Ancient Egyptian art: what to notice
A short guide to how Egyptian artists showed gods, kings and ordinary people, with examples from museum collections.
Egyptian art stayed recognisable for about three thousand years. That does not mean it never changed, but its basic habits were so steady that once you know a few of them you can read almost any piece. This guide uses objects from this site to show what to look for.
Art made for a purpose
Most Egyptian art was not made to be hung on a wall. Statues stood in temples and tombs, painted coffins protected the dead, and small objects were used in daily life or placed in burials. The Head of Sekhmet on this site belonged to a large statue of a goddess, one of hundreds ordered by Amenhotep III for his temple at Thebes. Knowing the purpose explains a lot about the shapes.
Gods, kings and symbols
Gods were often shown with animal heads or bodies. Sekhmet is a lioness. Royal and divine power was marked with symbols such as the uraeus, the rearing cobra worn on the forehead. The museum notes that Sekhmet's wig was once crowned with a sun disk and a uraeus. If you see a cobra on a head, you are looking at a sign of authority.
A brief break from the rules
Under Akhenaten, in the 1300s BCE, art and religion changed sharply for a time. The king built temples to the Aten, the sun disk. Reliefs from those temples were made from small, standard-sized sandstone blocks called talatat, and the queen Nefertiti appears far more often than the king. The Talatat portrait on this site comes from that period. After the reign the temples were dismantled and the blocks reused as fill, which is how many survived.
Art in everyday life
Not everything was grand. The Paint Box of the Vizier Amenemope is about 21 centimetres long and holds five pots of mineral colour. Conservators identified the pigments with X-ray diffraction. It is a reminder that painters had a working palette, and that the bright colours we see in tombs came from ground minerals.
Art after the pharaohs
Egyptian traditions carried on under Greek and Roman rule. The Funerary Portrait of a Young Girl, painted around 25 to 37 CE, shows a person who lived between cultures. The practice of mummification is Egyptian, while her hairstyle and clothing follow Greek and Roman fashion. Gold on the lips may stand for her transformation into an effective spirit, according to the museum.
Three things to look for
First, ask what the object was for. Second, look for symbols on the head and in the hands. Third, check the date and the ruler named in the museum record. Egyptian history is divided by dynasties and reigns, and the label usually tells you which one you are looking at.
More guides
- How to look at a painting: a slow-looking guide
- Oil painting basics: what the paint is and why it lasts
- A short guide to Impressionism
- Public domain and CC0: why these images are free to show
- How artists paint light: from candle to sunrise
- Greek vases: a beginner's guide
- Chinese bronzes and porcelain: a short tour
- American landscape painting of the 1800s
- How to read a museum label: dates, credit lines and accession numbers
Written with AI assistance and checked against museum records and standard references. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.