Egyptian art? An introduction

Abstract

This article presents a general introduction to ancient Egyptian art studies. But the very notion of “Egyptian art” is problematic, to say the least. While earlier Egyptologists did not hesitate to use the concept, soon the need for a precise definition became evident. This task, however, proved very difficult. On the contrary, most recent works tend to avoid the problem by discarding the category “art”, speaking instead of visual culture, iconography, etc. In the following pages, I would like to argue in favour of using the category “art” for ancient Egypt, and to discuss critically how the history of the discipline has defined Egyptian art. For this purpose, I will examine a number of rock art images that do not follow the themes and conventions of “Egyptian art” as it is commonly understood. Due to their particular relationship with the landscape and their marginal location regarding population centres, I consider them to be especially relevant. I will present a balance of the studies on Egyptian art,and then recover new tools and discussions from art history that can be useful to understand better the Egyptian art of any period.