The Art of Ancient Egypt | Publications for Educators | Explore & Learn

Stone

For the Egyptians the hardness and durability of stone symbolized permanence and eternity. Stone was the material from which temples and tombs were built, while the dwellings of the living (ordinary houses as well as royal palaces) were built of mud brick. In very early times, Egyptian sculptors used only flint tools. Later, tools were made of copper and even bronze; by the first millennium B.C. iron tools were also utilized.

Fragment of a Battle Scene

Nikare and his family

Painters might be called upon to color limestone and sandstone sculptures, and relief was almost always painted. Usually a thin layer of gypsum plaster or gesso (chalk and glue) was applied first, and then pigment of various colors.

Sphinx of Senwosret III
The stone of this sphinx is diorite, which is one of the hardest stones to work. In creating works of art with material of this type, sculptors used hard stone hammers lashed to wooden handles to pound the stone until it was close to the final shape of the sculpture. Then, for final shaping and smoothing, they would use very hard rubbing stones and fine sand pastes.

Fragment of the head of a queen
This fragment of a lifesize head required extraordinary skill and patience to create. It is made of jasper, a form of quartz so hard that it could not be carved with bronze tools. Instead, the sculptor chipped and pecked the jasper into the basic form using a stone hammer. Then the surface was abraded; that is, the sculptor rubbed it with fine quartz paste. As the piece neared completeness, finer and finer pastes were used to create the subtle details and sheen of the surface.

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