Each scene in Egyptian art carries a multitude of meanings, and at the same time is synthetic. You can learn more about the Books from the blog article dedicated to them, click
Bibligraphy:
* Andrews Carol, Amulets of ancient Egypt, London 1994.
* Daumas François, Od Narmera do Kleopatry. Cywilizacja starożytnego Egiptu, Warszawa 1973.
* Deschroes – Noblecourt Christine, Tutanchamon, Warszawa 1980.
* Eliade Mircea, Structure et function du mythe cosmogonique, (w.) Sources Orientales I. La naissance du Monde, Paris 1959
* Hornung Erik, Jeden czy wielu. Koncepcja boga w starożytnym Egipcie, Warszawa 1991.
* Ikram Salima, Śmierć i pogrzeb w starożytnym Egipcie, Warszawa 2004.
* Lipińska Jadwiga, Marciniak Marek, Mitologia starożytnego Egiptu, Warszawa 2002.
* Lurker Manfred, Bogowie i symbole starożytnego Egiptu, Warszawa 1995.
* Niwiński A, Bóstwa, kulty i rytuały starozytnego Egiptu, Warszawa 2004.
* Niwiński Andrzej, Mity i symbole starożytnego Egiptu, Warszawa 2001.
* Ożarek Marzena A., Egipska magia kolorów używanych w produkcji amuletów i biżuterii w starożytnym Egipcie (w.) Antropologia Religii, nr V (2013).
* Skarby Egiptu. Kolekcja Muzeum Egipskiego w Kairze. Ilustrowany przewodnik po Muzeum Egipskim w Kairze, pod red. Alessandra Bongioanni i Marii Sole Croce, Warszawa 2007.
Eternal Atum from Journey of the Sun barge at Night (2021). It has the form of a winged snake, walking on two pairs of human legs, with the head of an old man and a solar disk between its wings. This complex form appeared at the beginning of the world (Atum was the creator god) and will appear at its end.
Lotuses in the painting Journey of the solar barge during the day, 2021.
Incarnations of the goddess Hathor from 2020. The goddess Hathor was often depicted in the form of a cow, emerging from behind the Western Mountain as the protector of the dead.
The blue of the headdress from the statue of Ptah in my latest painting is stunning).
My artwork Egyptian World Map (2021). The cow Nut personifies the sky, at the top the sea represents the north, and at the bottom the south gleams gold. The two sisters - Isis on the left and Nephthys on the right correspond to the west and the east. And almost in the very center lies the hieroglyph akhet meaning horizon.
Eye Udjat in my painting: the Journey of the solar barge during the day: At the bottom, on the barge, there is the eye.
Eye of Horus
The worship of a specific part of the body can also be considered a type of fetishism, which is undoubtedly the udjat eye, associated with Horus, always shown in the form of a frontal human eye. It was a symbol of sacrifice and triumph over the enemy, which is why it was a very popular motif on amulets made of green stones. However, the pair of eyes udjat shown on stelae, blind doors, sarcophagi or tomb doors had apotropaic meaning (protecting against evil forces). The deceased could also see thanks to these eyes. Sometimes the eyes udjat were provided with wings, which signified divine protection. They were also decorated with ureuses, i.e. cobras (incarnations of the goddess protecting Lower Egypt, Wadjet).
The sign of ankh, one of the key attributes of Egyptian gods
The sun from the painting Sol Invictus (The Invincible Sun), 2022.
In the painting Egyptian Atlantis from 2022, you can see the djed column (left) and the Ouroboros serpent (top, center).
Judgment of the Dead, visible two steps of the platform on which Osiris sits, One of the illustrations on the papyrus of the Book of the Dead belonging to Hunefer (1375 BC, British Museum, London)
Reality enchanted in symbols. How did the ancient Egyptians perceive the world?
A time machine
And so, ending with the symbolism of colors, we made our way through the maze of meanings hidden behind Egyptian symbols. As you can see, the entire reality was permeated with them, full of magic. You know what I love about symbols? They are archetypes that function in the collective imagination of humanity. And thanks to this, like a time machine, they transport us in the blink of an eye from the present to ancient times. They are the thread connecting us with our ancestors ;)
And what about colors in Egypt?
The production of even the smallest objects was subject to the imperative of symbols. The symbolism of colors was very important in religious iconography, which had a particular impact on the materials used in amulets, giving magical power to the holder. They were made of semi-precious stones whose meaning was associated with specific colors.
Green [amazonite, chrysoprase (a variety of chalcedony), malachite, turquoise and obsidian] was the color of vegetation, new life, rebirth and joy. However, the Fields of Yaru were made of green malachite, and amulets such as the eye udjat and the scarab were made from other green stones.
The blue color (lapis-lazuli, turquoise) was associated with the sky and the life-giving waters of the Nile, which flooded every year, enabling vegetation. It was also believed that the hair of the gods was made of blue lapis lazuli, which had divine power.
Geographical directions
The key direction for every Egyptian was the west (imenet), or the Land of the Dead. There, the sun disappeared every day, only to be reborn in the east (iabet). The deceased was placed on the left side, with the head lying south and the face turned west.
From the south The Nile flowed and floods were coming. And there was Nubia (today's Sudan) was there, where gold was obtained. Maps were also oriented from the south.
However, the most mysterious was the north, where the sea stretched, the Great Green.
Sometimes Isis and Nephthys personified the west and east, and Horus and Set personified the north and south. Osiris was the vertical axis of the world, both the sky and the underworld. The horizon, in turn, embodied the symbol and hieroglyph akhet. Its shape indicated that observations of the structure of the world were made from the valley framed by mountains, the Both Horizons.
Life
The hope for the eternal life of the deceased was contained in the sign of life ankh, called the Egyptian cross. It was a popular component of death scenes. It was often accompanied by a djed pillar.
Sun
In the Egyptian iconography of death, the sun disk that die at sunset could not be missing. In Egypt, the sun god was worshiped in various forms, so the solar disk with a specific emblem inscribed in it appeared both in the representations of the sunrise, as Khepre (the scarab is inscribed in the solar disk here), the south, as Re, and the sunset, as Atum. Moreover, it was an only variant of the image of the god Aten. Often, the shield was one of the components of the image of a deity or an attribute.
Symbolism of time, cyclicality and durability.
The archetype of the cosmic mountain, which was of key importance in the Egyptian iconography of death, was the djed column, symbolizing durability and associated with Osiris. It was a very popular motif in amulets made of gold. Djed, duration, was inextricably linked with eternity, referred to as neheh or shen and imagined in the form of a mandala, the serpent Ouroboros (He-Who-Swallows-Its-His-Own-Tail). These symbols were often depicted together. Ouroboros expressed repetitive cycles such as the flooding of the Nile, life and death, and sunrises and sunsets. It was, after all, a circle along which this heavenly body runs, composed of earthly and heavenly paths.
Snakes were repeatedly depicted as symbols of time and the passing hours of the night in the Books of the Underworld. There were also other ways of imagining its passage. For example, a palm branch marked with a single cut signified a closed period, such as a year, while multiplying this cut equaled eternity.
In this article I wanted to tell you why symbols play such an important role in the tangible and intangible heritage of ancient Egypt. And, therefore, they could not be missing in the Egyptian Cycle. While reading, you will come across individual motifs, also from my paintings, illustrating symbols. I invite you to read ;)
Mountains and stair
In Theban beliefs, small islands grew into mountains and proto-hills. In Thebes, the sacred element of the landscape was the so-called Western Mountain, dominating the necropolis, also called the Pink Mountain. It was from there that the king began his journey in the Book of Gates. This sandy and rocky hill often appeared in images of the sunset, i.e. the death of the sun. It replaced the images of the watery primeval ocean on sarcophagi, where there was less space to depict the eternal circulation of the sun. The fact that water was replaced by sand was not a problem for the Egyptians, who treated the entire universe as one matter.
.Beginnings
Many of the symbols that I will mention here are related to the first stage of the development of Egyptian religious iconography, corresponding to the initial phase of the evolution of Egyptian religion, which, according to many researchers, was fetishism. Dead elements of reality were worshiped then, such as stones or mountains, they also had souls. I will present the next stages of the development of Egyptian iconography - zoomorphism, anthropomorphism and mixanthropism on the blog on another occasion.
Most of the symbols related to death are taken from the nature of Egypt itself and many of them are associated with the floods and rainfall of the Nile. Here and there, islands emerged from the river, and lotuses grew in the waters.
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The uniqueness of Egyptian religious iconography
Egyptian scenes seem complicated... And in a sense they are, because in order to read them, you need to realize the three basic features that distinguish Egyptian religious iconography, i.e. multi-source, multi-layered and ambiguous.
The multi-source nature is manifested in the combination of traditional and new elements in the decoration of sarcophagi and papyri, and the multi-layer nature makes it possible to consider each scene from different points of view (ritual, religious, costume-related, etc.). The third key feature is ambiguity, combining divergent solar elements concerned with vitality and energy with Osirian elements concerned with death.
An additional difficulty in interpreting the religious iconography of the ancient Egyptians is the significant difference in their way of thinking from the Western one. While our attitude to the reality around us is analytical, the Egyptians thought synthetically. In a scene composed of several symbols, they were able to convey all knowledge about the universe. This makes our rational way of assessing phenomena and reasoning relatively little useful here. But don't worry, we'll try to decipher their view of the world a bit ;)
In turn, the hills venerated in other centers were the benben stone (Heliopolis), tatenen (Memphis) and the Flame Island (Hermopolis). In the Old Kingdom, their embodiment was the pyramid. Its steps symbolized death, because the stairs or ladder were the path by which the soul of the deceased ascended straight to heaven. The Pyramid Texts record a dead king ascending the steps of the pyramid to connect with the sun. Many scenes with stairs appear in Egyptian death iconography, for example in the scenes of the Judgment of Osiris from the Book of Gates, shown, for example, in the tomb of King Horemheb. There, 10 steps lead to the platform with Osiris enthroned. However, in the case of representations of this type of scenes from the Book of the Dead, the platform was usually two-step.
Red (jasper), in turn, symbolized blood and fire. On the one hand, it had a positive meaning (life, energy, power, solar power, victory). On the other hand negative: in Egypt, a man overcome with anger was said to have a red heart, and through its association with Set, it became a sign of threat and danger because it was the color of the barren desert. The heads of ureuses crowning royal headgear were often made of red materials, because the fire-spitting cobras were supposed to protect the pharaoh.
Gold, bile (nebu), the body of the gods, associated with the sun, regeneration and rebirth, was considered one of the hardest, indestructible and at the same time plastic materials. The term "from hard material" appears in many texts, after all, hardness was associated with durability and eternity. The raw material and the color itself were symbolicalcharged, so it was an ideal material for the production of jewelry or amulets. Its extraordinary power flowed to the person wearing the gold item, ensuring protection, indestructibility and eternity.
Black was the color of darkness preceding light, containing the germinating seed signifying resurrection.