An illustrated history of over 3,000 years of Egyptian artwork arranged chronologically from the early dynastic period to the Ptolemaic period.

"Gay Robins discusses the role of royal women, queenship and its divine connotations, and describes the exceptional women who broke the bounds of tradition by assuming real power."--Back cover.

For over three thousand years, ancient Egyptian sculptors created statues of deities, kings and elite officials and their families. These were set up mainly in temples or tombs and played a vital role in temple and funerary ritual, being places where non-physical entities - deities, the royal ka-spirit and the ka-spirits of the dead - could manifest themselves in this world. The book begins by examining the materials and techniques employed by sculptors and the various statue types and poses that occur. Next it explores the function of statues and the different contexts for which they were made. This is followed by a chapter explaining the notion of the ideal image: statues were not intended to be exact likenesses but rather ideal images reflecting the identity, role and status of the subject. The individual identity of a statue was usually provided by inscriptions, and the various texts found on statues are discussed together with the different types of relief decoration that occur on statue surfaces. A final chapter considers what was constant and what changed over time and looks at the influence that Egyptian statues had on the origins of monumental Greek sculpture.

The artists of Ancient Egypt reached a level of sophistication and technical mastery unsurpassed by other early peoples. This book elucidates the principles of representation underlying Egyptian art, which differ fundamentally from western conventions rooted in perspective, and describes the materials and methods used by the artists.

She also considers for the first time how, in general, the use of a grid system influenced composition as a whole. Numerous line drawings of paintings and reliefs with superimposed grids, either derived from actual grid traces surviving on monuments, or calculated according to the systems used by the Egyptians themselves, illustrate the text.

La obra estudia el papel de la mujer en el seno de la antigua sociedad egipcia, a partir de los documentos conservados (tanto los textos mismos como los objetos, artísticos o no, que han llegado a nosotros). Desde el papel de las mujeres de la realeza y las sacerdotisas de los distintos cultos religiosos a la vida cotidiana de la mujer, tanto en el hogar y la familia como en la esfera económica y legal.