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Ancient Egyptian Art
Essay Assignment #2
Essay and Proof of Visit Due: December 12, 2012
One of the most common misconceptions about ancient Egyptian art is that it never changed, throughout its three-thousand-year history. The purpose of the second essay assignment is to examine several examples of a single topic or genre of Egyptian art from different periods and discuss the changes that took place in them over time, as well as the aspects that remained consistent. In addition, you are asked to discuss the cultural reasons for these changes, putting the pieces into the broader context of Egyptian cultural development.
To conduct this examination, you are asked to choose three or four works of art from ancient Egypt, of the same kind or having the same cultural function, but dating to different periods of its history. These works should be selected from whichever museum collection (Metropolitan or Brooklyn) you did not use for the first essay. You are then to write an essay that compares them and puts them in the larger context of Egyptian artistic developments.
Providing this context will require some research, unlike your first essay which was completely based on your own observations. It is useful to collect parallels for your objects, from books (there are a number of Egyptian art books on reserve for this class in the library) or from web sites of other museums. (I would advise against random web searches, which often mis-date or mis-identify objects.) This tells you how typical the works you are discussing are of their time period, and also shows you changes that take place in the periods between those of your examples.
Choosing your topic and your example pieces. The pieces you choose to compare should differ in date, but be similar in their cultural function (or form). Possible categories would include statues of officials, of working people, of couples, of scribes, of kings, of royal women, of children, or of gods. Two-dimensional (relief or painted) representations of might be daily life scenes, cult functionaries doing a ritual, a family, a king interacting with a god, a tomb owner at an offering table, or people bringing offerings. Potential objects that could be studied are jewelry; furniture; tableware; or a category of mortuary objects, although canopic jars and coffins are embargoed, since their specific development has been so thoroughly discussed in class. In all cases, the examples chosen should differ in date, but be as similar as possible in all other respects. Do not compare royal with non-royal, or male with female, or temple equipment with tomb equipment; the point is to hold most other factors steady and look at the difference that time makes. If you are in doubt about whether the pieces you would like to compare are sufficiently comparable or their dates sufficiently far apart, you can e-mail me.
The works you compare will not be entirely identical, of course; they will inevitably vary somewhat in their materials (stone, wood) or technique (sunk relief, raised relief, paint) or scale. In your comparison, you should note such differences and consider whether the contrasts you note might be attributable to these differences.
Obviously, you will want to choose objects that have both similarities and differences, to give you interesting things to say in your paper. Again, I suggest that you keep the assignment in mind while selecting your objects, rather than simply choosing something you like. It may be a good idea to spend some time on the museum’s web site choosing your topic before going to the museum.
Proof of Museum Visit: As before, you need to visit the museum and look at your works in the original to see them from all angles and appreciate their scale and quality. You are therefore asked to provide proof of your visit, which may be either the physical receipts or tags that you got when you paid museum admission or showed your membership card, or it may be a digital photograph of yourself with one of the works you are writing about, taken during your visit.
Writing your paper. Your essay should include discussion (either at the beginning as a summary or throughout the paper) of the larger category of things to which your chosen pieces belong and the general historical evolution of this type of object or motif. Other artworks (from published sources or museums) that illuminate the points you want to make may be cited to illustrate the variability possible and to fill in chronological gaps. This introduction will require some research, in the library and/or on the web. (Be very careful of web sites not affiliated with educational institutions or museums; there is a lot of nonsense out there about Egypt and Egyptian art. Digitized journal articles found on JSTOR, for example, are far more dependable.) Your research should include at least one non-course source. You may, obviously, use course books in addition, and you would be well advised to do so.
Your comparison of the pieces should note both similarities and differences, and also discuss what you see as the reasons for the changes you observe (based on your knowledge of general currents in Egyptian history and Egyptian art history). How do the pieces fulfill their functions? Can you see evidence that the function itself has changed or is different? In what ways? Can you discern the influence of non-Egyptian cultures on its development? Can the change be explained by the fact that the object is used by a different segment of the population (elite, larger, provincial)? You may want to cite some of the concepts and principles of Egyptian art, and discuss the degree to which they appear to be applied. You can also, in this assignment, briefly discuss the reaction of a modern viewer (you) to the work, but make sure to analyze your reaction, and discuss what it is about the piece that inspires it. (This should not, however, be a major part of your paper.) But you should also discuss the ways in which you think the ancient Egyptians would have regarded the works, based on your sense of the criteria they seem to have valued.
Be sure that you make it clear how things compare, and whether the features you describe are the same or different. Just giving two descriptions is not sufficient. Juxtaposition is not comparison. Be explicit!
Format: Again you should give the headings from the museum’s labels or web sites, which will normally include the pieces’ Museum accession numbers, identifying captions (what they are), their date, and their archaeological provenience, where that is known. (You need not quote the description.) The paper following your heading should be 8 to 10 double-spaced pages long—roughly between 2400 and 3000 words. The essay may be a bit longer if you like, but points will be deducted if it is shorter. (Neither headings nor the bibliography count towards the word total.)
Sources (of both quotations and information not covered in class) should be listed in a bibliography at the end of your essay, in the same file, and then cited parenthetically in the text itself, including author, date and page number. If you quote, you should quote accurately, and quote no more than is necessary to make your point. Do not quote long passages that have nothing to do with your argument to make your paper longer. Do not quote descriptions of objects; describe them yourself. It should be clear why you are quoting.
Again, you may work together with other students, and discuss the pieces you are working on with each other, if you don’t write about the same object. Be sure to credit any observations your classmate makes using a parenthetical citation “(John Doe, personal communication)” or write “Jane Roe suggests… (personal communication).” Note that you can also cite such suggested interpretations in order to argue against them.
Plagiarism: As before, this will be dealt with severely. There is more of a danger of accidental plagiarism with this assignment, since you will be doing research. Remember that I cannot tell the difference, and be sure to label direct quotations clearly in your notes. Any plagiarism will be extremely detrimental to your grade; more than a trivial amount of plagiarism will result in a zero and a note to your school or program.
Grading: The “thought content” of your paper counts for 85% of your grade on this essay. The final 15% will be based on form of presentation: grammar, spelling, absence of typos, legibility, organizational coherence, and lack of repetition and obvious padding. Reading your paper through before submitting it will help with many of these problems.
Points will be taken off for insufficient background, missing label information (unless the piece is unlabeled and you say so), too-short essays, and vague and unexpressed comparisons.
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Submission of papers: Papers in MS Word or PDF format will be accepted electronically on Turnitin (instructions on the Assignment page of our Blackboard site) until midnight on the due date. They may include a picture of yourself at the museum or proof of your visit to the museum may be handed in physically in class. Late papers will not be accepted at all without a documented excuse, and I reserve the right to find the excuse inadequate. Make sure your paper is submitted well before the deadline, since glitches occur. Please title your electronic files LastName Art #2.doc or .docx.or .pdf.
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