Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Hawass Discloses Ancient Art Facts


Tue 21 May 2019 | 12:22 PM
Ali Abu Dashish

Countless artistic masterpieces were made by the pharaonic artists. Archaeologists have reveal how innovative the masterpieces were since the ancient times.

Iconic archeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass explained that among those is a painting of limestone depicting the head of one of the pharaohs of the age of the Ramses - the nineteenth and twentieth families. It exists now at Louvre, France.

When you look at the head, you feel the experience of drawing. Also this exceptional art is featured at the portraiture of the architect "Sinmot", the genius engineer who built the temple of the "monastery of the sea" of Queen Hatshepsut and who was one of her entourage. This one is placed at the Metropolitan Museum.

The ancient artists were using the 16-square grid system, which they used to control the drawing of each part of the human body and, once completed, they remove it.

There are also sketches of the "Acrobatic" dancer, one of the most important pieces and is placed at the Museum of Turin, Italy. In addition, there are many ironic drawings, revealing that the ancient Egyptian artist was able to reflect opinions of the people in politics, economy and social situations. For example, there are drawings depicting a weak guard asleep at a store of grain, a fox grazing a herd of geese, and a small cat serving a plentiful mouse.

When the ancients artists made the drawings on the walls of tombs, they featured the profiles from their sides, as rarely did they feature a human face from the front side. The reason is that they were trying to shed the light on the fact that an active Egyptian is all the time on the move.

The ancient artist did not post signature on drawings but only in very rare incidents, such as the artist who signed inside the cemetery of "Qar" at the pyramid, as well as the tomb of "Mri Roca" and "Khanti". They depicted themselves either in a boat or sitting in front of a drawing board.

The reason may be religious, but never it was that artists are inferior in the society.. On the contrary, this class enjoyed a high position in the society, which they considered to be gifted special skills from God.