The ornamental daggers of the late bronze age found in the shaft graves at Mycenae, that date between 1550, and 1500 B.C. were made by Cretans for the mainland market. Even though these daggers were made in Crete none have ever been found there. Some other places where similar daggers have been found are the island of Thera, Vapheio, Pylos, and the Argire Heraeum. This shows that there was trade among all of those places during the time period that the daggers were made. Most of the daggers were found in grave circle A at Mycenae.
How they were made
The men who made the daggers found in the shaft graves were very skilled craftsmen. They showed contrast of color and of relief with the decoration of their work. On
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They would decorate the plates with gold, silver, copper, alloys, and another technique known as niello. Niello is a black metallic alloy of sulphur, copper, silver, and usually lead, used as an inlay on engraved metal. It is considered painting in metal. The metal surface is brushed with a borax solution as a flux to help distribute the heat evenly, dusted with powdered niello, then heated. After cooling, the surface is scraped and shows a black pattern in the incised lines. The Egyptians are credited with originating niello decoration, which was practiced in classical times, spread throughout Europe during the middle ages, and came into high repute in the 15th century(Encyclopedia Britannica).
Looking at this Palette, it isn’t hard to see how the old Egyptian subjects were so entranced by their leaders and how that compares to our modern viewpoints. Where we view politicians and leaders as a wiry group, always keeping an eye on them lest today be the day they raise their daggers against us, the ancient Egyptians saw their leaders as infallible, godlike beings to be trusted, obeyed, and adored. Standing just over 2 feet tall and 1.4 feet wide, this Palette was carved out of a majestic shade of grey-green siltstone, almost shield-like in appearance. Both sides are exquisitely carved out, each one uniquely decorated but both sides containing a central serekh used to identify and in this case even confirm the subject as royalty. This serekh contains the symbols n’r and mr, which as you may have noticed, phonetically spell Narmer. These symbols are surrounded by two bovine heads, which could either represent the Goddess Hathor or Bat. The front s...
Thomas Smith is my great, great, great, grandfather that fought in the Civil War. In the Civil War many soldiers were issued swords, such as artillerymen, Cavalry men, and Musicians(Stoddard). Thomas Smith was a Civil War soldier in the 128th regiment of Pennsylvania, wounded and involved in the battle of Antietam and owned and fought with a sword as many others did in the Civil War.
As the name suggests the Bronze Age is a period of human culture, in which civilizations heavily used copper and bronze for various aspects of life and trading. The beginning of the Bronze Age is estimated to date before 3000 BCE in parts of Med. Europe, Middle East and China. Knossos and Mycenae are both archeological sites, and date back to the Bronze Age. Knossos was the capital of the ancient Minoan civilization; located on the island of Crete. Mycenae was a massive fortified palace, located between two hills on the plain of the Peloponnese, Greece.
The process by which this particular statue was created involved using a method developed by Kaikei, a Japanese sculptor. It was a groundbreaking process that involved carving different pieces of wood separately and then joining them together (“Amida”). Instead of using a single object for creating a sculpture, multiple parts could be used to make the statue easier to construct and put together. After the parts were all joined together, the statue was covered in a lacquer finish and gilt was added to the face to give it the golden look.
If you look closely, you can see the scrapings of lines made from the tool used to sculpt the stone. In addition, if you look close, you can see that at one time this sculpture was completely covered vibrant colors. At first, I was not aware of what polychrome or gilding was, but apparently, it is in reference to the color or painting of a piece and the technique used. I only realized this while looking under the soldier's clothing. This tells me that the soldiers were dressed in blue uniforms. The reason for the loss of color of the sculpture is unknown to me, but I could figure that since it was created in the thirteenth century, that time has taken its toll, or maybe at one point someone had stripped it of its color.
The medium is Granodiorite and the technique used was sunken relief, which is a technique were the sculptor chisels deep outlines below the stone’s surface. The sculpture does not seem to be originally painted. The Egyptians created coloristic effects through contrasting shadows and highlights. They used natural pigments to color some sculptures, however this was not the case. There are deeply cut areas in the back of the statue that create deep shadows and the use of natural light helps to bring up the highlights. The granodiorite has natural colors that helped the sculptor show more of those shadows and highlights. The statue is mostly in a warm hue and it may be caused because of the lighting inside the museum. These warm colors make the details stand out more. At a closer look of the structure there are different colors that can be easily identified, such as white, yellow, brown, black, gray and small spots of orange. The statues seems to be carved in one piece. There are no signs indicating it
Jewelry has been worn by people in almost every civilization around the globe in every century. These accessories can often tell a lot about a civilization. One can especially compare the jewelry of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome to get an accurate idea of the time period and how people's customs evolved within that area and that time. Jewelry in ancient times were very similar in that they were often made of identical materials, showed status of the people living within a society and the sophistication of the civilization itself; however, the way the jewelry was produced and complexity of the design changed with time.
During the Middle and Upper Paleolithic era, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis started to create works of art such as cave paintings, rock art and jewelry as well as religious behavior through burial rights and rituals. These burials are important since it signifies a "concern for the dead that transcends daily life,” (Lieberman). These burial rights and rituals can be dated back to the Middle Paleolithic era, overlapping with the first appearance of Homo neanderthalensis. While it may be disputed, evidence suggests that the Homo neanderthalensis were the first to intentionally bury the dead in shallow graves along with what is assumed to be their possessions (Wikipedia).
The Victory stele of Naram-Sin holds similar features, however there are some distinct characteristics that set the two apart. The stele is obviously a different material than the Egyptian palette of King Narmer. The palette was made of soft siltstone while the stele was made of pink limestone. They both have similar shapes; however, the palette is much more polished than the stele.
The Palette of Narmer was created on a flat stone surface; the artists then carved the story into the flat stone in a very specific manor. This palette is known for representing the coming together of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt (Stokstad and Cothren, 52). At the top of the palette on both sides shows two bulls that were said to possibly represent the goddess Hathor. Hathor was known as the goddess of protection, and is depicted in other Egyptian art as a woman with cow ears (British Museum, no page). In between the heads of Hathor is the name of the King Narmer, written with iconography called serekh. In this serekh, one can see the Horus falcon head and below it is the name of the king. The falcon head is said to protect the Egyptian ruler (Kinnaer). Although this is just one small piece of the top of the palette, it already starts to depict an enormous part of history in Egypt.
Let’s begin with what was going on during the time period for each sculpture. During the 2458-2446 BCE. Userkaf was thriving over his brother Sahure, and he became the new ruler of Egypt. In the start of 2446 BCE, Neferirkare beings his dominant over Egypt. King Sahure and Nome God is a high relief it is still attached to a surface of a stone. The Pharaoh sitting on his thorn wearing a Nemes headdress (it is usually blue and gold striped), fake beard. The king has an emotionless facial expression. It was made for a decoration for the king pyramid complex. The symbol behind this statue could be the gathering of the Nome gods form Upper and Lower Egypt around t...
...or historical records and scribing. In this manner, each section showcased the idea of purpose behind each Egyptian artifact; while all items are very ornate and artful, this separation proves the Egyptians lack of embodying “art” so much as embellished items of practicality and function.
were 10 doors and at end there was a statue of Osiris, the god of the
The pieces of sculpture are both carved using the subtractive method of sculpting from stone. However, the types of stone used were very different. The sculpture of Mycerinus and Kha-merer-nebty II was carved from a stone called greywacke, a dark colored, very hard stone the Egyptians prized for sculpture despite the fact t...
They took the technique of Cloisonné enamelling and developed it to produce highly stylised figurative works. In this technique flat wire or cloisons from the French word for partition or casement are used to outline designs, which had been incised on thin gold sheets by master designers. The cloison were then soldered to the sheets and the base roughened before the resulting cells were filled with enamel using a goose quill. They then placed the pieces in a kiln like device that was heated with a charcoal fire. Then after slowly cooling they were highly polished. The resulting enamels were beautiful works of art that would influence the development of western enamelling.