“The Origin of Sculpture”
The ancient Egyptians were thinking of something that would prevent the annihilation of the dead, so they believed that mummified corpses engulf the soul to some extent. A time will come, and it will dissolve in this corpse, and the spirit will dissolve with it, and their future lives will die.
Think about making and making statues
And they put it with the deceased in the cemetery to analyze the soul if the mummified bodies were damaged.
• This idea spread among the ancient Egyptians, and they were not satisfied with placing one statue in the cemetery by placing many statues.
The sculptors worked on sculpting statues that resembled their owners, as they depicted the person and matched him in his sections to be a true example of him so that the soul would not be mistaken.
The artists exerted their utmost effort in perfecting the statues, not to be images of the ideal and showing beauty in them, but rather they were made to be stone bodies in which the soul flows.
Objects resemble their owner, so the statues are also ugly if their owner is ugly in appearance.
– After he finished sculpting the statues, the artists were most interested in colouring the statue in the colours that he knew in the era of the old state.
Yellow skin colour for women
Men’s skin is dark red.
Amazingly, the statue of King Djoser is painted yellow
The ornaments and jewellery that men and women wore were coloured turquoise or pale red
The wig was painted black
White used to colour clothes
The statue wore a belt coloured according to the harmony and good taste in its colour combination.
The statue of Rahotep and his wife Nefert is considered one of the most beautiful statues that have been painted.
Because of the mastery in colouring the statue of Rahotep and his wife Nefert, it was difficult to distinguish the stone from which it was made.
And the artist did not taste his art, so all his concern and preoccupation was to show his piece of art according to the era’s ideas and make the statue an exact copy of its owner, where the soul dwells in it.
Model:-
The era of the Third Dynasty witnessed more stability than what preceded it, and the Memphis school influenced it.
During Djoser’s rule, he witnessed a great development in sculpture, especially the tombs of individuals.
The arts of the members of the Third Dynasty matched the arts of their kings, and this is evident through the wooden paintings of (Hess Ra). The tombs of individuals were no less accurate, beautiful and splendid than the paintings of the pyramid of Djoser and his southern tomb that were executed on stone.
The arts of individuals were similar to the arts of kings.
Examples of statues of individuals are:
‘Hotep DF’ statue
The material of the statue: pink granite
Where the statue was found: Dead hostage
Statue Description: The statue of Hetep DF is shown kneeling
He wears a fake wig on his head
We note in this statue that the shape, features and details are not clear. The head is large and bloated, and attached to the shoulder. It appeared in this statue, the foundations of the Memphis School.
From where the artist wants to show the statue’s owner in an ideal way, he focused on the face and hair area.
In this statue, the expressive form of its owner and the frontal view appeared, as this is one of the basic principles for the formation of art that appeared in the era of the first and second dynasties.
There is evidence that “Hotep DF” was a contemporary or the last king of the second dynasty (Hotep Sekhemwy, Raa Neb, and Prose), where these nymph names are engraved on the right shoulder of “Hotep DF”.
But he belonged to the era of the Third Dynasty, and his name and the name of his father (Mary Thothi) were engraved on the upper roof of the base.