The vocabulary of ancient Egyptian art would be interpreted and adapted in different ways depending on the standards and motivations of the time.

Learn about past excavations by the Department of Egyptian Art.

Explore facsimile installations from the Museum’s Egyptian Expedition.

Alfred Lucas, one of the foremost early researchers in the study of ancient Egyptian technology, correctly surmised that the vast majority of such colorations resulted from fortuitous tarnishing of silver-bearing gold and also recognized correctly that a smaller group of objects bearing a distinctly different red coloration represented another phenomenon altogether.

The first generation of modern Egyptian artists was driven by a renewed appreciation of their national patrimony and the return to ancient pharaonic art detached from any African, Arab, or religious cultural references.

The Department of Egyptian Art oversees a wide range of archives, with the earliest dating back to the late nineteenth century.

An amulet is an object believed to have certain positive properties that, as the amulet’s main function, can magically be bestowed upon its owner.

The aim of this book is twofold: first, to provide beginning students with step-by-step guidance in drawing hieroglyphs; and secondly, to supplement the observations of Gardiner in the Sign List at the back of his Egyptian Grammar. The examples include all 24 of the common forms of "alphabetic" (monoconsonantal) signs, and a selection of other signs that are either difficult to draw or that call for additional comment—a total of about 200 in all. Comparative material, emphasizing Old Kingdom models, is presented in 175 line drawings. By familiarizing themselves with this material, along with the points made in the Introduction, students will, at the same time, learn a good deal about hieroglyphic palaeography.

By 1905, approximately 4,400 objects formed the nucleus of a collection of ancient Egyptian art at The Met.

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.

"Egyptians were probably the first to be aware of the nobility inherent in the human form and to express it in art." — Heinrich Schafer, Principles of Egyptian Art (1919)