The Story of Art, EH Gombrich, Art for Eternity
Death is not a friendly topic. Nevertheless, mortality and its afterlife get credit for the origin of many fascinating stories of art.
Very few civilizations in have taken on the art of mortality as magnificently as the Ancient Egyptians.
The Pyramid of Giza, c. 2613–2563 (National Geography)
Egypt. The land of the pyramids “tell us of a land which was so thoroughly organized that it was possible to pile up the gigantic mounds in the lifetime of a single king, and they tell us of kings who were so rich and powerful that they could force thousands and thousands of workers or slaves to toil for them year in, year out, to quarry the stones, to drag them to the building site, and to shift them with the most primitive means till the tomb was ready to receive the king,” Gombrich shares.
Portrait head, c. 2551–2528 BC; Found in a tomb at Giza; limestone, height 27.8cm, 11in; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
There’s more: “the Egyptians held the belief that the preservation of the body was not enough. The likeness of the king was also preserved, it was doubly sure that he would continue to exist forever. So they ordered sculptors to chisel the King’s head out of hard, imperishable granite and put it in the tombs where no one saw it, there to work its spell and to help his soul to keep alive in and through the image” Gombrich continues.
I bet they never would have imagined that thousands of years later the story of the most powerful King’s afterlife would be displayed in a modern museum.