Sphinx & Pyramids
The Peak and Splendour of the Old Kingdom from the Fourth
Dynasty to the end of the Sixth Dynasty
By Zahi Hawass
The Old Kingdom, from the Fourth Dynasty to the end of the Sixth Dynasty, represents the height of ancient Egyptian culture and gave birth to the distinctive style and canons of Egyptian art and architecture. It was as if a master plan or program was devised during the Fourth Dynasty, which defined the specific forms, proportions and order of art and architecture. Each elements of official and fimerary architecture, statuary, wall reliefs, even the smaller objects of daily or fimerary use had its own program which was a systematic organization of the relevant elements intended to fulfill a set of specific functions Each element was linked inseparably to the other categories and was part of a basically unified program. The overall purpose was to confirm the perfect nature of each king's governance and to emphasize his special relationship with the divine world. This program continued to the end of ancient Egyptian history.Our knowledge of the Old Kingdom comes chiefly from the monuments and objects found in the desert cemeteries of Giza. Abu Rawash, Zawiet el-Ayrian, Abusir, Saqqara, Dahshur and Meidum - all sites lying in the vicinity of the ancient capital of Memphis. With the rediscovery of ancient Egypt in the nineteenth century, these sites were first ransacked for portable objects, large and small, to grace foreign collections. This wholesale looting ceased after the foundation of the Egyptian Museum in 1857 when Mariette, a young protege of the Egyptian Khedive, employed vast teams of workmen to clear large cemeteries and buried temples. For the first time, major works of art stayed in Egypt. However, Mariette paid the workmen according to the objects found, and it is rumoured that, if finds were short, the workmen were quite capable of buying objects on the flourishing antiquities market, to present as their own discoveries, or even when they hit a particularly productive site, to withhold objects 'for a rainy day'!
Later archaeologists working in this area supervised their men more closely, and the provenance of objects found by Junker, Reisner, Abubakr, Fakhry and Hassan are well ........ed and have contributed to our detailed knowledge of this period.
الجمعة يوليو 12, 2013 9:47 pm من طرف البطل
موضوع: the peak and splender of the old kingdom from the fourth ...