About 240 wooden statues survive from the Old Kingdom (c. 2575 - 2134 BC). The statues that can be dated by external criteria have been gathered together into a chronological catalogue and their features studied to establish dating criteria. The criteria are then applied to the remaining statues, enabling many of them to be assigned dates within individual reigns of the Old Kingdom.
The book is the first complete publication of a relatively small but interesting collection of Old Kingdom monuments in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Twenty-two pieces are reproduced as black-and-white photographs and line drawings. Among them are two statues, fourteen reliefs and relief fragments, five offering stones and a fragment of an ointment tablet; several objects in museums of Cairo, Copenhagen, and Cambridge belonging to the same people are published as well. Most of these monuments were never published or are known only through books and periodicals in Russian that usually are not available in Egyptological libraries. Although the Hermitage pieces were acquired at antiquities dealers without any documentation, their modern history is traced and in a half of cases either their provenance is reconstructed or related monuments are found. A limited number of monuments allowed the author to discuss them to a much greater extent than it is common in museum publications and, thus, the book in spite of its structure of a catalogue virtually is a detailed study of various problems of Old Kingdom history and ideology.
In the autumn of 1997, following his sixty-fifth birthday Prof. Dr Herman te Velde retired from the chair of Egyptology at the University of Groningen. On this occasion he was presented with a volume of Egyptological studies in his honour to which colleagues and friends from all over the world contributed. Although the emphasis is on the relition of Ancient Egypt, the book covers a wide range of subjects including history and archaeology, philology and linguistics.
The Middle Kingdom (ca. 2030–1650 B.C.) was a transformational period in ancient Egypt, during which older artistic conventions, cultural principles, religious beliefs, and political systems were revived and reimagined. Ancient Egypt Transformed presents a comprehensive picture of the art of the Middle Kingdom, arguably the least known of Egypt’s three kingdoms and yet one that saw the creation of powerful, compelling works rendered with great subtlety and sensitivity. The book brings together nearly 300 diverse works— including sculpture, relief decoration, stelae, jewelry, coffins, funerary objects, and personal possessions from the world’s leading collections of Egyptian art. Essays on architecture, statuary, tomb and temple relief decoration, and stele explore how Middle Kingdom artists adapted forms and iconography of the Old Kingdom, using existing conventions to create strikingly original works. Twelve lavishly illustrated chapters, each with a scholarly essay and entries on related objects, begin with discussions of the distinctive art that arose in the south during the early Middle Kingdom, the artistic developments that followed the return to Egypt’s traditional capital in the north, and the renewed construction of pyramid complexes. Thematic chapters devoted to the pharaoh, royal women, the court, and the vital role of family explore art created for different strata of Egyptian society, while others provide insight into Egypt’s expanding relations with foreign lands and the themes of Middle Kingdom literature. The era’s religious beliefs and practices, such as the pilgrimage to Abydos, are revealed through magnificent objects created for tombs, chapels, and temples. Finally, the book discusses Middle Kingdom archaeological sites, including excavations undertaken by the Metropolitan Museum over a number of decades. Written by an international team of respected Egyptologists and Middle Kingdom specialists, the text provides recent scholarship and fresh insights, making the book an authoritative resource.
Cairo’s Egyptian Museum houses the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world. Some 150,000 pieces are exhibited, and another 30,000 are held in storerooms. This book carries full-color illustrations of many of the masterpieces of ancient art in the museum from the decorated vases, flint knives, and palettes of the predynastic period, through the magnificent artifacts of the pharaonic period, to the beautiful tempera portraits of the Roman period.
Masterworks from a golden era of ancient Egyptian culture are gathered in this volume, which accompanies a landmark exhibition organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, running from September 16, 1999 through January 9, 2000. 130 color illustrations.
During the Old Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians constructed elaborately decorated mortuary monuments for their pharaohs. By the late Old Kingdom (ca. 2435-2153 BCE), these pyramid complexes began to contain a new and unique type of statue, the so-called prisoner statues. Despite being known to Egyptologists for decades, these statues of kneeling, bound foreign captives have been only partially documented, and questions surrounding their use, treatment, and exact meaning have remained unanswered. Ancient Egyptian Prisoner Statues-the first comprehensive analysis of the prisoner statues-addresses this gap, demonstrating that the Egyptians conceived of and used the prisoner statues differently over time as a response to contemporary social, cultural, and historical changes. In the process, the author contributes new data and interpretations on topics as diverse as the purpose and function of the pyramid complex, the ways in which the Egyptians understood and depicted ethnicity, and the agency of artists in ancient Egypt. Ultimately, this volume provides a fuller understanding of not only the prisoner statues but also the Egyptian late Old Kingdom as a whole.
During 2004 a conference dedicated to the history, art, archaeology and language of Old Kingdom Egypt (2700 - 2200 BC) was organised by the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Prague. The publication of the conference makes available a representative overview of the latest research and trends presented by more than thirty Egyptologists, most of them leading experts in their respective fields of specialisation.
"The Egyptian Old Kingdom (c. 2650-2150 BC) was an era of extraordinary artistic achievement-the period that gave us the Sphinx and the pyramids as well as a rich legacy of private tombs, wall paintings, reliefs, statuary, jewelry, and decorative arts. This book, the companion volume to a major traveling exhibition organized by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre in Paris, showcases the most impressive assemblage of Egyptian art and artifacts since the Tutankhamun exhibition of the late 1970s. Scholarly essays and 650 illustrations bring to life a remarkable panoply of Old Kingdom objects-temple and tomb reliefs, striking gold jewelry, handsome stone vessels, monumental statues, stelae, and exquisite statuettes. Together, text and images create a stunning tribute to the world of the Pharaohs"--Publisher's description.
