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The Doni Tondo ,Sketched and copied by Yasser Kamel ,

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Know more about ancient Egypt!

Know more about ancient Egypt!

Within the New Kingdom period, about 1400 B.C, the funeral papyri “Book of the dead” became widely spread around the whole country and also it became affordable to others than royals. The popularity and the spread for that type of papyrus books had synchronized with a simplicity trend for the accompanying art of those papyri. The use of the classical drawings in book of the dead, in ancient Egypt, did require a highly skilled artist as well as much of time which had a negative effect on papyrus cost while the use of the simplified art on papyrus which requires less skilled artist and takes less time to finish was a help to allow major number of people to get it. The Egyptian artist used the stroke-order style or the simplified for the repeated and exact god’s figures which used to be made in classical style before. The two figures above show the simplified style for a man and woman and the possible strokes led to have them drawn. Written and painted by Yasser Kamel for Museumegypt.2006. All rights reserved.

Pre-historic Egypt, The Scorpion King. ”special articles” Part-2

The amazing pre-historic finds and fact never cease an opportunity to stun its lovers. Among the unique finds of pre-historic Abydos small fragments of an ivory mace cover that recorded the oldest known attempt of unification between South and North of Egypt. The earliest unification was established by a unique Egyptian king who was called the Scorpion king. The scorpion king unification had preceded king Narmer for almost a millennium .The estimated dating for the mace cover fragments determines the possibility to exceed 4000 B.C. The mace was the royal traditional weapon for pre-historic and archaic kings of Egypt. The mace was pointy always and usually poisonous, therefore, the cover was so required and many cases the cover can be incised with carvings that commemorate a special event such as victory. The one above represents Egypt status in post-war time, once the Scorpion King war on Lower-Egypt”Northern Egypt” succeeded. The cover contains three registers of carvings, the first one shows a row of hanged lapwing birds on poles that carry flags of the main districts of Egypt. The lapwing bird “Rekhit” is a representation for the locals or the commoners as it can be traced in later hieroglyphic vocabulary,     and it sounds like those who were depicted as hanged birds were in fact the ones did resist the war against the north. The second register sounds more cheerful and pleasant as the Scorpion king became ruling the north as well as his native land which was the south of Egypt or Upper Egypt. Obviously the Hieroglyphics was still to be developed as we only see few primitive signs such as the one for the Scorpion name,   on the other hand a beginning for a welfare in the north as king Scorpion is shown while holding a wooden plough, followed by his fan bearers and assisted by someone who could be his vizier as he represented while providing grains to allow farming. Also we should not miss seeing the Papyrus plants which was carved there to refer the north of Egypt,   . The third register is so related to second as it shows more of the Scorpion achievements, such for the canal and farming around .In fact the glorious unification of the Scorpion king did not last enough long which required king Narmer, about 3200 B.C to reunify Egypt .Once more the Pre-historic Egypt never seemed primitive in many aspects as those who had known farming, textile, cloths ,weapons and building canals should not included by such word.   

Information and Painting by Yasser Kamel for Museumegypt.2006.