This is the second and final video for the key works of Egyptian Art.
We're starting off by looking at the mortuary temple
of Hatshepsut because we'll be looking at a sculpture that represents her, that was
actually destroyed
in just a minute that's one of your key works. Hatshepsut was a particularly
exceptional pharaoh
because she was a woman, and so
her mortuary temple reflects her power. It's quite large
It's this temple over here.
She was originally named regent
for her stepson, Thutmose III, so presumably she was intended to rule until
reached his majority, and then she would step aside.
This did not happen, however, she seems to have taken control
and ruled from 1473 to 1458 BCE.
So, the location of this mortuary temple is farther south -- Deir el-Bahri
-- farther south in Egypt,
indicating that in the New Kingdom you see a number of structures, monuments and
the capital itself
moving farther south in what we consider to be
Upper Egypt.
Hatshepsut's mummy has been recently discovered, or at least archaeologists hope that they've
found her
mummy. Because her stepson -- once he became pharaoh --
carried out a campaign of trying to destroy her memory or any claims that
she made
to being pharaoh or king, her mummy may have been hidden away
in the tomb of her nurse, so they found a mummy that
that's extraordinarily well preserved, and there are a few
he archaeological findings that connect at the mummy
that we see here to her original coffin,
but unfortunately we cannot know for sure if this is
actually Hatshepsut, but that's a recent archaeological
discovery. The key word we are focusing on is Hatshepsut with offering jars from
the upper court
of her mortuary temple -- so the upper area at the temple that I was the first slide of this
video
So, what we see here is work made out of red granite.
It's currently in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City
It's quite substantial in size -- over eight feet tall.
and if you look closely you can see that its
all fragmented -- broken up into tiny little
pieces, which that reflects the fact that once Thutmose III became pharaoh he did destroy a
lot
Hatshepsut's memory through the destruction of her artworks.
As we can see from this work of art, she really did take on
more of the appearance of a man in her artwork
Probably as a way to ensure
or to reassure her people that she was powerful enough
and strong enough to rule. She wears the same kind of headdress as that we
saw previously with earlier pharaohs from the Old Kingdom.
She has the false beard even though she's a women, and she's holding onto two
offering jars here and also kneeling.
The offering jars and the kneeling pose are things that a pharaoh would only do
when making offerings to the gods or to the divine
A pharaoh would never kneel to anyone but to a god,
so this shows us that that she has this sculpture
that puts her in a position of perpetual offerings
or perpetual gift to the gods.
This is the Temple of Amun-Re in
Karnak in Egypt. This is also from an area farther south
in Egypt. This entire complex takes up hundreds of acres
You can see it's enclosed. It would have been a restricted area
primarily for priests; also the pharaoh could presumably
enter, especially became the pharaohs were often the primary
patrons of this site.
Some of the site does survive. We have some columns
and remnants of the structures, but most of it does not survive as it looks
in this reconstruction, so I show you the reconstruction, so you can see the temple
of Amun-
Re at center here, and you can also see the sacred
lake here, which refers back
to the creation story -- from the waters
of the Egyptians. The stories begin
with the first waters or early waters and then land came from those waters,
so presumably this structure recreates the
creation story of the Egyptians.
And so, we'll focus in on the structure here. The temple to Amun-Re.
You can see there's number pylons or gateways that one would have to go
through
plus pylons on either side of the temple itself.
A number of pharaohs contributed to this,
so Hatshepsut also Thutmose III
Thutmose I, Ramses and Seti later on.
A recent project that's been undertaken at UCLA is to do a digital
reconstruction of Karnak because it did change so much
over a long period of time. This
reconstruction project is called digital Karnak -- it allows you to enter into places like
the temple of Amun-Re, and here's where Karnak is located
on the map of Egypt, so you can see that it is farther down the Nile
than Giza, which is up here. This is a reconstruction the hypostyle hall.
Hypostyle hall is a hall where columns support the roof.
Remember we're in a period of post-and-lintel type construction,
so you want to make sure that all the columns are relatively close together
so that the roof remains fully supported. And another invention here -- in addition
to having
this type of hypostyle hall, which we see each in other examples in Egypt --
we also have the clerestory, which are these windows along either side,
which allow light to enter in, so light would come through
in either direction. This temple otherwise would be quite dark.
It was dark -- if you see reconstruction through the Digital Karnak
project at UCLA, you'll see that it still was a relatively dark structure,
but you needed that light or this source of light
would have been very important, so by having these slightly taller -- or actually quite
a bit taller columns in the center
and then shorter calls on the side, this creates a space for windows or
for grates so that can enter in. And, this is just to give you a sense of the scale.
Look how small human figures are at the base here, and this is just a view so you
see some of the pylons on either side the temple. These are how how the
columns look today, and how the site itself survives -- the temple [interior],
and you can see a person off to the side here. The columns look
very natural. They look like a flowering plant up at the top,
so often we see these columns as reflections of
what artists and architects were seeing in the natural world, so
we believe that a lot of these architectural forms originated
in what was seen in nature, which is not unusual.
We have what's called sunken relief, so rather than carving in traditional relief
style where you would reveal the figures by carving around them,
these are actually sunken into the columns to preserve
the bulging shape of the column on either side. Otherwise if you carved in the traditional
fashion
it would look very bumpy along the side, so sunken relief
provides a more consistent look on the
outer portion of the column
Moving on you can see by looking at the temple complex
that we were just looking at Karnak that
the priests and that the religion in Egypt was becoming extremely powerful,
that they likely controlled a lot of the resources, that the priests
themselves you probably becoming very powerful,
so we see this dramatic change to a more monotheistic system
and we see this was a pharaoh called Akhenaten. He
worships a god called the "ATEN", which is a disc, a single sun disc,
so we see a portrait of Akhenaten, and Akhenaten means "He
who is a service to Aten", so he's referring through his name
back to this new god or this new
important figure in the Egyptian theology, that he is now
controlling -- that he's in charge of. We also see a dramatic change
in the artistic style in this period, so as you can see from this figure
very curvy type hips -- almost looking like female figure,
a slightly slack belly or bulging belly,
more narrow shoulders, an elongated face
so there's been a number questions as to what's going on here in terms of the artistic
style.
Is it just a break from the past? So a new style
indicating a new religion? Or it some kind of disorder that Akhenaten
suffered from that's being celebrated here? Some people have put that idea forth.
But most likely, there's just a deliberate artistic change
to reflect this new belief system. Akhenaten
also founded a new capital. It's called Akhetaten,
which is a site called Amarna, so this is often referred to as the
Amarna style, so Akhetaten
means "the horizon of Aten", so everything began to be
renamed for it this new sun disc,
this new god. Previously everything had been named for Amen [Amun],
and now everything's for Aten.
His original name meant "Amen is
satisfied" but of course he had to change it due to this new religion.
The key word here is Akhenaten represented with his wife
Nefertiti, meaning "beautiful one has come", and their three daughters.
You can see they also have these very curvy hips,
very elongated heads. The three daughters have almost
egg- shaped heads, and you can see they're in an outdoor pavilion. It looks quite
pleasurable.
They have wine carafes over here or
holders of wine or some type of liquid, but most importantly, you have that
Aten up here -- that sun disc, so the new gods don't take the forms of
animals or humans, but the form of a disc,
and so the idea that
Akhenaten would have represented himself as almost genderless,
as having both female and male characteristics may also refer back to
this
Aten, this disc that seemed to lack a sex.
And you can see the sun rays providing
health or life. You can see they're holding at the symbol of life [the Ankh] in
Egypt. And so these are being offered to
Akhenaten, his wife Nefertiti, and their three daughters.
And you can see they're clearly figures of status -- sitting on the thrones with their feet
elevated. The last
key pharaoh to focus in on is of course Tutankhamen. Who's
known in popular culture as King Tut. His tomb
is relatively modest. He died probably unexpectedly at a very young age, at
18 [years old], after ruling for about a decade, so he became pharaoh very young and
also died very young. He did a couple of important things.
The religion was changed back to the original
pantheon of gods or original group of gods, so had abandoned the worship of the Aten.
And he also -- because he died
rather suddenly -- has this relatively modest tomb
that seems to have been put together very quickly and is the only tomb to have
been found in such complete shape. It had been robbed a couple of times,
but most of the large, substantial things in his tomb were still there
including his coffin and including a lot other objects
that give us a sense of how rich some of these tombs would have been
for pharaohs who ruled for even longer than King Tut.
At first people thought maybe he was murdered. They suspected foul play
because he did die so young, but recent archaeology or recent,
excuse me, DNA analysis or analysis of his mummy
indicates that it was possibly malaria that killed him,
which was a much more common illness and
is much more exciting than murder. A key work that I want to show --
most people do know his mask and things like that -- but the key work that I want to
focus in on is his throne that we
see here. We see him looking quite young
here seated on a throne with a footstool just like the one we see here.
Just like Khafre's [sculpture from the Old Kingdom], it has lions on either side, symbols of authority and
power,
but it continues to have that Aten sun disc here, so we see some
continuity in terms of
iconography, but we do see his young wife off to the side
and her name includes the word Amen, so we know that they've returned
to the previous religion, the older religion,
and they've abandoned or seemingly abandoned
that new religion, however, some of that iconography does continue.
And, finally, if we look down at the food stool
you can see that we have bound captives so this is this portion of the footstool.
We have bound captives, which very literally would show how powerful
King Tutankhamen was and by placing his feet directly on these captives.
And, of course, Tutankhamen's name also includes a reference to that
previous god "Amen" right here,
so both his wife and Tutankhamen refer back to that
earlier god. They seem to have left the Aten behind,
with the exception of a little bit of iconography left on the throne itself.
So that's the conclusion of the New Kingdom. The next video will be on the
Near East.