• Egyptian art and sculpture extend from prehistory to the time of Alexander the Great and the conquering of Egypt by the Greeks, then the Romans. The earliest recorded Egyptian art is a depiction of a human face at Merimde Beni Salam, during the Neolithic period, which extended from 7000 to 4500 B.C.

• Four sculptures of pharaoh Ramses II. The temple of Abu Simbel, built in his honour.

• The tools of the trade include cement trowels, straws and paintbrushes, and palette knives for the more detailed work such as hieroglyphics

• Cut in the most intractable of stones, it passes on to us completely the strength and authority, the wilfulness and courage, the sensitivity and intelligence of the (artist or the) King.

Rules of Egyptian Sculpture

• Sculptures were made of stone or wood.All sculptures from stone started with a finished block of stone. The stone was worked or sculpted from all four sides at the same time and was not the work of one person, as it is today.The figures could sit, stand or kneel. The arms and legs were not free from the block because they feared extended limbs would beak off. Statues were normally view from the front although all sides of a piece were finished in some way.As with painting the statues of pharaohs were not intended to look like the pharaoh or his queen. The pharaoh as god and his queen were intended to be beautiful.

Pharaoh Menkaure and his Queen

Dynasty 4 2548-2530 BCE

the standard rules for standing sculpture.

1. Both the Pharaoh and his Queen are beautiful. The faces do not look like the Pharaoh or his Queen.

2. They both have hansom well formed bodies.

3. Both individuals are connected to the block, they are not free standing.

4.They each have their left foot forward.

5.This is the grid that would have been used when the sculpture was started. Note that the queen is only faintly drawn because the Pharaoh would have had his foot, the part closest to the edge of the stone done first from the front and from the left side of the block of stone.