics of the work - why Isis is depicted with wings and the kneeling position are not all explained by the context, mythology, or analyzation of the object itself. In short, there is yet more to this work that cannot be explained by anyone except an ancient Egyptian. That quality of specific meaning is still a mystery.