Ancient Egyptian Greek and Roman Stele Essay -- essays papers

Ancient Egyptian Greek and Roman steleJust as we use tombstones to mark graves and commemorate our dead, so too did ancient elaborations. One way to do so in the ancient world was through the use of steles. A stele is a stone slab, usually decorated in relief and inscribed, that honored the finale of a person. Three of the ancient cultures that had implemented the use of the stele were the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. In comparing an example from each civilization, it is possible to make the evolution of the stele from one period to an opposite and the different influences each civilization had on a individual element.The Egyptians had many ways to honor their dead, including the stele. Wealthy Egyptians, specially officials and priest, often had stele placed near their tombs. These steles usually told of the name, position/rank, and the epithets of the dead soul along with a funerary prayer. (Gee 224) One much(prenominal) example is the funerary Stele from Dendere h from the First Intermediate Period (ca. 2150 BCE). (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) This stele belongs to a man named Tjaunty, an official during the First Intermediate Period. The stele depicts Tjaunty on the far left of the rectangular slab. The other two-thirds of the stele are reticent for inscriptions of hieroglyphs.The depiction of Tjaunty is characteristic of the Egyptian style. The purpose of the Egyptian style was to translate the human form in the clearest and to the highest degree fatten up way. The head is shown in profile but with the eye in a frontal position. The rationality for this is that the head is more distinct from the profile position the eyes, on the other hand, are more representative from the frontal view. The shoulders are presented frontally with the waist, hips, legs, and feet in profile. (Gee 18)In Tjauntys funerary stele, Tjaunty is presented in this very distinct way. He is overly shown with the symbo ls of his position as an official. This is known because Tjauntys right hand is holding the said(prenominal) staff as in Hesy-ras right hand in the characterization Panel of Hesy-ra. (Janson and Janson 44) As for the inscriptions to the right of Tjaunty, this author is not able to definitively bring up the meaning. It is assumed that it tells of Tjauntys name, rank, and offers a funerary prayer.The Greeks were also another ancient civilization that i... ...d gives only a summed-up version of information about the owner. Granted, it is certain that a more glorified nature would be found in such as that of a pharaoh, but not so in those under the pharaoh. The Egyptian stele seems to represent an attitude of straight-forwardness (in keeping with the clarity and complete representation of the Egyptian style). As for the Greek stele, it is more intimate, a discern into a moment of that persons life (very naturalistic). The Roman stele is, without a doubt, glorifying. The Ro mans most certainly had an egotistical attitude about them. Why should it surprise anyone to see it within the art that was meant to memorialize them? Comparing these three civilizations has shown that a single element, used in different civilizations, may have the same intend use but the way each civilization goes about using this element can be quite different from one another.BibliographyGee, Robert. Egyptian Sculpture. Oxford Blackwell, 1994.Janson, H.W. and A.F. Janson. History of Art the Western Tradition. New Jersey Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2001.Rothermel, Johnathan Albert. The Art of Greece. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1990.