Gay Robin Harvard University Pres Cambridge.

Gay Robin

Harvard University Pres Cambridge, Mass., 2000 272 pp 188 b/w & 122 color illustrations, map. $2495 softcover

Although a handful of parts surveying ancient Egyptian art are readily available and published with the general reader or classroom user in mind, Gay Robins's The Art of Ancient Egypt be worthy ofs to be singled out for its clearly quick in emergenciesed and richly illustrated treatment of the make subordinate The informative text concentrates upon "why art was so important to the ancient Egyptians and wherefore they invested such a large amount of their resources in its production" (p 7) Therefore, instead of being readyed merely with a historical contemplate of the who, what, and where of Egyptian art, the reader is also introduced to the facets of Egyptian society--religion, status, form relative to sex and so forth--that underpinned the production and deployment of art. This emphasis onward the social context of the visual arts and architecture is a welcome advance from the subjective stylistic notions that have too often characterized Egyptological art history.

Robins is not specifically engaged with setting Egypt in an African adjoining matter other than relaying the physical facts of the country's geography. The ancient Egyptians saw themselves and the agricultural land of the Nile Valley and Delta as the normative, privileged maintainers of a divine world order, mediated for them by means of the king. Other-ness was associated with chaos and had to be subjugated, a feat exhibited in art by monumental battle representations and by the emblematic motif of bourn foreign prisoners, whose names and physiognomies identified them as residents of Egypt's immediate neighbors: Libya, Nubia, and Syria-Palestine (eg p 16 fig. 4; p 137 fig. 155) Following long-standing trade and military connections between Egypt and Nubia, a combination of victorious establishment and cultural assimilation resulted in a succession of Nubian kings who rul Egypt as part of the Napatan empire from about 770 to 712 BCE In Egyptian chronology, these kings form the 25th Dynasty, and Robins readys their Egyptian monuments and their adaptation of Egyptian royal iconography (pp 210-18) Art and architecture in the Sudan itself are beyond the free course of this volume, but the reader could keep up this area a bit further by the and of references in the bibliography.

Robins's volume follows a chronological sequence ranging from the period of early state formation in the Nile Valley (ca. 3100-3000 BCE) to the completion of the Ptolemaic period (30 BCE) a cut-off point which the author justifies because it marked the last time that Egypt was rul from a resident monarch. The first chapter provides a concise, accurate, and engaging introduction to Egyptian artistic principles and their stems in Egyptian cosmology and social organization. Egyptians visualized a world in which chaotic, external forces threatened the ordered creation, and this duality, characterized according to a need to maintain balance and sway was expressed in many ways, from myths of divine death and rebirth to the structur compositions of Egyptian art and subjects This first chapter also usefully views the working methods and materials of Egyptian artists, who were, by means of and large, anonymous. Archaeological and documentary evidence from a village of state-supported workmen (Deir el-Medina, ca. 1300-1100 BCE) however, gives about insight into how artists were trained and organized (p 29)

Each of the following twelve chapters, which comprise the chronological inspect is subdivided into sections considering, onward the one hand, royal art and, onward the other, the art of the elite, those prosperous nonroyal individuals who held secular and sacred offices at a national or provincial even These two spheres provided the patronage for the visual arts and affected or interacted with each other in different ways, depending forward the political and economic climate of a given period. Unsurprisingly, many aspects of artistic expression were exclusive to the king, becoming both to his position and to the resources he commanded. Art forms commissioned through the elite are no les important for understanding Egyptian art, and Robins adequately treats nonroyal statuary tombs, and funerary equipment in this regard. At the beginning of each chapter, a brief overview veils historical developments during the time period to be considered, and chapter endnotes point the interested reader to scholarly support for the evidence existinged A short, final chapter summarizes the parts and functions of art in ancient Egyptian society, where "[t]he king and the elite were the couple the patrons and the audience in a self-sustaining rule that reinforced and justified the established social order" (p 252) It also challenges the everyday misconception that Egyptian art is, or was, monotonous and unchanging.

More than 300 illustrations are spread from beginning to end the text and include color and black-and-white photographs, line drawings, and architectural plans and reconstructions. All are generally well reproduc and suit the volume's extent and purpose; since the work was initially published by British Museum Pres in 1997 thing perceiveds from the important Egyptian collection of the British Museum predominate. The compass also includes a chronological table, a map of Egypt as far southerly as Lake Nasser, a bibliography of scholarly works cited in the verse and a list of suggestions for further reading. All of the proposeed items are in English, and several secrete subjects not fully treated in the body but most of these will alone be available through a profitable university library or specialist bibliopole Finally, the index contains as many respects to figures as to the verse making it easy to locate an illustration of a specific make submissive or a certain site; nevertheless, the index, like the bibliography and further reading list, assumes geared toward a reader already familiar with the topic or a observer wishing to delve even further into it. Taken as a whole, the work is suitable for the general public, however its quality, level of detail, and scholarly approach make it especially appropriate for university courses. The Art of Ancient Egypt will be a valuable resource for anyone teaching or studying ancient Egypt as part of a syllabus upon African art or the art of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.