Art History For Dummies. Jesse Bryant Wilder
hand, Anubis holds an ankh, the symbol of life. Things look hopeful for Hu-Nefer. At the scales, Anubis shows up again, this time to weigh the heart, which is contained in a jar on the left scale. The feather of truth (symbol of Maat, the goddess of truth) rests lightly on the right-hand scale. The heart had to be very light not to outweigh a feather!The court reporter, ibis-headed Thoth, records the weight while a monster named Ammit watches greedily. If the heart is heavy, Ammit gets to eat it. But on this occasion, Ammit goes hungry. Hu-Nefer moves on to the next stage.
The second test: The hawk-headed Horus leads Hu-Nefer’s ka to the temple of Osiris to face a second test. To be admitted into paradise, Hu-Nefer must recite secret prayers to Osiris that he memorized while alive — or he could have had the prayers inscribed on his coffin lid if his memory wasn’t up to snuff. Inside Osiris’s temple, Hu-Nefer encounters the four miniature sons of Horus standing on a lotus blossom, a symbol of resurrection.The four sons of Horus are the guys whose heads cap the jars that contain the deceased’s organs. Maat, the goddess of truth, hovers overhead, confirming that Hu-Nefer’s heart is light. Osiris’s wife, Isis, the goddess of life, and sister-in-law Nephthys, goddess of decay, stand behind Osiris.
Too-big-to-forget sculpture
Rameses II, who ruled Egypt for 67 years and supposedly sired 100 children, had a pharaoh-sized ego. This 19th-dynasty egomaniac (1304 BC–1237 BC) wanted to be remembered — maybe he feared he’d get a bad rap from the Bible, if indeed he was the “Pharaoh” of Exodus and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, where he’s portrayed by Yul Brynner. In any case, Rameses erected colossal monuments to himself throughout Egypt, especially at Abu Simbel, Karnac, and Luxor, the temple districts near Thebes. Four 65-foot statues of Rameses guard the entrance to his massive temple in Abu Simbel, where he could be worshipped as a god. Smaller statues of family members, wives and his chief queen, Nefertari, stand at attention between his knees and feet.
Rameses II also used art as political propaganda. He barely survived the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittites, yet he touted it as a great victory on a war monument.
Chapter 7
Greek Art, the Olympian Ego, and the Inventors of the Modern World
IN THIS CHAPTER
Everything that grows great also decays. But the memory of our greatness will be bequeathed to posterity forever … the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs … we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere … have left imperishable monuments behind us.
—PERICLES (Athenian Statesman, Fifth Century BC)
Pericles was right. The world he helped create did decay. But its memory and influence have lasted for nearly 2,500 years, reaching across the ages into our day-to-day lives.
Whether you’re watching a play or movie; cheering your country at the Olympics; debating an ethical question; visiting the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.; wrestling with an abstract math problem; or voting for your local mayor, your actions are rooted in Ancient Greece. The Greeks wrote the blueprint for the modern world. They invented democracy, logic, ethics, drama, the Olympics, the study of history, theoretical math, and rational inquiry (the precursor of modern science). They also laid the foundations of Western art and developed architectural styles that we still mimic today.
We owe our Western heritage to all of Ancient Greece, but especially to Athens (located on the coast of the Aegean Sea), which may be the most creative city in history. (Florence, Italy, runs a close second — see Chapter 12.)
How did a tiny city-state the size of Toledo, Ohio, launch the modern world two and a half millennia ago? Read on.
Mingling with the Minoans: Snake Goddesses, Minotaurs, and Bull Jumpers
Aegean culture (civilization around the Aegean Sea) didn’t begin with the Greeks — it started with the Minoans in the late third millennium BC. The Minoans lived on the island of Crete (south of what became the Greek mainland). Crete is about 160 miles long and 37 miles wide (at its widest). Though they traded with the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, the Minoans lived in relative isolation and developed a unique culture. Their art focused not on death and war like the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, but on life, beauty, and partying!
The Minoans are named after the mythical King Minos who supposedly ruled Crete and owned a half-man, half-bull “pet” called the Minotaur. The pet’s name is a variant of the king’s because the Minotaur was also his stepson. Minos’s wife cheated on him with a bull! Minos penned up his monstrous stepson in a labyrinth and sacrificed young Athenian men and women to him until the mythical Athenian hero Theseus slew the beast.
Actually, the Minoans were a peaceful people. They made more tools than weapons, and their chief god was not a thunderbolt-wielding macho man like Zeus, but a sexy-looking snake-goddess. Her cult animals (animals associated with worship) included the dove, snake, and bull. The Minotaur myth probably evolved from the Minoans’ infamous religious sport, bull jumping, in which young men and women somersaulted off the backs of wild bulls.
Notice that the women vaulters (in front of and behind the bull) are white skinned, suggesting that they spent more time indoors than the dark-skinned male jumper. Yet we see total sexual equality here. Man and woman are equal partners in this dangerous but playful religious sport. In fact, the women outnumber the men in the fresco.
The streamlined bodies in The Toreador Fresco brim with exuberant life. Even the bull’s S-shaped tail looks like a wisp of playful energy. Here is a breakdown of other aspects of the Minoan art style:
Harmony and sequential action: The wavelike shapes of bull and jumper harmonize, suggesting that man and nature are one in Crete. The next jumper stands anxiously on her tiptoes, ready to vault off the bull’s back, while an earlier jumper holds the bull’s horns. (Obviously, there was some fictionalizing here!) The positions of the three jumpers suggest the sequence of actions involved in bull jumping.
Fluidity: