The Character of Ancient Egyptian Woman with a New Contemporary Art Vision.. From Past to Present

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Lecturer at Decoration department - Faculty of Applied Arts – Helwan University

Abstract

The ancient Egyptian woman has a unique personality characterized by many great features that are written in most books and literature. Ancient Egypt considered that women have equal rights with men, so Egyptian women worked in most fields; As writers and priestesses, in addition, they became a princess and a queen who rules the whole country. She has a leadership personality capable of managing wisely and flexibly. Sometimes a question comes to our minds: How was life in that great civilization’s time? What were the features of women in general like princesses and queens in their daily life’s times? How did they spend their free time? What was the ancient life like in the real three dimensions? not what we found on the two-dimension walls of Egyptian temples and tombs.Ancient Egyptian art has its own rules in drawing the Egyptian woman and depicting her jewellery, makeup, clothes, her standing and sitting positions “formal body positions” and the free positions for work and movement “informal body positions”.  All of these have special features, but the most important feature is the special perspective that the Egyptian artist created which is different from the realistic perspective that we use. Therefore, the research deals with reviewing different visions of depicting Egyptian women in other artworks inspired by ancient Egyptian art, whether in technology, body positions, colours, subjects, or structure and rules. In addition to trying to imagine the form of a woman's life with a new artistic vision from the researcher's point of view, interested in summarizing the characteristics of the ancient Egyptian woman from a realistic perspective.
Statement of the problem:
The research problem is summarized in the need to use the symbols of ancient Egyptian art in depicting women to extract a modern contemporary artistic vision that illustrates the characteristics of the Egyptian woman in her daily life.
Objectives:
Create a contemporary vision that depicts the Egyptian woman in her daily life and her dreamy times in the real perspective, extracted from the spirit of ancient Egyptian art, especially in depicting clothing, and jewellery and emphasizing the characteristics of ancient Egyptian women.
Importance:
The importance of the research lies in presenting different art visions for different artworks depicting Egyptian women and extracting a special vision by the researcher to depict ancient Egyptian women based on inspiration from ancient Egyptian art in daily life without its district rules in drawing and painting.
Methodology:
The research approaches the descriptive-analytical methodology in analyzing the personality of the ancient Egyptian woman and her interests in using jewellery for decoration, clothing and makeup, and the experimental methodology to apply a contemporary artistic point of view by the researcher to imagine the features of Egyptian woman spending her relaxing times in a realistic perspective, outside the two-dimension mural drawn by the Egyptian artist.
Results:
·      The ancient Egyptian woman will remain an icon of beauty and strength, so the world tells her story in literature and books from ancient times to the present, as she is one of the most powerful personalities due to her important position in Egyptian society, which has reached to the sanctification, a position that no other woman in the ancient civilizations has reached at that time.
·      By analyzing the characteristics, personality and interests of the ancient Egyptian woman, a set of criteria can be determined from the researcher's perspective that would help in imagining her various features and expressions, and then the ability to portray and draw them in the spirit of the Egyptian personality, with the specifications that indicate her characteristics.
The artist's perception to the subjects of his paintings would help in creating his own vision that mixes reality with imagination, which makes him involved within his work, as if he lives with his characters, talks, and listens to them.

Keywords

References

1-       Fayad, Mohamed, Ancient Egyptian Woman, Dar El Shorouk, first edition, 1995.
2-      Shafek, Dorya, Egyptian woman from the pharaohs to today, Misrpress, 1955.
3-      Abd El Hamed, Soher, the ancient Egyptian civilization granted women all rights, article in Nesf Al donia magazine by Dr. Fayza Hasanin Hekal, April 2021.
4-      Jamal El Deen, Wael, how did the cosmetic arts the charm and attractiveness of the ancient woman? October 2018, Retrieved March 12, 2022, from  https://www.bbc.com/arabic/art-and-culture-45815709
5-      Mohamed, Hend Khalaf, The aesthetics of women’s head accessories and decoration in ancient Egyptian art as a starting point for distance education in the field of metalwork, Amsiat Misr Association, Vol. 6, Issue 24, 2020, p 693-744.
Shababy, Ahmed, The art of decoration and ornaments for women in Ancient Egypt, Historical studies journal, vol 142, 2021

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics