The cultural icons of Pharaonic Egypt, from the Great Sphinx at Giza to the famous burial of Tutankhamun, are among the world's most renowned works of art. Less well known, but equally impressive, are the rare and ancient images of people, animals, and landscapes made by the Egyptians who lived prior to the age of the pharaohs, when the formal conventions of Egyptian art had not yet fully evolved. With illustrations of more than 180 objects created from about 4000 to 2650 BC, Dawn of Egyptian Art presents the art forms and iconography in which the early Egyptians recorded their beliefs about the land where they lived, the yearly events that took place there, and what they thought was important to the eternal survival of their world. Comprehensive texts explore the origins and early development of the culture of ancient Egypt while discussing the relationship between images and writing as well as the representation of the self and the universe.
Director's Foreword
Acknowledgments
Contributors to the Catalogue
Lenders to the Exhibition
I. Introduction
Diana Craig Patch
II. From Land to Landscape
Diana Craig Patch
Hierakonpolis
Renée Friedman
An Early Weaving Scene
Emilia Cortes
III. The Human Figure
Diana Craig Patch
IV. Early Dynastic Art
Diana Craig Patch
Sculpture in Early Dynastic Egypt
Marianne Eaton-Krauss
Objects, Animals, Humans, and Hybrids: The Evolution of Early Egyptian Representations of the Divine
Ann Macy Roth
V. Text and Image and the Origin of Writing in Ancient Egypt
David P. Silverman
The Stela of King Raneb
Catharine H. Roehrig and Anna Serotta
Appendix A: Chronology of the Predynastic Period
Appendix B: Chronology of the Early Dynastic Period
Notes
Works in the Exhibition
Selected References
Index
Diana Craig Patch is Associate Curator in the Department of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
