Diary Entry 3 - Art

Today in school we had art with Ms. Cleobey. We discussed the history of art in Ancient Egypt. We learnt that Ancient Egyptian art is five thousand years old. Expressed in paintings and sculptures, it was highly symbolic and fascinating - this art form revolves round the past and was intended to keep history alive. I think that its amazing that Art has been used to show the past, and teach us about our history!
There are many different art forms, Ancient Egyptian art forms are characterized by human beings and the nature, and, were intended to provide company to the deceased. Artists' endeavored to preserve everything of the present time as clearly and permanently as possible. Some art forms present an extraordinarily vivid representation of the time and the life, as the ancient Egyptian life was lived thousand of years before.

Egyptian art in all forms obeyed one law: the mode of representing man, nature and the environment remained almost the same for thousands of years and the most admired artists were those who replicated most admired styles of the past =]

I love to paint pictures of the nature, often after school i go to the nile and paint the environment around me.
My Mom is an artist and she tells me all about her painting and the history of painting, she told me that Ancient Egyptian paintings survived due to the extremely dry climate. The ancient Egyptians created paintings to make the afterlife of the deceased a pleasant place. Accordingly, beautiful paintings were created. The themes included journey through the afterworld. Some examples of such paintings are paintings of Osiris and Warriors.

Some tomb paintings show activities that the deceased were involved in when they were alive and wished to carry on doing for eternity.

The Tree of Life

On the Tree Of Life, the birds represent the various stages of human life. Starting in the lower right-hand corner and proceeding counter-clockwise:

The light gray bird symbolizes infancy.

The red bird symbolizes childhood.

The green bird symbolizes youth.

The blue bird symbolizes adulthood.

The orange bird symbolizes old age

In ancient Egypt, the direction east was considered the direction of life, because the sun rose in the east. West was considered the direction of death, of entering the underworld, because the sun set in the west. They believed that during the night, the sun traveled through the underworld to make its way back to the east so it could rise in the east again on the next day. On the tree of life, note that the birds representing the first four phases of life all face to the east, but the bird representing old age faces to the west, anticipating the approach of death.

Ancient Egyptian Art