Egypt of the Pharaohs – Fall 2023
Essay #4 Instructions
Due: 12/16/2023 (note new date)
Egyptian Art and Artifacts:
Compare and Analyze Primary Sources
Scope and Completion Date: Your second essay is due on Saturday, December 16th, by 11:50 pm. The body of the essay (excluding headings, any illustrations, or bibliography) should be about 2000 words long, (roughly 6 pages, depending on fonts and spacing). Again, it is not meant to be a research paper, but a comparison and analysis, this time of two artifacts or objects, one from Egypt and one from a more recent Western culture. It is the same sort of comparison you did with your third paper, but focusing on objects rather than texts. These objects may be selected from the two major New York City museum collections: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum; if you visited a city with a major Egyptian collection over the Thanksgiving holiday and did the basic observations then you may use a piece from there (for example, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, or the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum at the University of Chicago. Links to collection search pages for the two NYC museums are given at the end of these instructions. In addition to your analysis, you will need to submit (pasted into your paper) a photo of your dated receipt or of you (or your ID) taken in the relevant Egyptian collection. You need not include photos of the objects, as we can find them on the museum’s website.
Description of Assignment: In addition to texts, the ancient Egyptian culture produced art, architecture, and artifacts. Since these physical objects must have played a role in the pharaonic culture (or else they would not have been produced), they can tell us something about the needs and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians who produced them. One useful way to analyze and explore the meanings and uses of objects is to compare them with the cultural products of Western civilization that fulfill the same sort of purposes or represent the same sort of things.
As with your third essay, this essay is meant to be a comparison and analysis, in this case of two objects rather than texts. As with that essay, you will choose one from Predynastic, Archaic, or Old Kingdom Egypt and one from a Western tradition (post 1000 CE). A general list of potential topics is given at the end of this handout. You may choose others, but you should check them out with me or your section instructor, to ensure they are appropriate for this assignment. Like the previous assignment, this comparison should have two parts (although they may be interwoven): you should describe and compare the objects, noting what characteristics are the same and what are different; then you should explain how the similarities and differences reflect the two cultures that produced the objects—principally, what the ancient Egyptian objects tell you about the Old Kingdom (or earlier) culture. What assumptions do they embody? What cultural concepts (including, for example, ma’atand nonexistence, ideas about gender, traditions of representation, or beliefs about the afterlife in the Egyptian case) do they express? Why were they produced, and why were they produced in the way they were produced? Who was meant to see or use them?
The two objects you choose should be as closely comparable as possible in the functions they fill or the kind of people they depict, so that the differences can be attributed to the differences in culture rather than other factors. For example, if you are examining the representation of women in Egypt and 18thcentury France, you should compare either two queens or two non-royal women. If an image of an Egyptian queen is compared to that of a non-royal Frenchwoman, there will be differences that are dependent upon class or royal status rather than culture. Similarly, if you are examining representations of an Egyptian ruler and a British ruler, they should both be of the same gender—Queen Victoria and King Sahure are different for far more than cultural reasons. Objects like furniture should be from households of similar status. It is usually best to compare pieces that are similar in form of representation (three- or two-dimensions), and in context (royal/non-royal or mortuary/non-mortuary) or function. Comparing a statue to an oil painting doesn’t work well. Try to choose objects where the main differences between them are the cultures from which they come. Do not get bogged down too much in discussions of aspective representation and religious doctrine unless you can connect them to cultural differences.
Choosing your examples. Both pieces you write about must be chosen from the collections of these museums, although they need not come from the same museum. Your Egyptian example must date from the late Predynastic Period through the end of the First Intermediate Period, roughly 3500 to 2000 BCE; your Western example should be from after 1000 CE. It is important to have seen both pieces in the original, not just photographs. Generally, it is useful to look at the museum website and choose a few potential pairs before going to the museum.
Do not simply choose pieces that you like. Select pieces that will allow you to address larger questions, where you can see significant distinctions and comparisons that can be drawn that will reflect the cultures that made the pieces. For example, a fragment of a face may be a lovely piece of sculpture, but very difficult to compare and analyze. Read the descriptions and examine the pieces you are thinking of writing on carefully, to insure that they are in fact comparable and of the right date. Avoid Western objects that were influenced by, or are trying to imitate, Egyptian objects.
Also avoid selecting objects that are highlighted with essays on the museum’s website, because the quantity of information given can leave you with little of your own to say, and those essays are a temptation to plagiarism.
Note: If your objects are chosen from a museum outside of NYC, make particularly sure you have the accession number and that searching for it on the museum’s website will result in a good photo.
Organizing and writing your essay. Your essay should be rationally organized, with a discernible structure that is clear and logical. The introduction should identify the pieces you plan to discuss, with a short description of their most significant features (and in particular the features that you plan to discuss). Your introduction should also indicate why you find these objects comparable and the points of comparison upon which you plan to focus. (This introductory description, called a “formal analysis” in art history, should not be much longer than a page.) The essay should be divided into paragraphs that correspond to logical segments of the argument. It should end with a summary of your conclusions about the pieces you have compared and about the cultural meaning of the distinctions you have drawn between them. (Do not leave this step out!) Note that you are not simply comparing the Egyptian piece with a “Western” piece, but with a piece from a specific Western culture, at a particular time.
As with the literature essay, your comparisons should be explicit—that is, don’t just describe one object and then the other, assuming that the reader can see the points of comparison from the descriptions. State clearly whether you think they are the same or different, and in what ways. Remember that similarities (when they are not determined by things like human anatomy) can be as significant as differences.
Be sure that your comparisons do not simply show the differences between the objects, but analyze those differences to deduce cultural beliefs. You should conclude, based on your comparison, how the two cultures differ—what is distinctive about Old Kingdom culture..
Format. The essay should be at least 2000 words long, which comes out to about six pages, depending on the font and margins. Points will be deducted for overly short papers. Overly long papers (say, double the assigned length) are discouraged, and will also lose points if they are long enough to annoy the grader.
One specific museum requirement: At the beginning of your paper, directly following the title, list the label information for each of the two objects you are comparing.
Name of object (from the museum label or website)
Museum and accession number (for example, MMA 8.2.4 or Brooklyn 49.215)
Date of object and the location where it was found (if known)
Material of object, Measurements (if given)
The location of the find may be unknown, if the object was purchased. If the accession number is missing, however, choose another object. This is a number that identifies the piece within the collection (a unique inventory number). The accession number is useful in helping you—and the person grading your paper—to find the object on the museum’s web site. It prevents mix-ups: one piece might be very similar to another piece, but they will never have the same accession number. The label information should be single spaced and will not contribute to your word count.
You should assume that the person reading your paper will have access to all material on the museum’s web page, so it isn’t necessary to paste in the pictures. (If you notice a detail you want to reference that is not visible on the web page, you may take a photograph (without flash!) and paste it into your paper. Be sure to give your picture a short caption.)
Essays should be submitted electronically via Brightspace, in .doc or .docx format (or a .pdf if you must). The file name should begin with your last name. Late papers will not be accepted without a medical or similarly dire excuse.
Again, this is more of an essay than a research paper. You should not need a bibliography.
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Sample Topics. The following topics should give you an idea of the range of possibilities. You can perhaps come up with something more original. If so, be certain to check it out with me or your section leader to be sure that it is do-able and reasonable.
I. Depictions of the same thing in the Egyptian and Western tradition. Your examples should be either both three-dimensional (statues) or two dimensional (reliefs or paintings), and it would be best if they were both created for placement in similar contexts (tombs, religious edifices, or homes), although you will not always be able to determine this. Consider the context to be found within the piece itself: what is an individual holding or wearing? For example:
Depictions of people working (if possible, doing the same sort of task)
Depictions of a king (if possible, in the same sort of context—religious, secular, monumental)
Depictions of a child
Depictions of a family group
Depictions of a young woman
Depictions of an old man
Depictions of an important official
Depictions of hunting
Depictions of a religious ritual or festival
Depictions of people caring for animals
Depictions of a harvest
Depictions of people playing a game
Depictions of a foreigner
Depictions of a person with a disability or an unusual appearance (e.g., a dwarf)
Depictions of clothing and or jewelry
II. Objects that serve the same or a similar function, or that seem, at least superficially to have the same form. Here it is important not to be distracted by technological differences. Note that decorated examples of these objects will give you more material to discuss. For example:
Jewelry
Coffins or Sarcophagi (if possible of similar material—stone or wood)
Memorial markers (stelas, false doors, tombstones, again, of similar materials)
Furniture
Weapons
Decorated jars or dishes or cups
Inscriptions / texts combined with images
Hair ornaments (combs, circlets)
Museum Websites: Search the collection
Metropolitan Museum:
Brooklyn Museum:
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:
