The earliest creator in world history whose name is known to us today was Egyptian. The priest Imhotep is credited with designing the step pyramid of King Djoser at Saqqara about 4,700 years ago, and so starting the sublime aesthetic achievements of the ancient state that straddled the Nile.
Yet ancient Egyptians did not imagine creativity as an individual achievement or see artists as celebrities – unless they were literally gods. Imhotep was believed to be the son of the creator god Ptah and was deified as a god of wisdom and knowledge, patron of scribes. Most Egyptian artists were no more likely to be remembered by name than Stonehenge’s builders. “Art” was not an idea. Golden mummy masks and statues of spear-wielding pharaohs were not made to be admired but to help dead people on their journeys through the afterlife. As for individual creativity, there wasn’t much place for it in art that conserved the same style, with only superficial changes, for 3,000 years.
Or was that really the case? When you study wall paintings in Egyptian tombs, says Helen Strudwick of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, you sometimes see outbursts of individualism, when the painter breaks out of the formalised Egyptian style. “You’ll find a little snippet where it’s really quite free … sketchy stuff.”
Strudwick is the curator of the Fitzwilliam’s Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition, which aims to let the artist step out from behind Egyptian art. Unlike most exhibitions that are transfixed by the magical purposes and magnificence of this art, Strudwick wants to explore how and by whom it was made: “Their skills, how they lived, their practices.”
They didn’t call themselves artists, for one thing. “The term they used is ‘hemut’, someone who knew how to do things in a skilled way with deep knowledge.”
These highly skilled workers were “predominantly men” and their knowledge was passed on through families, father to son. It was valued work and their lives were fairly comfortable. In the Valley of the Kings, there was a special village for the artists who worked at this remote desert location, with a canteen and servants. A typical day involved four hours work, then a meal break, then another four hours. It seems a long way from the stereotype of ancient Egypt as an oppressive top-down society where overseers with lashes extracted forced labour.
“Slaves didn’t build the pyramids – they were built by a skilled workforce,” says Strudwick. In general in ancient Egypt, “Slaves were less of a thing than people tend to think.”
We see ancient Egypt so much through its tombs and their furnishings, not to mention the mummies, that it’s easy to picture it as more alien than it was. Made in Ancient Egypt wants to get at the real life behind some of the world’s greatest art. As Strudwick says: “These people were not mysteriously weird but human just like the rest of us.”
Made in Ancient Egypt is at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, to 12 April.
Pyramid schemes: five artworks from the exhibition
Head end of the inner coffin of Nespawershefyt c. 1000BC (main image, above)
Every ancient Egyptian’s hope was to have a happy afterlife. But that would entail a dangerous journey and judgment, so every spell and charm helped. All the beauty of the gold-decorated coffin of Nespawershefyt, a supervisor of scribes’ and craftsmen’s workshops, is intended to speed him on his quest. The painters and woodworkers who created this coffin were surely under extra pressure to do a good job – or maybe motivated by affection and respect, who knows? – for Nespawershefyt, their boss.
Photograph: National Museums Scotland
Commemorative stela of the faience maker Rekhamun 1295-1186BC
It’s very possible Rekhamun made this himself, to preserve his name and help him succeed in the afterlife. Ancient Egyptian faience, made with quartz and other minerals, was a brilliant blue, glazed ceramic that was believed to be magical. Against this supernatural blue, Rekhamun is drawn in clear black lines standing in front of the god Osiris, who ruled the afterlife. His gesture of supplication and worship is a personal plea for protection.
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Photograph: Christian Décamps/Musée du Louvre/GrandPalaisRmn
A guide for drawing animals 664-332BC
This amazing document of how ancient Egyptian artists learned to draw is also an insight into how art stylises reality. Animals are depicted in flat profile, in the formalised way they appear in tomb paintings. Artists are literally being shown how to see like an ancient Egyptian. When the 14th-century BC pharaoh Akhenaten overturned religious and artistic conventions, artists switched immediately to the realistic, expressive style he wanted. When he died they went back to drawing like this.
Photograph: Christian Décamps/Musée du Louvre/ GrandPalaisRmn
Decorative spoon with an elaborate handle and swivel lid 1327-1186BC
This exquisite object of carob wood shows how creative Egypt’s craftspeople could be. It’s a long container for cosmetics: the jar the woman appears to carry is a makeup pot with a movable lid. The portrayal of her near-naked body under the tottering jar, still with its bright yet delicate painted colours, has a sense of sheer artistic playfulness. It’s a glimpse not only of the maker’s skill but the joy ancient Egyptian artists could find in their work.
Photograph: The Trustees of the British Museum
Glass vessel in the form of a fish 1550-1292BC
It used to be thought that the ancient Egyptians didn’t know how to make glass so imported it. Now this is known to be untrue. “There’s clear evidence that they were making glass in a really skilled way,” says Strudwick. That skill glows in this gorgeous sculpture of a fish. It is also proof that Egyptian artists could see and imitate nature in the round: their paintings’ formality was dropped when they made three-dimensional objects.
