TICE ART 1010 Ancient Near Eastern and Ancient Egyptian Art

Arturo ptoy here but you can call me art this is Explorations in art history starring me and the Hand well what about the rest of me how embarrassing people watching from around the world and I'm stuck waiting on some five-fingered primadana well that's better it looks like we'll be talking about the Mesopotamian and Egyptian period we're going back 5,000 years to place the Greeks called Mesopotamia which means land between the rivers those Rivers were the Tigris and the Euphrates which formed fertile crescent sometimes called the cradle of civilization very funny Mesopotamia actually refers to an area rather than country at different times it was ruled by the samarians the acadians the Babylonians the Assyrians and the Persians they lived close to the natural world and like this lion that decorated the walls of the Ishtar gate their animal art was pretty realistic their Human Art not so realistic both Mesopotamian and Egyptian artists stylized the human body in Mesopotamia they invented the first written language called cuniform they started with pictographs but over time the writing evolved into more abstract symbols they also got to invent cool names for their buildings like zigarette in they built massive zigarette to pay homage to the gods zigarette love the sound of that the zigurat was the center of the city moving on Mesopotamia may have started the civilization craze but Egypt took it to new standard Egypt depended on one Great River the Nile and developed civilization that lasted over 3,000 years when tanaman became Pharaoh the great pyramids were already thousand years old and it was another thousand years after that when Cleopatra held power egyptologists invented an ingenious system to classify the different periods of Egyptian rule there's the Old Kingdom Middle Kingdom the New Kingdom and the later Kingdom how did they think of that interestingly Artistic Styles never changed much over 3,000 years the best artist was probably the one who could most closely copy the classic style of the past what was good enough for kufu was good enough for ramsy except for one brief moment called the armana period when pharaoh named ainan ushered in new style and new religion all of sudden faces got stretched bodies got streamlined and lengthened Finn was in but when ananan passed away Egypt quickly reverted back to the old familiar ways that doesn't mean Egyptians weren't creative just look at their Pantheon of gods they imagined jackal-headed gods and hawk-headed Gods lion headed goddesses ra hippoe headed goddesses my crocodile headed gods and Ibis headed Gods cat-headed gods and well you get the picture of course the Pharaoh themselves were considered the living Gods Pharaohs were portrayed according to specific rules that emphasize their perfect unchanging nature usually these representations included some symbols of authority like the Royal headdress the crook and the flail and false beard even the female pharaoh hat shapot commissioned statues of herself with the false beard to reinforce her position of authority attractive Egyptians obsessed over death and the afterlife paintings on the walls of tombs often showed the or soul on its Journey Through the afterlife when an Egyptian artist painted figure every body part was shown from its most recognizable angle the face was shown in profile except for the eye which was shown head on the body was shown head on and the legs and feet were Twisted back into profile don't try this at home Alexander the Great admired the Egyptian Kingdom so much that he decided to conquer it in 332 BC while in Egypt he founded the city of Alexandria on the northern coast of Egypt and installed his General toy as Pharaoh Greek elements were introduced into the ark the toic dynasty lasted 275 years and included several toames and cleopatras the most famous of these was Cleopatra iith whose son toy the 15th was the last pharaoh of Egypt in 30 BC Rome conquered Egypt he