Ancient Egypt and Egyptian Art Essay

Death and After Life in Egyptian Art

The Ancient Egyptians one of the most amazing ancient cultures, Egyptians are famous for their unique ideas, beliefs, innovation and their architecture of the pyramids. Ancient Egyptians believed in life after death, they believed that life goes on and it doesn’t end when the person dies. All these beliefs towards death and after life played a big role in Egyptian Art.
Death and after life played a big role in Egyptian Art, the Ancient Egyptian civilization was based on religion, they believed in life after death and that became a huge impact in their art and their funeral practices. For them death was just momentary pause between life as we know and eternal life (Crystallinks). And the way to achieve this was through worshiping the Gods, the preservation of the body and by putting statues and other funerary objects. Egyptians also believed humans to be the gift or children of God and that they had obtained or gained many of the elements constituting their body, from the divine progenitors more than the physical bodies (Diamon).
The body of the person would be mummified as well as carefully embalmed to be placed in the coffin, the degree of their belief in the life after death concept is revealed from the fact that they buried the utensils, ornaments, the toilet articles and many other essentials which would be required by the person in his journey after death (Diamond). The art in in burial chambers depict scenes of how pharaohs were mummified, we can observe in “King Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber” how Egyptians painted King Tuts a little green showing that he was death but now he reborn, a perfect example of their beliefs in after life.
Egyptians portrayed their beliefs in afterlife in their tombs; art in these tombs shows how big and how powerful religion was in their funerary rituals. Tomb art was designed by a master artist and then executed by a team of apprentices and workers. When representing human figures in a piece of tomb art, it was important to show as much of the body to the gods as possible, and they were not meant to be naturalistic but a sign that stood for human so Gods could recognize the body (White), and also king were portrayed bigger to show how powerful they were and their god-like powers they had. Tombs were frequently done in raised relief, but sometimes sunken relief was used instead (Sylvester). Another special element of the rite besides the tomb was a sculpted mask, put on the face of the deceased. This mask was believed to strengthen the spirit of the mummy and guard the soul from evil spirits on its way to the afterworld. The best known mask is that of Tutankhamen, made of gold and gems, the mask conveys the features of the ancient ruler. Most funerary masks were not made of solid gold (Crystallinks), and we can observe how his face was perfectly shaped and these other features and characteristics like the wig and the false beard, gives more idea how these rituals were performed and the little details that artists put on them.
The role of death and afterlife in Ancient Egyptian art shows how concerned were Egyptians about all that is divine. The color in their art was used in some kind of way to communicate with Gods, certain colors were meant with specific powers or attributes that were linked to gods. For example, green and blue were the colors of plants,

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