Ancient Art Podcast

November 27, 2009April 15, 2012

26: Aphrodite of Knidos

Welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast. I’m your host, Lucas Livingston. Last time in episode 25, “Beheaded Beauties,” we explored the Art Institute of Chicago’s 2nd century Roman headless statue of a seated woman. We closed with a glimpse of the also-headless and roughly contemporary 2nd century statue of a standing nude woman.

There are a number of indicators that tell us that this is a copy of the famed Aphrodite of Knidos by the prolific Hellenistic sculptor Praxiteles from the 4th century BC, approximately five centuries earlier than the Art Institute’s copy.

The Aphrodite of Knidos has her claim to fame as being the nude that ushered in the era of Greek nudes. She’s widely considered one of the first and certainly the most famous of Greek nude female sculptures. She gets her name from, well, of course, the subject depicted, Aphrodite, goddess of love, the Roman Venus. And Knidos comes from the ancient city that purchased the statue from Praxiteles. Knidos was located on the southeastern coast of Turkey on a narrow peninsula jutting far out into the Aegean Sea. You might also come across the pronunciation [ni’dus], but that’s just plain silly.

In his work called the Natural History, the 1st century Roman historian Pliny the Elder recounts the story that Praxiteles was commissioned by two cities for a statue of Aphrodite, Knidos and Kos. So, Praxiteles created two different statues of the goddess, one traditional draped figure and then the very Avante-garde nude. Kos, the wealthier of the two cities, got first dibs and went with the less controversial draped Aphrodite and Knidos got the leftovers, although that’s really not fair to say. They still got a Praxiteles. And the world fell in love with her. This controversial nude depiction of a goddess put Knidos on the map. So stunningly beautiful was the work of art, that the goddess Aphrodite herself is said to have asked, “Where did Praxiteles see me naked?” Pliny states that, “…superior to any other statue, not only to others made by Praxiteles himself, but throughout the world, is the Venus, which many people have sailed to Cnidus to see.” People came from far and wide throughout the Mediterranean World to visit her. The citizens of Knidos set her up in a rotunda, a round chapel, so she could be equally admired from all angles. There’s an interesting account of the setting in the Amores:

“…we entered the temple. In the midst thereof sits the goddess–she’s a most beautiful statue of Parian marble–arrogantly smiling a little as a grin parts her lips. Draped by no garment, all her beauty is uncovered and revealed, except in so far as she unobtrusively uses one hand to hide her private parts. So great was the power of the craftsman’s art that the hard unyielding marble did justice to every limb….The temple had a door on both sides for the benefit of those also who wish to have a good view of the goddess from behind, so that no part of her be left unadmired. It’s easy therefore for people to enter by the other door and survey the beauty of her back.”

To add further scandal to this already controversial nude depiction of a goddess, various stories begin to emerge in the centuries following the statue’s debut identifying the famous Greek courtesan Phryne as having supposedly been the model for this sacred icon of the goddess Aphrodite. Other accounts also surface of the supposed romantic affair between Praxiteles and Phryne.

Later during the Roman era, it became vogue for sculptors to produce copies of famous works for wealthy patricians to decorate their villas. The Aphrodite of Knidos was one such statue and her image soon flooded to Roman empire. Figures based on the Aphrodite of Knidos are commonly referred to as “Knidia.” What distinguishes the Knidia from other nude representations of the goddess is the general pose, for one. She’s commonly interpreted as engaging in the rather private act of bathing and we’re peering at her with this almost voyeuristic gaze. Her right arm reaches down seemingly in a gesture of modesty. We see two small bumps on her inner left thigh where two fingers of her right hand one engaged with the thigh. That’s something of a remarkable feature to this Roman copy. The torso and at least the right arm are composed of a single unbroken piece of marble skillfully carved to produce the long curving limb structurally reinforced by its engagement with the hip. Remember from last episode’s Statue of a Seated Woman that it was common for sculptors to carve limbs and other precarious projections separately and then attach them with wooden or metal dowels, or more properly called tenons. So while the Art Institute’s heavily weathered Knidia may not be the hottie that she used to be, she’s still quite artistically remarkable. On her outside left thigh is a fairly long fragmented tab from some now lost section. Most likely the characteristic Roman period support pillar once connected with the rest of the figure at this point.

The support pillar was probably in the shape of a vessel that held the water for her bath. The evidence can be seen in other copies of the Knidia, one of the more famous being the Colonna Venus in the Vatican’s Museo Pio-Clementino. Also the Venus Braschi in the Munich Glyptothek. In her left hand she holds her drapery that she has removed for her ritual cleansing, which is now missing from the Art Institute example. Perhaps our best evidence for the appearance of the original Praxitelean Aphrodite of Knidos comes not from later copies, but from coins, like this 1916 engraving of an ancient coin from Knidos supposedly depicting the original statue. Also, don’t forget … as we’ve seen in many other episodes of the podcast, this statue, too, like so many others, was painted. The 19th century neo-classical sculptor John Gibson shocked audiences when he debuted his Tinted Venus in an attempt to recapture the Classical taste for polychromy.

As we already learned, the Aphrodite of Knidos was one of the most famous statues in her day and extensively copied during the Roman era. There are a bunch of copies existing today, and for each surviving copy we can imagine dozens of copies that didn’t withstand the ravages of time and mankind. The whole notion of a Roman “copy” of a Greek original, though, is a very loaded term that demands a little more attention. When we think of a copy, we likely think of an exact duplicate, like a photocopy. But when we’re talking about Roman copies of Greek statues, the copy in this context can more so be thought of having been inspired by the original. Putting two copies of the same original side-by-side reveal distinct differences. Often the Roman era artists may not have even seen the original, and were working from a description, another copy, or at best a tiny image on a coin. In the case of the Knidia, in the successive centuries, we begin to see some variants on the original form.

One popular variant is dubbed the “Venus Pudica” — the “modest Venus.” A particularly famous example is the Venus de’ Medici in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Here we see both hands of the goddess posed in what are generally interpreted as gestures of modesty, the right hand now at her chest and the left hand below the waist. The drapery is gone and the vessel in this example has been replaced with a small cupid figure riding a dolphin. The dolphin alludes to the sea, out of which, according to one legend, Aphrodite was born. Check out Hesiod’s Theogony around line 175. It’s a bit gruesome, but nothing you can’t handle. You’ll find a link to the full ancient text translated into English at ancientartpodcast.org. Just click on “Ancient Sources on Aphrodite” in the Additional Resources section. There you’ll also find links to some of the other primary sources that we’ve learned about in this episode on the Aphrodite of Knidos. Aphrodite rising from the sea is perhaps most famously captured not in an ancient work of art, but in Sandro Botticelli’s the Birth of Venus from 1482-86, also in the Uffizi. The pose of the goddess by the Florentine master strongly reflects the Venus de’ Medici, which Botticelli had plenty of opportunity to study.

Despite first-hand accounts from ancient sources stating that Aphrodite is covering up her private parts for modesty’s sake, you’ll come across some revisionist interpretations of the gesture not as a shameful attempt to cover her sexuality, but rather to emphasize it. Check out, for example, Christine Mitchell Havelock’s 1995 publication The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors, where the author argues that her nudity signifies her divine birth from the sea, and we’re not catching her off guard at her bath. Rather, the vessel is for ritual cleansing and renewal. So, we shouldn’t necessarily take any interpretation at its face value, even an ancient one. But it’s important to remember that our own contemporary culture can easily be a filter that shapes and guides our interpretations. And that’s what makes art the gift that keeps on giving.

Don’t forget to check out ancientartpodcast.org for image credits, bibliographic references, and links to lots of other relevant things. I appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. You can reach me at info@ancientartpodcast.org or with the feedback form on the website. You’ll find me on Twitter at lucaslivingston. And you can leave your comments on YouTube, iTunes, or on the website itself. You might have heard that the Art Institute of Chicago’s podcast Musecast has reached its final episode, but don’t worry. The Ancient Art Podcast ain’t goin’ anywhere! Thanks for listening and see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

Image Credits

1. Statue of a Seated Woman, Roman, 2nd century A.D. The Art Institute of Chicago. Katherine K. Adler Endowment, 1986.1060. Photo by Lucas Livingston, 23 Oct 2009.
2. Galleries of Roman art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo by Lucas Livingston, 23 Oct 2009. (photo #DSC03599)
3. Galleries of Roman art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo by Lucas Livingston, 23 Oct 2009. (photo #DSC03598)
4. Statue of the Aphrodite of Knidos, 2nd century A.D. Roman copy of a fourth century B.C. Greek original by Praxiteles. The Art Institute of Chicago, Katherine K. Adler Endowment, 1981.11. Photo by Lucas Livingston, 23 Oct 2009.
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1. Shepherd, William R. “ Reference Map of Asia Minor under the Greeks and Romans,” The Historical Atlas, 1923, from the University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection.
2. “Venus Temple at the Villa Adriana in Tivoli,” photo by Jastrow, September 2006.
3. Temple of Venus at Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli, Italy. Image from “Tivoli.” Encyclopaedia Romana. Accessed 28 November, 2009.
4. Unidentified statue of of a woman, presumable Aphrodite, in the Louvre Museum, Paris, France. Photo 20 October, 2007.
5. The Colonna Venus. Roman period copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos. Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican, Italy. Image from “Aphrodite of Cnidus,” Encyclopaedia Romana. Accessed 4 December, 2009
6. The Colonna Venus from Paul Carus, Venus of Milo: An Archaeological Study of Woman. The Open Court Publishing Company, 1916, p. 172.
7. Head of Aphrodite, of the Aspremont-Lynden/Arles type, 1st AD copy of an original from Praxiteles. Christian mark (cross) defacing the chin and forehead. Found in the Roman Agora of Athens. National Archaeological Museum in Athens (MNA 1762).
8. Ludovisi Cnidian Aphrodite. Roman copy after a Greek original of the 4th century. Marble; original elements: torso and thighs; restored elements: head, arms, legs and support (drapery and jug). Ludovisi Collection, Palazzo Altemps, National Roman Museum, Inv. 8619. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen, September 2009.
9. So-called Aphrodite Braschi, 1st century BC copy after a votive statue of Praxitelean Aphrodite of Cnidus type, ca. 350–340 BC). Glyptothek, Munich, Germany, Inv. 258. Photo by Bibi Saint-Pol, 2007-02-08.
10. An engraving by Roscher of an ancient coin from Knidos, showing the Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles, from Paul Carus, Venus of Milo: An Archaeological Study of Woman. The Open Court Publishing Company, 1916, p. 162.
11. John Gibson, The Tinted Venus, c.1851-6. Tinted marble, height 175 cm Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England (WAG7808).
12. “John Gibson: The Tinted Venus.” Encyclopaedia Romana. Accessed 4 December, 2009.
13. Modern cast in Pushkin Museum, Moscow, of the Venus de’ Medici, 1st century BC, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
14. Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510). The Birth of Venus, ca 1482-1486. Tempera on canvas. 172.5 cm x 278.5 cm (67.9 in x 109.6 in), Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

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October 25, 2009October 4, 2017

25: Beheaded Beauties

Welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast, bringing you the chart-topping hits from the ancient art billboard three years running now. Every month or so the Art Institute of Chicago publishes a neat little self-guide that draws connections between different works of art in the collection. You can download it or pick it up at the museum, or just keep it on your smartphone while you go around browsing the artwork. In keeping with the Halloween season, the October 2009 self-guide is called “Off with Their Heads,” inspired, as it says, “by the playfully disembodied human heads that practitioners of Victorian photocollage whimsically grafted on to animal bodies or morphed into household objects…[T]his guide reveals the bounty of beheadings in the collection, from the ghoulish to the gorgeous.”

One humorous disembodiment is a page from the Madame B Album of the 1870’s where little portrait photos of Madame B’s family were cut out and pasted onto the tail feathers of a watercolor turkey. And then the rather grisly Head of Guillotined Man by Théodore Géricault from 1818 to 1819. Supposedly Géricault kept this severed head of a thief in his studio for two weeks! On the flip side, some headless bodies include the provocative, yet disturbing 1988 sculpture of a Woman in a Tub by Jeff Koons. You can only wonder what’s at the other end of that snorkel poking out of the water. And then we come to a Roman period Statue of a Seated Woman.

The Art Institute self-guide reveals that this 2nd century marble sculpture didn’t lose its head as an accident. You can tell from the deep cavity in the neck that the head was carved separately and then attached to the torso. It was common among Roman statuary to make the head removable and interchangeable, especially with imperial statuary. In our current economic climate we can appreciate that marble was expensive. So instead of throwing away the whole statue of someone after they passed away, it made more sense simply to remove the distinctly identifiable portrait head and replace that with the head of the new emperor or whoever has just inherited the work of art, because the clothing that they wore, or in the case of the emperor, the military regalia, didn’t considerably change enough to warrant the cost of a whole new body.

If you look closely, you’ll see that the arms too were separately carved and attached with dowels, like little rods. See the holes carved into the shoulders of the woman? Dowels could be made from wood or metal and a simple analysis could tell you in the case here, but the reason for separately carved arms wasn’t so they could be interchangeable. Wipe those images of Mr. Potato Head from your mind. No, it served the very practical function of permitting them to bend a little bit. Marble along with any kind of stone has a very low tensile strength, meaning it’ll break before it bends. Wood and metal have a far greater ability to bend, so it was wise to insert dowels at points of precarious joints, like where an outstretched arm meets the shoulder. Without the dowels, the arms would have long since snapped off and would be forever lost … um … well.

Moving right along, the elaborate drapery is befitting of a goddess, perhaps Juno, the Roman Hera, or perhaps a wealthy patrician matron casting herself in the light of a goddess. As the self-guide suggests, perhaps one of the imperial wives: Faustina the Elder or her daughter Faustina II, both elevated to goddesses posthumously. Whomever the original subject may have been, it’s thought that the artist was likely looking back to the grand sculptural legacy of the Periklean Acropolis. We examined the Parthenon frieze ad nauseam in episodes 10, 11, and 12. Nearby the Parthenon, jutting out on a precipice of the Acropolis is the diminutive Temple of Athena Niké, that is Athena in the guise of Nike, goddess of victory. The Nike temple of 410 BC was once adorned with richly carved depictions of the goddess striking various poses, like the exquisite and thankfully surviving example of Nike fastening her sandals in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, or some might say unfastening her sandals as she prepares to enter a sacred space. You see how deeply carved the folds of her drapery are? There’s this almost unnatural suspension of gravity and physics. She’s definitely having a massively bad static cling day. In these figures of Nike, the desperately realistic and idealized images from the High Classical Greek era are beginning to give way to the more exaggerated and outlandishly baroque style of the later Hellenistic period. Her robe becomes almost liquid as is pours and cascades down her frame revealing the not so subtle contours of her nude physique underneath.

We see a strong stylistic influence taking place on a somewhat more prudish Roman level in the figure from the Art Institute. The drapery spilling over her leg also has this rather liquid appearance to it, like some ancient Roman wet toga contest effectively revealing her leg beneath. Her undergarment produces a sort of tidy meander at the ground level similar to the earlier Nike. Note also the belt clenching her waist and bunching the fabric. We also see a similar tight cinching of the waist on other fragmentary Nikes from the Temple of Athena Niké as well as a similar horizontal billowing of an especially large fold of drapery. The many stylistic similarities in the rendering of drapery strongly suggest that the Roman era artist of the Art Institute’s 2nd century AD Statue of a Seated Woman was indeed likely receiving strong inspiration from that pinnacle of Greek artistic achievement, the 5th century BC Athenian Acropolis.

It’s not entirely surprising that a 2nd century Roman artist would receive inspiration from the Ancient Greek sculptural tradition of six centuries earlier. Many of the artist in the Roman Empire were in fact Greek slaves. The size and scope of the Roman slave force was phenomenal. The HBO series Rome gives you some sense of the proliferation of slavery. Many of the highly skilled laborers in the Roman Empire were slaves, including artists, accountants, physicians, secretaries, tutors for Rome’s privileged children, and, get this, corporate management! So, it’s quite likely that our Roman era artist here would have received his artistic training in Greece, with many Classical and Hellenistic prototypes, including the Acropolis sculptures, serving as models.

This Statue of a Seated Woman isn’t the only beheaded beauty in the Art Institute’s Roman art collection. Here’s a lovely lady contemporary to the seated woman. This is a 2nd century copy of one of the most notable statues from the Hellenistic world, the famed Aphrodite of Knidos by the 4th century BC Athenian sculptor Praxiteles. The Aphrodite of Knidos was the nude that ushered in the era of Greek nudes. This is one of countless copies of the Praxitelean Aphrodite produced during the Roman era, which demonstrates the feverish popularity of the original work. The Aphrodite of Knidos deserves much more attention than what we’re able to cover in the short span of this episode, so we’ll just have to defer our satisfaction until next time when we’ll take a close detailed look at the fantastic history, legacy, and artistry of the Aphrodite of Knidos.

In the mean time, download “Off with Their Heads,” the October self-guide to the Art Institute of Chicago. If you follow me on Twitter at lucaslivingston, you’ll already have the link — check out tinyurl.com/aicselfguide. Also, try to visit the special exhibition “Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage” at the Art Institute on view through January 3, 2010. You’ll find a nice little interview with the curator Liz Siegel in the October episode of the museum’s podcast Musecast. Thanks to everyone who’s sending the feedback and questions. You can contact me at info@ancientartpodcast.org. You can also leave comments at the website, on YouTune, and on iTunes. You’ll find the feedback form at ancientartpodcast.org, plus the nice little survey that helps me get to know more about you all and your interests. Happy Halloween and see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

Image Credits

1. Marie-Blanche-Hennelle Fournier (French, 1831-1906). The Marvelous Album of Madame B, 1870’s. The Art Institute of Chicago. Mary and Leigh Block Endowment, 2005.297.1-141.

2. Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault (French, 1791-1824). Head of a Guillotined Man, 1818/19. The Art Institute of Chicago. Through prior gift of William Wood Prince; L. L. and A. S. Coburn Endowment; Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection, 1992.628.

3. Jeff Koons (American, born 1955). Woman in a Tub, 1988. Porcelain. The Art Institute of Chicago. Collection Stefan T. Edlis Trust, partial and promised gift to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2005.472.

4. Statue of a Seated Woman, Roman, 2nd century A.D. The Art Institute of Chicago. Katherine K. Adler Endowment, 1986.1060. Photo by Lucas Livingston, 23 Oct 2009.

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11. The British Museum, Room 18 – The Parthenon Galleries (North Slip Room). Photo by Mujtaba Chohan. 8 January 2007.

12. Cavalcade. Block II from the west frieze of the Parthenon, ca. 447–433 BC. British Museum. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen. 2006.

13. Areopagus with the Acropolis of Athens in the background.

14. Temple of Athena Nike, Acropolis of Athens Greece. Photo by Steve Swayne, 26 August, 1978.

15. Nike adjusting her sandal from the parapet of the Temple of Athena Nike, Acropolis, Athens, Greece, c. 410 BC, Acropolis Museum Athens. [Official website]

16. Two Nikai leading a bull to sacrifice. Slab north IV, figures 10-11 from the parapet of the temple of Athena Nike, Greece, c. 410 BC, Acropolis Museum Athens. [Official website]

17. Image of Acropolis hill and Parthenon at night. Photo by Thermos, 29 June 2006.

18. Title image from the HBO television series “Rome,” 2005-2007. [Official website]

19. Galleries of Roman art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo by Lucas Livingston, 23 Oct 2009.

20. Statue of the Aphrodite of Knidos, 2nd century A.D. Roman copy of a fourth century B.C. Greek original by Praxiteles. The Art Institute of Chicago, Katherine K. Adler Endowment, 1981.11. Photo by Lucas Livingston, 23 Oct 2009.

September 25, 2009August 17, 2017

24: Japanese Screens

Continue reading “24: Japanese Screens”

August 31, 2009April 15, 2012

23: King Tut and Beyond

Hey all you people out there. It seems that I’m not the only one to have noticed the crazy resemblance between that one Egyptian statue at the Field Museum and … oh … the most famous entertainer in the history of the world, Michael Jackson. The press also caught wind of the same likeness early this month and the web has been lit up with articles and blog posts. If you want to check it out yourself, I’ve put together a collection of many links at ancientartpodcast.org in the Additional Resources section under the blog post “Ancient Egyptian Michael Jackson look-alike.”

My wife and I went to the Field Museum last weekend to see the “Pirates” exhibition, and while we was there I took a few new photos of the Egyptian statue. Added bonus, we got our names stamped in Egyptian hieroglyphs, but I was a jerk and made them redo her name, because they spelled it wrong.

Like the gallery label in the Field Museum says, the statue is of a woman from the New Kingdom. That’s pretty vague, but if you look at it closely, you’ll notice that the facial characteristics and headdress bear some resemblance to the topic at hand in recent episodes, the Amarna period. Those sharp almondine eyes, deep eyelids, large full lips, high cheekbones, and exaggerated eyebrows all indicate the influence of the Amarna period following the reign of the heretic king Akhenaten. Plus the wig favors the fashion of the time.

Last time in episode 22, “Nefertiti, Devonia, Michael,” in our discussion of Lorraine O’Grady’s contemporary works Miscegenated Family Album and Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, we briefly briefly talked about the family of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and touched on the line of kings following Akhenaten. It gets a little confusing late in Akhenaten’s reign. Did Nefertiti rule alongside him as coregent? Was there another male king on the scene? Did one of Akhenaten’s daughters assume the throne for a while? How many kings were there between Akhenaten and Tut? These questions continue to be debated, as can be seen in the latest issue of KMT magazine, the Fall 2009 issue, volume 20, number 3, in Aidan Dodson’s article “Were Nefertit & Tutankhamun Coregents?” Your head can really spin around if you think too hard about this. It’s like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box and only half the pieces.

Looking at what we do have, though, we see evidence of a somewhat turbulent transition from heretical Atenism back to orthodoxy, but it’s not a complete return. The Amarna period has a lasting impact on Egyptian art, giving rise to what’s sometimes dubbed the post-Amarna period, or more romantically the “legacy of Amarna.”

You might be familiar with this all-too-famous throne from the tomb of King Tut, which can be yours now for only $895 plus $39 shipping and handling direct from SkyMall. The original of this magnificent work of Ancient Egyptian artistry is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. There are countless spectacular things about it, but one interesting nuance to zero in on is the inscription. The chair must have been produced very early in the reign of King Tut. We can tell because he’s referred to by his early throne name, Tutankhaten, with his wife Ankhesenpaaten, third daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. About a year into his reign, Tut changed his name from Tutankhaten to the more familiar Tutankhamun, which means the “living image of Amun,” and his queen changed her name from Ankhesenpaaten to Ankhesenamun, or if you’re Boris Karloff, that’s “Ankhsenamun” (1). Of course, at the time, Tut was only about 10 years old, so the notion that he made any decisions on his own other than which toy to play with today might be a little far fetched. More likely the name change was imposed on the boy king by his vizier Ay and other advisers like general Horemheb to win favor with the bitter and previously disenfranchised temple of Amun. “No, really, we were on your side the whole time. Yeah, that’s the ticket!”

Stylistically, the decoration of the chair also shows a strong entrenchment in the Amarna period, not only with the subject matter of the solar disk Aten shining down on the royal couple, but in the figures themselves, with their long slender limbs, sharp almondine eyes, large heads, elongated torsos, and cute little paunches. These characteristic Amarna features gradually soften in the arts, becoming less pronounced as time marches on. Some works of art well into the following 19th dynasty, the time of those bijillion Ramses’s, continue to show strong vestiges of the Amarna style, which we will examine in a minute, but one final note that deserves recognition is the coloration of their skin.

King Tut is represented with the customarily dark skin of Ancient Egyptian men, but so is his queen. Egyptian women are traditionally shown with lighter skin than men. The typical explanation for this is that men worked outdoors all day, so they had tan skin, whereas women worked indoors all day, didn’t tan as much, and are therefore traditionally shown with fairer skin. That argument is also usually put forth against skin color as an indicator of heredity. Well, permit me to get a little cynical, but that’s a prime example of art historical chauvinism getting in the way visual interpretation. Translation: look before you leap. There are many works of art from throughout Egyptian history where it’s safe to interpret racial type being expressed through skin color among other features. God forbid the Egyptians practiced mixed marriage as far back as 2600 BC, as evidenced in the statues of Rahotep and Nofret from the 5th Dynasty in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. What continues to hold public interpretation back from a more realistic, diverse perspective of the Ancient Egyptians are the sweeping blanket statements that often find their way into the press, along the lines of “[Ancient] Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa” (2). The issue’s not black or white. So, was Ankhesenamun a tomboy, spending more time outdoors than a proper young Egyptian lady should, or were she and Tut both of a more southern Egyptian heritage, closer to Nubian? Well, that’s a can of worms we don’t have time to get into, but if you want a nice synopsis of the whole issue, check out the 20-year-old article by Frank Yurco “Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White?” in the September/October 1989 issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review or BAR. You’ll find a link to the full text article in the bibliography at ancientartpodcast.org.

And then from some 20 to 100 years after the reign of King Tut comes this Lintel and Cornice from the Tomb of Iniuia and Yui at the Art Institute of Chicago. The dating is a little conflicted. The Art Institute dates the lintel to 19th dynasty during the reign of Ramesses II, 1279-1212 BC, but most scholarship seems to peg Iniuia and Yui to the reign of Horemheb, 1323-1295 BC. A lintel is simply the top of a doorway. The cornice here refers specifically to the characteristic Egyptian cavetto cornice with torus molding. The cavetto cornice is the classic, striped, flaring top section of a doorway and the torus molding is the protruding rounded ledge between the cornice and figural decoration. The cavetto cornice and torus molding both likely have their roots in traditional reed vegetal architecture translated into stone.

This piece was originally located above a doorway in the tomb of Iniuia and Yui from Saqqara. We don’t know a whole heck of a lot about them. Iniuia is the husband and Yui is his wife. In the inscription on this fragment, Iniuia is referred to by the title “Overseer of the Treasury of Silver and Gold of the Lord of the Two Lands.” At some later point in his career, he gets the titles “Overseer of the Cattle of Amun” and “Royal Scribe and Chief Steward of the Great Palace” and Yui is referred to as the “Lady of the House, the Chanteress of Amun,” which we see on their darling little double shawabty coffin lid from the MFA in Boston, which I had the pleasure of seeing in person for the first time just a couple weeks ago and snapped this lame cell phone picture.

What we are really interested in with the lintel, though, is the Amarna influence. We see Iniuia and Yui supplicating before Osiris and Isis, their hands raised in prayer, so this is clearly after the Amarna period, since the orthodox gods have been reintroduced. But look closely at Iniuia and Yui. Notice their slender limbs, elongated torsos, protruding chins, pronounced cheekbones, sharp almondine eyes, and their little potbellies. Note also how the artists has seemingly rendered a straight line from the tips of their noses to the peak of their foreheads. These are all very distinctive traits developed during the Amarna period. Even upwards of 50 years or more after the reign of the heretic king Akhenaten, after the radical transformation of Egyptian art, religion, and society, then after the rampant, vehement, passionate movement to eradicate all traces of the previous order and restore Egypt to its orthodox religious traditions, we still continue to see a lasting artistic influence of the monumentally influential Amarna period.

Thanks to all, who have been sending feedback. I appreciate you taking the time and making the good suggestions. If you want to be part of the cool crowd too, you can give feedback on the website and fill out a fun little survey. If you have any questions you’d like me to discuss in future episodes, you can also email me at info@ancientartpodcast.org. You can comment on each episode on the website or on YouTube. And if you like the podcast, why not share the love with some iTunes comments? It helps to get the podcast noticed. Lastly, you can follow me on Twitter at lucaslivingston. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

Footnotes:
1. Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen. Exhibition catalog edited by Rita E. Freed, Yvonne J. Markowitz and Sue H. D’Auria, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts in association with Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown, and Co., 1999, page 180.
2. “Hawass Says That Tutankhamun Was Not Black.” Touregypt.net. 2007-9-26. Retrieved 8-18-2009.

Image Credits

1. Statue head of a woman, limestone, New Kingdom, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago (31713), photo by Lucas Livingston.
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1. Comparison of Field Museum Statue head of a woman and Statue of an unknown Amarna-era princess. New Kingdom, Amarna period, 18th dynasty, ca. 1345 BC Egyptian Museum (21223), Berlin, photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts, 15 Dec 2006.
2. Chair of Tutankhamun, 18th dynasty, Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
3. Chair of Tutankhamun (detail), 18th dynasty, Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
4. Chair of Tutankhamun (detail), 18th dynasty, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, photo by Richard Seaman.
5. Chair of Tutankhamun (detail), 18th dynasty, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, photo by Pataki Márta.
6. Chair of Tutankhamun (detail), 18th dynasty, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, photo by Jerzy Strzelecki.
7. Golden Mask of Tutankhamun, Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
8. Cartouche of Tutankhamun.
9. Cartouche of Tutankhaten.
10. Boris Karloff as Imhotep from The Mummy, Universal Pictures, 1932.
11. Decorated Balustrade Fragment, Amarna, Great Palace, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten, 1353-1336 BC, Crystalline limestone, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JT 30/10/26/12.
12. Lintel and Cornice from the Tomb of Iniuia and Yui, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18 or 19, reign of Horemheb (1323-1295 BC) or Ramesses II, (c. 1279-1212 B.C.), The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Henry H. Getty, Charles L. Hutchinson, Robert H. Fleming, and Norman W. Harris, 1894.246.
13. Lintel and Cornice from the Tomb of Iniuia and Yui, photo by Lucas Livingston, 21 August 2009.

…

1. Wall Fragment from the Tomb of Amenemhet and His Wife Hemet, Middle Kingdom, Dynasty 12 (1976-1794 BC), The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Purchase Fund, 1920.262.
2. Scene depicting the procession of funerary offerings from the tomb of Amenemhet, senior officer during the reign of Thutmose III, Dynasty 18 (1479-1425 BC) from The Yorck Project: 10,000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.
3. Head of Queen Tiy, Egyptian Museum, Berlin.
4. Shawabtys of King Taharqa, Nubian, Napatan Period, reign of Taharqa, 690-664 BC, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
5. Statues of Rahotep and Nofret, Dynasty 4, reign of Sneferu (2575-2551 BC), Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
6. Ka statue of Rahotep, Dynasty 4, reign of Sneferu (2575-2551 BC), Egyptian Museum, Cairo, photo by Jon Bodsworth, 10 December 2007 (egyptarchive.co.uk).
7. Ka statue of Nofret, Dynasty 4, reign of Sneferu (2575-2551 BC), Egyptian Museum, Cairo, photo by Jon Bodsworth, 10 December 2007 (egyptarchive.co.uk).
8. Temple of Philae, Description de l’Egypte, Ile de Philae – A. vol. 1, pl. 18, 1809.
9. Lid for double shawabty coffin [of Iniuia and Yui], New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Horemheb (1323-1295 BC), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Francis Warden Fund, 1977.717.
10. Lid for double shawabty coffin of Iniuia and Yui, photo by Lucas Livingston, 12 August 2009.
11. Bust of Queen Nefertiti, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten (1351-1336 BC), Egyptian Museum, Berlin, photo by Magnus Manske, 28 December 2005.

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August 30, 2009April 22, 2012

Ancient Egyptian Michael Jackson Look-alike

Ancient Egyptian Michael Jackson Look-alike:

All links last retrieved on August 30, 2009.

Online media coverage:

• “Egyptian statue ‘looks like Jackson.’” Yahoo News 2009-8-8.

• Gilmer, Marcus. “Michael Jackson = Ancient Egyptian?.” Chicagoist.com 2009-8-5.

• “Egyptian Statue Looks Just Like Michael Jackson!” Media Outrage. 2009-8-6.

• Sneed, Michael. “Did Michael Jackson model face after Egyptian bust?” Chicago Sun Times. 2009-8-5.

• “Egyptian bust in Chicago museum bears eerie resemblance to Michael Jackson.” Chicago Sun Times. 2009-8-5.

• Greiner, Andrew. “Busted: Statue’s a Dead Ringer for Jacko: Jackson-like bust gets attention at Field Museum.” NBC Chicago. 2009-8-5.

• “The Top 3 Exhibits at Chicago’s Field Museum.” Speaking-up.com.

• “Egyptian Statue Totally Looks Like Michael Jackson.” Totallylookslike.com. 2009-6-2.

• “Ancient Egyptian Woman or Michael Jackson?” flickr.com by mandalariangirl. 2007-11-8. The flickr photo that started it all … or at least the one that’s referred to once or twice in the news.

• Ancient Egyptian Michael Jackson. flickr.com by Lucas Livingston. 2005-7-13. Flickr photos by yours truly, Lucas Livingston of the Ancient Art Podcast.

• “The Pharaoh of Pop?” Discovery Channel. 2009-8-12.

• “Statue Thrills Jackson Fans.” iafrica.com. 2009-8-8.

• Esaak, Shelley. “Statue of a Woman. Egyptian, New Kingdom, ca. 1550 B.C.-1070 B.C.” About.com. The only online article I could find (besides the Ancient Art Podcast) that actually has some intellectual information.

Other online articles related to Episode 23 “King Tut and Beyond”:

• “Hawass says that Tutankhamun was not black.” Touregypt.net. 2007-9-26.

• Yurco, Frank J. “Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White?” BAR 15.5 (Sep/Oct) 1989.

(Full text available online here.)

YouTube and other related video media:

• “Jackson’s Egyptian Statue Sings.” 2009-8-12. Silly parody on the Remember the Time video incorporating the Field Museum statue.

• “Michael Jackson – Remember the Time.” 2008-3-24. Official Michael Jackson video for Remember the Time.

• “Michael Jackson ~~ The Ancient Egyptian Statue.” 2009-8-6. Video from Field Museum galleries with spokesperson.

• “Michael Jackson – The Pharaoh of Pop ???” 2009-8-7. Cool morphing faces.

• “King Tut.” Saturday Night Live. Steve Martin’s classic 1970’s homage to the Egyptian boy king. Not YouTube, but it totally rocks.

July 7, 2009August 17, 2017

Lorraine O’Grady Resources

1. Lorraine O’Grady (American, born 1940), Miscegenated Family Album, 1980/94, Art Institute of Chicago, Through prior bequest of Marguerita S. Ritman, 2008.81.1-16.

2. Miscegenated Family Album, Alexander Gray Associates, press release, 10 Sep 2008.

3. Lorraine O’Grady (official website of the artist). http://www.lorraineogrady.com/

4. Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline (official website)

5. Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline at Oberlin, 1982

6. Miscegenated Family Album (official website)

7. “‘Miscegenated Family Album’ at Alexander Gray Associates (New York), September 10–November 11, 2008.” ARTINFO, 1 Nov 2008. Accessed 7/6/2009. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/29166/lorraine-ogrady/

8. Cotter, Holland. “Lorraine O’Grady.” New York Times, 26 Sep 2008. Accessed 7/6/2009. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE4DB103EF935A1575AC0A96E9C8B63

9. Allen, James P. “The Amarna Succession.” Accessed 7/6/2009. http://history.memphis.edu/murnane/Allen%20-%20Amarna%20Succession.pdf

July 7, 2009August 17, 2017

22: Nefertiti, Devonia, Michael

On October 31, 1980 at Just Above Midtown Gallery in New York City, artist Lorraine O’Grady, dressed in a long red robe, debuted her new work of performance art. On a dark stage with a slideshow backdrop and dramatic recorded narration, O’Grady enacted hypnotic, ritualized motions, like the priestess of an ancient mystery cult, incanting magicks over vessels of sacred sand and offerings blessings of protection to the projected images of the Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti and her late sister Devonia Evangeline O’Grady Allen. In the piece entitled Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, Lorraine O’Grady confronted her relationship with her sister through the lens of Nefertiti and Nefertiti’s own apparent sister, Mutnedjmet — a relationship which O’Grady felt would have been equally troubled. O’Grady’s sister Devonia tragically died just a few short weeks after the two of them had finally begun speaking after many years of a strained relationship.

Inspired two years later after a trip to Egypt, O’Grady began researching Queen Nefertiti and her famed family of the Amarna Period. While in Egypt, O’Grady encountered a new found feeling of belonging — as the artist says in her own words, “surrounded for the first time by people who looked like me” (Art Journal 56:4, Winter 1997, p. 64). Of African, Caribbean, and Irish descent, O’Grady never felt a similar sense of kinship in her homes of Boston and Harlem. In a New York Times article from September 26, 2008, “she remembers her youthful efforts to balance what she has called her family’s ‘tropical middle-and-upper class British colonial values’ with the Yankee, Irish-American and African-American cultures around her.” Building on a resemblance that she long thought her sister had with Nefertiti, she was struck by what she saw as narrative and visual resemblances throughout both families. While pairing members of her own family with those of Nefertiti, O’Grady weaves together various narratives connecting personal stories with historical events (Alexander Gray Associates press release, 10 Sep 2008).

In 1994, from the performance piece Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline originally composed of 65 photographic comparisons, O’Grady took about a fifth of the diptychs and framed them in an installation piece entitled Miscegenated Family Album, which has been exhibited in various galleries, including the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. O’Grady’s work often focuses on black female identity and subjectivity, as well as cultural and ethnic hybridization. Miscegenation, in the title of the piece, is the procreation between members of different races, which was still illegal in much of the US as late as 1967, when it was finally overturned by the Supreme Court.

The ethnic identities of Nefertiti and Akhenaten have been debated in the spheres of Egyptology and African studies, with no immediate end in sight. Not quite as much as Cleopatra, but still. In Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline and Miscegenated Family Album, O’Grady directly confronts the racism of a white-dominated, Western-European interpretation to the field of Egyptology. While the notion of a black African cultural and ethnic influence on Ancient Egypt is frequently discussed today, we should bear in mind that in 1980, when O’Grady first performed Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, this was still seven years before the publication of Martin Bernal’s highly acclaimed and criticized work Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization.

Now, I’m not saying that the sub-Saharan African influence on Egyptian civilization is definitively confirmed. It’s still a hotly debated issue with many shades of gray. Ancient Egypt was a huge nation surviving thousands of years. And during that time there was frequent contact with surrounding countries, including periods of foreign occupation. By the time of Nefertiti and Akhenaten in the mid to late 14th century BC, parts of Egypt were pretty ethnically diverse, which likely got even more ethnically diverse as the centuries led up to the Ptolemaic period of Cleopatra. I’m excited to see that the University of Manchester museum will be hosting a conference on “Egypt in its African Context” on October 3rd and 4th, 2009. You can read about the conference online. The URL’s kinda long: www.museum.manchester.ac.uk/collection/ancientegypt/conference. [As of at least 12/22/2010, this link is no longer active. Visit http://egyptmanchester.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/egypt-in-its-african-context-programme1.pdf for a PDF of the conference agenda. Visit http://egyptmanchester.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/sally-ann-ashton-talking-at-the-manchester-museum-at-the-conference-egypt-in-its-african-context-3-4-october-2009/ for videos.] So, check out the transcript at ancientartpodcast.org for the link or see my recent tweet on Twitter at “lucaslivingston.”

One point that we need to bear in mind when considering the ethnicity of Ancient Egyptians is the baggage we bring with us to the discussion. We all have a lot of baggage, but what I’m specifically talking about is the whole preoccupation with ethnicity. I don’t know about kids these days, but not too long ago when I was a wee lad, every American schoolboy or girl could tell your their heritage, breaking it down by the percentage. Blame it on the African diaspora, Western imperialism, or Ellis Island, but I would argue that this obsession with the argument over whether the Ancient Egyptians were black, white, Greek, Berber, or other is something of a modern development. The Egyptians were an ethnically diverse lot and they would have said to us “So what!?” What mattered to the Egyptians was that you were Egyptian. You don’t hear of Ancient Egyptian race riots.

The beauty of O’Grady’s Miscegenated Family Album is that it looks more than skin-deep. O’Grady draws a few parallels between her sister Devonia and Nefertiti. They both marry, have daughters, and perform ceremonials functions — one as a priestess, the other as a bride. Devonia passed away at the age of 37 before the two sisters could fully reconcile their differences. Nefertiti suddenly vanished from the written record after the 12th year of Akhenaten’s reign, around the year 1341. Back in the 1980’s when O’Grady was researching for her performance piece Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, the prevalent theories for Nefertiti’s disappearance involved her death or fall from grace, perhaps due to Akhenaten elevating another consort to Great Royal Wife. Akhenaten did, in fact, elevate someone else to be the Great Royal Wife at that time — his eldest daughter Meretaten.

Nefertiti may have died, or some argue that she was elevated to co-regent, like a king-in-training. Another theory is that Akhenaten’s fourth daughter, Neferneferuaten Jr., became co-regent. She’s junior, because another one of Nefertiti’s names was also Neferneferuaten, and since the co-regent was named Neferneferuaten … well, hence the confusion as to exactly who was co-regent. After the death of Akhenaten around 1336 BC, we then have king Smenkhkara, ruling just a short while before our boy King Tut came onto the scene.

Another parallel that O’Grady draws is between herself and Neferitit’s apparent younger sister Mutnedjmet. Just as the younger O’Grady was left behind after her sister’s sudden and tragic passing, Mutnedjmet would also have been abandoned after Nefertiti’s sudden disappearance, according to the theories at the time. Just to bring everything else up to current theory, contrary to popular speculation, there’s no evidence that Nefertiti’s sister is the same Mutnedjmet, who was queen to the later king Horemheb. Also the more widely accepted translation today of Nefertiti’s sister’s name is Mutbenret, which is spelled exactly the same in hieroglyphs. But those are both minor technicalities that have little to no impact on O’Grady’s overall work. The importance of Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline and Miscegenated Family Album is that the immediate physical resemblance in the framing of O’Grady’s family members with figures of ancient history is indicative of deeper sentiment and associations. The past becomes an idealized and humanized film through which our own lives are filtered and compared.

So much comparison between these ancient and modern figures compels me to draw one comparison from my own imagination …

[…]

Keep on moon walking, Michael, in the great beyond.

You’ll find a whole lotta great links about Lorraine O’Grady and her work at ancientartpodcast.org. Click on Additional Resources and scroll down to the post prominently titled “Lorraine O’Grady.” If you’re interested in seeing Miscegenated Family Album in person, Lorraine O’Grady has posted on her own blog that it should be installed in the Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing some time in the near future, and I have an unconfirmed corroborating report from unnamed sources. But if you want to find out for yourself, over at ancientartpodcast.org among the additional resources on O’Grady, you’ll find a link to the Art Institute’s online collection record for Miscegenated Family Album, which tells you whether or not the work is on display.

You can follow me on Twitter at lucaslivingston. If you have any questions you’d like me to discuss in future episodes, be sure to email me at info@ancientartpodcast.org. You can also give feedback on the website and fill out a fun little survey. You can comment on each episode on the website or on YouTube. And if you like the podcast, why not share the love with some iTunes comments? It helps get the podcast noticed. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

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1. Stela of the Royal Family, probably from Amarna, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten, 1351-1336 BC, Limestone, Egyptian Museum, Berlin, 14145.
2. Chair of Tutankhamun and Queen Ankhesenamun.
3. Golden Mask of Tutankhamun, Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
4. Head of Queen Tiy, Egyptian Museum, Berlin.
5. Colossal Head of Akhenaten, Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
6. Right-hand sided tomb statue of Tutankhamun, Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
7. Statue of an unknown Amarna-era princess. New Kingdom, Amarna period, 18th dynasty, ca. 1345 BC Egyptian Museum (21223), Berlin, photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts, 15 Dec 2006.
8. Statue of King Horemheb with the god Amun, Egyptian Museum of Turin, photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbera, 14 Sep 2008.
9. Small head of a princess, probably Amarna period, Louvre Museum (E14715).
10. Statue head of a woman, limestone, New Kingdom, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago (31713), photo by Lucas Livingston.

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May 29, 2009April 15, 2012

21: Akhenaten and the Amarna Style

Hello and welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast. I’m your host, Lucas Livingston. In this episode, we’ll scratch the surface of one of the most interesting periods from Ancient Egypt, the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Any enthusiast of Ancient Egyptian history will probably have heard of Akhenaten, the so-called “Heretic King,” and if not Akhenaten, then at least you’ve heard of his wife Nefertiti, arguably the most famous Ancient Egyptian woman, second only to Cleopatra. Akhenaten ruled in the 18th dynasty from about 1353 to 1336 BC. In that relatively short time of only 17 years, he radically transformed Egyptian state religion and developed an entirely new artistic iconography.

At the beginning of his reign, Akhenaten, who then went by the name Amunhotep IV, commissioned works of the traditional sort. As with many of his predecessors and successors, he built additions to the Temple of Amun at Karnak decorated in the very traditional canonic Egyptian style. But then in his second or third year he changed his name from Amunhotep to Akhenaten, which means something like the “Spirit of Aten.” So, he stripped the god Amun from his name and replaced it with Aten, the solar deity represented as a disk rather than an anthropoid god. Aten wasn’t anything new. His father King Amunhotep III already celebrated the cult of Aten, majorly elevating its status, and Aten as the life-giving power of the sun goes back at least as far as the Middle Kingdom.

The changes Akhenaten made were to more than his name alone. He outlawed many of the major cults, especially the cult of Amun, closing their temples and pissing off a lot of priests. He enforced the worship of Aten, with himself (and sometimes Nefertiti) as the sole intermediary between Heaven and Earth. He built a vast new capital city called Akhetaten, meaning the “Horizon of Aten.” Now it’s mostly rubble and sand, because it was destroyed after Akhenaten’s reign, and much of the rubble was used as filler for later additions to Karnak, but it once held huge open air temple courts where offerings were given up to Aten on a daily basis. The open air architecture was very different from the tiny, dimly lit, secretive back rooms of Karnak, Luxor, and other traditional Egyptian temples where a few special high priests would gather and perform sacred rituals enshrouded in mystery and secrecy.

This is a fragment from the Great Palace at Akhetaten, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. On it we see Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their eldest daughter Meretaten praying and making offerings to the solar disk, much like we might imagine them having routinely done those many millennia ago. Notice the subtle linear band along the top of the scene. That’s actually the hieroglyphic character pet, meaning the “sky,” further reinforcing the doctrine of open-air worship to Aten. As the giver and sustainer of life, Aten’s rays of light reach down to its supplicants and hold symbols of the ankh, the hieroglyphic character for “life,” to their noses. In effect Akhenaten and Nefertiti breath in the life-granting essence of Aten. The hands at the end of Aten’s rays remain the only vestige of anthropomorphism to an otherwise abstract divinity.

This fragment exemplifies the innovative artistic style from the reign of Akhenaten, often called the Amarna style from Tel el Amarna, the modern Egyptian name for the area around what once was Akhetaten. The Amarna revolution abandons the idealized representation of the human form, especially the Pharaoh, who, as we might remember from our discussion of the statue of Ra-Horakhty back in episode 14, was always shown as an eternally youthful, muscular exemplar of human physique. The Amarna style, however, could be described as down-right caricature, a deformation of an individual’s characteristics. Just like the cult of Aten, itself, Akhenaten’s not uniquely responsible for inventing the Amarna style. He adopts, augments, and elevates many artistic characteristics that were already making their appearance during his father’s reign.

A couple other big developments in Egyptian art that the Amarna style picks up and runs with are the representation of movement and snapshots of moments in time. More typical of Ancient Egyptian religious and royal artwork is a very static timeless quality with almost no effort to represent any kind of action among the figures. But in the Amarna style, we definitely feel a sense of movement. Expression of emotion is also a big development that Akhenaten adopts from his predecessors. Take for example this delightful royal family portrait from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Here we see two young princesses cuddling up in the lap of Nefertiti, one daughter affectionately touching her mother’s chin. Akhenaten playfully dangles an earring like a piñata before Princess Meretaten. Note also the comfortable reclining pose that the king takes. I mean, this is a family at leisure, or at least they’re acting like it for the camera. All the while, the life-giving rays of the Aten shine upon them. This is all quite different from classic representations of the royal family like Menkaure with his wife here at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A beautiful piece and sure she’s holding him with some minuscule degree of affection, but you have to wonder if they slept in the same bed. Of course, then the summer 2009 issue of Kmt, the popular journal on Ancient Egypt, has to go and accuse this lovely relief of Akhenaten and his family of being a modern counterfeit, but at least we still have this very similar example in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. Check out the article “Nefertiti’s Final Secret” by Rolf Krauss in volume 20, number 2 of Kmt.

We also see a big change to the actual stylistic execution of relief carving. The sunken relief carving of the Amarna period is rendered with deeply cut, bold, smoothly flowing contour lines. Particular attention is given to detail, especially in individual parts of the body, like fingers and toes. Remember back at the end of episode 9, “Walk Like an Egyptian,” we learned that you never see little toes in Egyptian painting or relief carving. Well, the Amarna period may be the only general exception to this rule.

What makes the iconography of the Amarna style most distinctive, however, is the unusual physiology of Akhenaten and others. Instead of the ideal physical specimen of masculinity, Akhenaten is represented with an elongated face and head, full, heavy lips, enviably slender waist, spindly limbs, a pendulous belly, and thick, rounded thighs. … And Pharaoh got back! … So, what gives? It’s like Akhenaten’s trying to mix together exaggerated masculine and feminine characteristics. There’s absolutely no evidence to back up the idea that Akhenaten may have been physically deformed, although you come across a lot of people espousing that misconception. In fact, for many many centuries, the ancient god of the Nile’s annual flood, Hapi, was represented with breasts and a pregnant belly, yet masculine attire, a typical god’s beard, and otherwise generally masculine physique. Akhenaten is adopting an iconography similar to Hapi, blending masculinity and femininity into a singular being of idealized androgyny as the sole provider to the Egyptian people, thereby legitimizing his divine right to rule.

You get a lot of theories for why Akhenaten made the changes that he did to Egyptian society, religion, and art. Most of the theories are variants on the idea that he was either crazy or enlightened. He’s frequently given credit for introducing the concept of monotheism when all the rest of the world was running around worshiping different gods, rocks, and shrubbery, but that’s just not true. Akhenaten wasn’t a monotheist; he was more like a henotheist. Henotheism is the worship of one god, while believing that others exist and can get a little bit of credit too. Even though Akhenaten preached that the Aten was the one and only god, his motivation was largely political, not religious or ideological. In the generations leading up to Akhenaten, the state cult of Amun had risen to such unprecedented heights that it almost came to eclipse the authority of Pharaoh. The temple was the administrative and financial center of Egypt, holding massive tracts of land and immense influence over all aspects of Egyptian society and national affairs. In an effort not to become a puppet of the temple, Amunhotep III, Akhenaten’s father, already started to take measures to return to the unquestionable authority of Pharaoh, and Akhenaten took it that much further. But it didn’t work. Almost immediately after Akhenaten’s reign, Amun was reintroduced as the state god, royal iconography began reverting, and the Amarna style was dying out, giving rise to the Post-Amarna Period. But this fragment, rich in iconography, expression, and eternal supplication to Aten, is a prime example of the unique, short-lived, and beautiful artistic revolution of the “Heretic King” Akhenaten.

Want to learn more? Check out the bibliography in the Additional Resources section at ancientartpodcast.org. One particularly great resource is the catalog and website to the exhibition Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen from 1999. You can email me at info@ancientartpodcast.org. You can also give feedback on the website and fill out a fun little survey. And why not share the love with some iTunes comments? Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

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April 26, 2009February 1, 2018

20: Ancient Olympics, Part 3

Alright, welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast. It’s time to wrap things with part 3 of the Ancient Olympics. We looked at the foundation myths for the four major crown games at Delphi, Nemea, Isthmia, and Olympia. We also, ahem, exposed the concept of nudity as a quintessentially democratic Greek dynamic to ancient athletics. This time we’re getting in to the nitty gritty where we can smell the sweat and taste the dirt. Ancient athletics never felt so real. We’ll keep looking at what makes the Greek games essentially Greek and we’ll run through a survey of the different types of athletic events at the Olympics. Then we’ll go on a nice little marathon run and polish things off with some character portraits of notable athletes.

Like nudity, explored in episode 19, another fascinating quality to the ancient Greek games, which contributed to their idealized democratic nature, was how judging took place. All subjectivity was removed from judging. There were no points awarded for grace or form. Judging was done using objective standards. Who hurled the javelin furthest, who ran the fastest, or who threw his opponent to the ground first. Judges are fairly easy to spot in Greek vase painting. Just look for the guy with the big stick. We see judges calling matches to an end when a victor is declared, or sometimes intervening in a match when a contestant breaks the rules. The beauty of competing in the nude — no, this isn’t going where you think — but it’s that the aristocrat and laborer were judged alike and judgment was swift and harsh.

Most of the events of the Ancient Olympic Games are familiar to us. The earliest type of event, the only event that would have been held at the supposed first Olympiad of 776 BC, was the stadion, from which we get the word “stadium.” The stadion was basically just the ancient equivalent to the 200 meter dash. Contestants would run down the length of the stadium, which was 600 ancient feet. Funny thing is, though, the official length of a foot varied from location to location. The length of the stadium at Olympia was different from the length at Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea. But that sort of standardization didn’t really matter to the ancient Greeks. Another footrace that was added to the Olympics in 520 BC was the hoplitodromos, where athletes would run down the stadium and back in armor, wearing helmets and greaves, and carrying shields. Again, there’s no evidence that there was any sort of standardization to the weight of the armor being carried. Similarly, in the pentathlon, one event was the long jump. Athletes would often jump with the aid of handheld weights called halteres, or halters. Halters have been excavated from different sites and periods and there’s no apparent pattern to their shape or weight. Much like a bowling ball, you’d use whatever weight works best for you. The other four events of the pentathlon, which originated in 708 BC, included the discus, the javelin, the stadion, and wrestling. You might think that’s where we get modern Greco-Roman wrestling from, but that’s just Victorian nostalgia run amok.

Similar to wrestling was another full contact event called pankration, literally “all-powerful,” the no-holds-barred ancient equivalent to mixed martial arts or the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The only illegal moves in the pankration were gouging and biting. Everything else was fair game. The idea for these rules comes from Hercules’s battle against the Nemean Lion. The lion’s hide was impenetrable to sword and spear, so Hercules was forced to grapple with it, choking the beast to death. Now, the pankration was not by definition a death match, but yes, some contestants did die. One of the most well known is Arrhichion of Phigaleia, pankration victor of the 572 and 568 Olympics. In his third attempt at an Olympic victory in 564, his opponent managed to get a good strangle hold on Arrhichion, slowly choking the life from him. But as darkness swept over him and the sleep of death crept in, Arrhichion swiftly executed one final move to wrench his opponent’s ankle from its socket. His opponent, still applying the choke hold, signaled submission to the judge. Arrhichion simultaneously became a three-time Olympic victor and slipped away into death.

We also see boxing, called “pyx,” added to the Olympics in 668 BC. And to round out the gymnikos agon, the nude games, we see the diaulos added in 724 BC. The diaulos was the second event added to the Olympics, after the stadion. Diaulos is the word for a double-flute, a common instrument from Ancient Greece. Playing on that term, the diaulos race was a double stadion, or down and back, just like the later hoplitodromos. And at the next Olympiad four years later in 720 BC, we see the addition of the dolichos, the long-distance run, somewhere around 20 to 24 laps of the stadium. It’s interesting that you can identify which race is being depicted in art based on the position of the runners’ knees and arms. If their arms are raised high up with knees high in long strides, they’re running the shorter stadion. If their knees aren’t quite as high, it’s likely the diaulos. Arms carefully tucked in to the torso like jogging, that’s certainly the long-distance dolichos. But if you’re not sure, inscriptions next to the runners sometimes provide additional evidence.

What about the marathon, you ask? The famed 26.2 mile run popular throughout the world today named after the famous ancient Greek site of the Battle of Marathon? You might be surprised to know that there was no such thing as the marathon run in the ancient world. It’s an entirely modern invention. The idea of the marathon originates from two possible stories that may have gotten mixed together in later times. The Battle of Marathon was a major Greek victory over the Persians in 490 BC. The basic story is that the Athenians sent a messenger named Pheidippides to run from Marathon to Athens after the battle to announce their victory. As soon as he arrived and shared the news, he dropped dead. But there’s no mention by Herodotus in his contemporary account of the Battle of Marathon of anyone running from Marathon to Athens to deliver the news. He does mention a messenger named Pheidippides or sometimes Philippides in some manuscripts, who ran from Athens to Sparta before the battle to seek Spartan aid. The other story that gets mixed with Herodotus’s is that the Athenian hoplite force, after defeating the Persian army at Marathon, marched at a high pace in full armor the 25 or so miles all the way from Marathon to Athens to defeat a second wave of the Persian attack. So, as I said, these two stories of two different runs eventually get mixed together to form the much more romantic account of Pheidippides, his valor, and his tragic self-sacrifice to bring news of the victory of democractic Greek heroism over the barbaric imperialism of Persia at the Battle of Marathon.

And the marathon run itself? Yeah, that was invented for the first modern Olympics in 1896 in an attempt to echo the legendary glory of Ancient Greece. As a side note, the distance was eventually standardized to 26 miles and 385 yards after the 1908 London Olympics. Today’s marathon run is not the distance from Marathon to Athens, but the distance from Windsor Castle to the royal box at the London Olympic stadium.

We’ve talked a lot about the gymnikos agon, the nude events, but what about the hippikos agon. I already mentioned that, despite all the hooplah about chariot races in art and literature nearly as far back as the Greek Dark Ages, they weren’t officially part of the Olympics until 680 BC. The first horse race to be added was the tethrippon, the four-horse chariot race, which was 12 laps around the hippodrome. But, of course, it shouldn’t surprise you any more that the length of the hippodrome wasn’t standardized from location to location. We also find the synoris, a two-horse chariot race, and the keles, a mounted horse race. As with today, it was advantageous to have as small and light a jockey as possible, but back in Ancient Greece that usually meant having a young slave boy race your prize horse. This silver coin from the Art Institute of Chicago commemorates the keles race won by Philip II of Macedon in 356 BC, father of Alexander the Great. The youthful jockey holds a palm branch, a secondary victory trophy given out at the games by this time. Philip’s name is stamped on the coin fragmented by the horse’s head. And on the other side (technically the obverse, if you want to talk numismatics) we see the god Zeus, the ultimate victor at the Olympics. Don’t forget — he’s the reason for the season.

Despite all this talk about the Olympics being the ultimate emblem of Greek democracy, there was definitely a social divide among the competitors and events. While any decent athlete could compete in the nude events, the horse races always held a certain air of snobbery and elitism. To enter in the horse races, one had to be able to afford a horse, chariot, rider, and training, which only the wealthiest of Greeks could afford. Last time in episode 19, we saw in the funeral games of Patroklos in Book 23 of the Iliad that Odysseus excelled in the footrace and wrestling match. Interestingly, though, he doesn’t compete in the chariot race, perhaps because he is one of the less affluent Greek kings at Troy and couldn’t afford to lug a team of race horses and chariot with him on a military campaign.

But this social divide didn’t prevent the masses from reveling in the spectacle of the horse races. By all accounts they were extremely popular. Popular for the masses and also as a means for political maneuvering and exploitation. The coin commemorating Philip’s keles victory ensured his fame and name would be dispersed throughout much of the Greek world. As Philip expands his outreach, he gains control of game sites, maneuvering to unify all of Greece in part through athletic competition, not as a series of disparate sacred centers and city states, but as a united nation of Hellenic people.

Hopefully this trilogy of episodes on the Ancient Olympics has whetted your appetite to delve a little deeper. If you’d like to learn more, visit the bibliography in the Additional Resources section at ancientartpodcast.org, where you’ll find a section under Greece on “the Olympics and Other Greek Games.”

March 28, 2009February 1, 2018

19: Ancient Olympics, Part 2

Continue reading “19: Ancient Olympics, Part 2”