The Art of Ancient Egypt - Book Review

African Arts, Summer, 2002 by Cristina Riggs

Gay Robin

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2000. 272 pp., 188 b/w & 122 color illustrations, map. $24.95 softcover.

Although a handful of books surveying ancient Egyptian art are readily available and published with the general reader or classroom user in mind, Gay Robins's The Art of Ancient Egypt deserves to be singled out for its clearly presented and richly illustrated treatment of the subject. The informative text concentrates on "why art was so important to the ancient Egyptians and why they invested such a large amount of their resources in its production" (p. 7). Therefore, instead of being presented merely with a historical survey of the who, what, and where of Egyptian art, the reader is also introduced to the facets of Egyptian society--religion, status, gender, and so forth--that underpinned the production and deployment of art. This emphasis on the social context of the visual arts and architecture is a welcome advance from the subjective stylistic judgments that have too often characterized Egyptological art history.

Robins is not specifically engaged with setting Egypt in an African context, other than relaying the physical facts of the country's geography. The ancient Egyptians saw themselves and the agricultural land of the Nile Valley and Delta as the normative, privileged maintainers of a divine world order, mediated for them by the king. Other-ness was associated with chaos and had to be subjugated, a feat represented in art by monumental battle scenes and by the emblematic motif of bound foreign prisoners, whose names and physiognomies identified them as residents of Egypt's immediate neighbors: Libya, Nubia, and Syria-Palestine (e.g., p. 16, fig. 4; p. 137, fig. 155). Following long-standing trade and military connections between Egypt and Nubia, a combination of conquest and cultural assimilation resulted in a succession of Nubian kings who ruled Egypt as part of the Napatan empire from about 770 to 712 B.C.E. In Egyptian chronology, these kings form the 25th Dynasty, and Robins presents their Egyptian monuments and their adaptation of Egyptian royal iconography (pp. 210-18). Art and architecture in the Sudan itself are beyond the scope of this volume, but the reader could pursue this area a bit further through references in the bibliography.

Robins's book follows a chronological sequence ranging from the period of early state formation in the Nile Valley (ca. 3100-3000 B.C.E.) to the end of the Ptolemaic period (30 B.C.E.), a cut-off point which the author justifies because it marked the last time that Egypt was ruled by a resident monarch. The first chapter provides a concise, accurate, and engaging introduction to Egyptian artistic principles and their roots in Egyptian cosmology and social organization. Egyptians visualized a world in which chaotic, external forces threatened the ordered creation, and this duality, characterized by a need to maintain balance and control, was expressed in many ways, from myths of divine death and rebirth to the structured compositions of Egyptian art and texts. This first chapter also usefully surveys the working methods and materials of Egyptian artists, who were, by and large, anonymous. Archaeological and documentary evidence from a village of state-supported workmen (Deir el-Medina, ca. 1300-1100 B.C.E.), however, gives some insight into how artists were trained and organized (p. 29).

Each of the following twelve chapters, which comprise the chronological survey, is subdivided into sections considering, on the one hand, royal art and, on the other, the art of the elite, those prosperous nonroyal individuals who held secular and sacred offices at a national or provincial level. These two spheres provided the patronage for the visual arts and affected or interacted with each other in different ways, depending on the political and economic climate of a given period. Unsurprisingly, many aspects of artistic expression were exclusive to the king, due both to his position and to the resources he commanded. Art forms commissioned by the elite are no less important for understanding Egyptian art, and Robins adequately treats nonroyal sculpture, tombs, and funerary equipment in this regard. At the beginning of each chapter, a brief overview covers historical developments during the time period to be considered, and chapter endnotes point the interested reader to scholarly support for the evidence presented. A short, final chapter summarizes the roles and functions of art in ancient Egyptian society, where "[t]he king and the elite were both the patrons and the audience in a self-sustaining system that reinforced and justified the established social order" (p. 252). It also challenges the common misconception that Egyptian art is, or was, monotonous and unchanging.

More than 300 illustrations are spread throughout the text and include color and black-and-white photographs, line drawings, and architectural plans and reconstructions. All are generally well reproduced and suit the volume's length and purpose; since the book was initially published by British Museum Press in 1997, objects from the important Egyptian collection of the British Museum predominate. The volume also includes a chronological table, a map of Egypt as far south as Lake Nasser, a bibliography of scholarly works cited in the text, and a list of suggestions for further reading. All of the suggested items are in English, and several cover subjects not fully treated in the text, but most of these will only be available through a good university library or specialist bookseller. Finally, the index contains as many references to figures as to the text, making it easy to locate an illustration of a specific subject or a certain site; nevertheless, the index, like the bibliography and further reading list, seems geared toward a reader already familiar with the topic or a student wishing to delve even further into it. Taken as a whole, the book is suitable for the general public, but its quality, level of detail, and scholarly approach make it especially appropriate for university courses. The Art of Ancient Egypt will be a valuable resource for anyone teaching or studying ancient Egypt as part of a syllabus on African art or the art of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.