Comparing Ancient Egyptian Art, Athena Parthenos, And Ancient Greek Art

Ancient art allows people to experience ancient cultures and the way people saw the world long ago. Ancient Egyptian art and ancient Greek art both have their own similarities and differences in their techniques, designs, and meanings. I have chosen to analyze the ancient Greek piece, Athena Parthenos, and the ancient Egyptian piece, Black Basalt Sculpture of Cleopatra VII Philopator. Ancient art was a large part of the ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures. Many ancient art pieces have influenced new art over time, and some pieces still have influences on today’s modern art. Religion played a large role in ancient Egyptian art. However, order played a large role in the Egyptian culture, so most of their art followed very strict laws and guidelines.

Mythology played a very sizeable part in Greek art, as well as everyday life. Greek artists were able to observe the world around them and express life through their art. The statue of Athena Parthenos was made by Phidias and his assistants, and they began sculpting it around 447 BC. Phidias was a Greek painter, sculptor, and architect who had several famous pieces. His statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”. He is often recognized as the main initiator of the classical Greek sculptural design. This particular sculpture shows Athena with her left hand resting on a shield and her in her right hand she is holding a winged Nike. This statue shows Athena’s weight is shifted to her right leg, and her head is slightly inclined forward, with a blank expression on her face. The original statue did not survive until today, but was a very large chryselephantine sculpture. There have been several replicas made, but the most famous is housed in the Parthenon in Athens. This statue was made of gold and ivory and stood around forty feet tall. The statue was hollow with a wooden frame that supported the outer surfaces of the golden material and ivory surface of Athena. In 296 BC, Lachares, a tyrant of Athens, removed the gold sheets from the statue to pay his troops, and

Cleopatra the VII was the queen of Egypt, and Athena was the goddess of wisdom and war of Greek mythology. Though the statue of Cleopatra the VII had a Greco-Roman style face, the two sculptures still had very different styles. The sculpture of Athena is way more detailed and intricately designed than the statue of Cleopatra. The statue of Cleopatra has a very simple and sleek design. Ancient Greek art shows a lot of emotion and movement. Usually, ancient Egyptian art did not show emotion or movement, but this statue does. It shows Cleopatra taking a step forward which gave the sculpture a feeling of movement. The Athena statue also shows a feeling of movement with her outstretched hand holding a