The Canonical Tradition in Ancient Egyptian Art

Book excerpt: From the beginning of Egyptian dynastic history (c. 3000 BC), Egyptian artists worked within a set of specific rules for image making. The system was established in order to depict and to justify the ambitions of the ancient Egyptian elite, and was so successful that virtually no other forms of image making survive in the archaeological record. This book describes the rules for making correct canonical images at the levels of technique and subject matter, and explores the way in which these rules were expressed and transmitted from artist to artist over 3,000 years. Although it uses up-to-date visual and archaeological data, it presumes no specific knowledge of ancient Egypt and aims to introduce the fundamentals of Egyptian art to readers with general interests in Egyptian art, history and archaeology.