Feature Article:
The Guided Hand of the Ancient Egyptian Sculptor:
by William H. Peck
There was no word in the ancient Egyptian language for “art” as we might define it today. The idea of art for its own sake or as a personal expression would have been totally foreign to the Egyptian mind, because all artistic production was generated in the service of religion and the state, the ruler and the gods. Egyptian art was essentially a symbolic language with a prescribed vocabulary capable of being read as directly as Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was not the role of the sculptor to invent variations on that language, but to learn its rules and apply them. |
