Treasures of Ancient Egypt

"We cannot find our future if we forget our past."

~ Alaa Awad, modern Egyptian artist

I have been watching this three part documentary called Treasures of Ancient Egypt where art lover Alastair Sooke discover ancient Egypt through 30 art pieces and what he finds is very intriguing.

At a first glance, ancient Egyptian art seems schematic and static and everything is supposed to be the same over thousands and thousands of years. Sooke, however, finds that there are a lot of things that interupts the static and schematic pictures, making them full of life. Some art pieces also goes more or less against the schematic style. I loved the so called ostraka Sooke finds in the worker's village Deir-el-Medina. They are much more free-styled and a lot of them are also parodies on the official style.

As someone who has studied colonialism/imperialism/cultural meating for awhile I do not really see it as strange that the invaders in Egypt after the New Kingdom tried portraying themselves as Egyptian, but also incorporating their own style, creating a hybrid. This is something I have tackled before, here and here but it might be time for a recap. To me, we are thinking too biologically about the concept of culture, one of the many things we have not been able to shake from modern imperialism of the last two centuries. It is extremely seldom that invaders go in and force their own culture on the colonized groups. This is an idea sprung from imperialism during the last two centuries and only one form out of many types of colonialism. Everyone of them were about power, but not everyone of them has been as devestating as imperialism during the last 200 years. Sooke says that maybe the Greek dynasty, the Ptolemies were not so powerful so they could introduce Greek culture into Egypt. I, however, would rather say that they were smart. They seem to have a much better understanding of cultures and how they interact than we do today. By using history and the old expressions of power in Egypt, they legitimized their right to rule over the Egyptians. They sought to build on the sense of eternity and stability presented in ancient Egyptian art, but like all cultures do as they adopt new traits, they interpreted it through their own cultural logic. This is why we actually can see some Greek influences in Egyptian art from this time. It really is like Egyptian artist Alaa Awad said to Sooke and which I qouted in the beginning. We all must look to the history to find our future.


Picture was borrowed here.