We have to watch at Egyptian art as a whole. An iconography is a set of images connected to each other. It is obviously very important to identify what is depicted. However, to find the deepest meaning of an Egyptian iconography it is crucial to see where and how are the images depicted. Because Egyptian art left few loose ends and just thinking of it as a puzzle, we can find the sense of a decoration on a surface. The iconography has three main parts: body, shoulders/neck and head. This what happens for instance in the iconography of the clay coffin of Men. Dismembering the different elements ..read more

Images in Egyptian art were much more than just designs, specially in funerary sphere. They were a tool for achieving a goal and their effectiveness was out of doubt. Moreover, the artist also had to choose their location on the surface for creating a coherent composition. DISTRIBUTION OF THE IMAGES IN THE CLAY COFFIN OF MEN. Iconography of the clay coffin of Men (After Petrie 1906, pl. XIV). Few things are random in Egyptian art and in this coffin the artist took special care about the distribution and location of the iconography. On the other had, the coffin of Men had barely texts. We just ..read more

Clay Coffin of Men. Dynasty XVIII. Tell el-Yahoudiyeh (tomb 411). Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles, E.4348. Photo: MRAHCoffins in Ancient Egypt were not made just in wood, but also in ceramic. Although these kind of coffins are much more common in the Middle East, there are some examples coming from the northeast of Egyptian Delta. Let us pay attention to the clay coffin of Men (Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles, E.04348), belonging to the Dynasty XVIII and from in Tell el-Yahoudiyeh (tomb 411), ca. thirty mile northeast of Cairo. This clay coffin belongs to the call ..read more

Thanks to the numerous documents that has come down to us from Ancient Egypt, almost all related to their religious beliefs, we know about their gods, the ceremonies they practiced, their mythologies, and above all how they buried their dead and also how they did to resurrect them. In the funerary sphere, we know that ancient Egyptians mummified to preserve the corpse and that they carried out rituals to promote the resurrection of the deceased and his rebirth in the Hereafter. Funerary texts played a crucial role in the regeneration of the dead. Some helped him to overcome the difficulties th ..read more

Keep safe and protect the others with your actions. Coptic painting in Tomb of Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan). XI-XII Century. Photo: Mª Rosa Valdesogo ..read more

We have already seen that Artemidora selected images of Isis, Nephthys, the two mourners, and Osiris at their feet and at both sides od her corpse. In both cases, the decoration was very concise and minimalist, but highly effective. Coffin of Artemidora from Meir (AD 90-100). Isis and Nephthys are a constant in the iconography. Photo: metmuseum.org The funerary mask of Artemidora was the most decorated element of the whole set. In contrast to the body art the head appears as the selected support for a more complete composition. We can even distinguish an upper and lower register with their c ..read more

Book Hair and Death in Ancient Egypt Mourners shake and pull their hair on reliefs and paintings from ancient Egypt. They took part in funerary ceremonies in ancient Egypt, contributing to the dead’s resurrection in the afterlife. Hair played a clear role in these rites. In this publication Mª Rosa Valdesogo Martín (Madrid, 1968) describes the relation between hair and these rites, and the role hair played in death in ancient Egypt. This book is the publication of her Phd research about the Hair in the Funerary Ceremony of Ancient Egypt.     ..read more

Artists and theologist of Ancient Egypt worked together in the emergence of iconographies and they combined different planes of meaning: images and words. That is why reading the Egyptian art requires an iconographic and textual analysis. The Egyptian art: a language of signs. The Egyptian art is a language of signs and just like the Egyptian language, it uses word games; that is decoration often plays games of images. Writing of the verb TO CREATE (left) with the substantive EYE (right) in Ancient Egypt. In the Egyptian language, we find a very graphi ..read more

Egyptian art had a magical-functional purpose and did not take into consideration the figure of the spectator. For that reason, we cannot consider Egyptian art from just an aesthetic empiricism. Which makes art feel in a subjective way through sensations. We must read the Egyptian Art from the technical realization, but also from its ideological-religious motivation, a motivation of a social group that gives the work a collective nature. Egyptian Art is Objects and Texts. In ancient Egypt written language and figurative language go together. Usually the images reach where the texts do not arri ..read more

The image in Ancient Egypt had a power in itself. Why? Because in addition to evoking a reality, they made it arise. In Ancient Egypt everything that was depicted was also happening. The Power of Scenes on Walls. The mural scenes that we observe in the mastabas of the Old Kingdom depict very realistically scenes of daily life. However, they did not consist in the memory of an earthly world that the deceased wanted to take to the Hereafter. In the belief of Ancient Egypt those scenes were moments and situations that happened perpetually. Making Bread. Mastaba of Ty in Saqqara. V Dynasty ..read more