Queen Nefertiti's legendary beauty is captured in this limestone bust from Thutmose's workshop in Akhet-Aten.

For nearly 3000 years, from the first dynasties around 3000 B.C.E. to Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C.E., the Egyptians maintained a particularly distinctive artistic style. They portrayed a wealth of subjects, including parties, food preparation, farming practices, religious processions, payment of taxes, pottery making, fishing, embalming of the dead, and even the pharaoh hunting hippopotami. Interspersed with human beings are representations of plants that grew along the Nile, cattle and other domesticated animals, and wild beasts such as crocodiles.

The Egyptians created art to endure. Their sky-scraping pyramids and their entombed mummies have lasted thousands of years. In the same manner, the Egyptians meticulously recorded their world upon tombs and temples with row upon row of brightly painted scenes in low relief.

Paint Like an Egyptian

A classic example of the Egyptian artistic style. Notice how the face is in profile, but the eye of the god stares out.

Egyptian art had a number of strict conventions for representing the human body that allow their works to be immediately recognizable to even the most untrained eye. These conventions were methods used to represent every figure, from slaves to gods.

Almost without exception, the head is represented from a side view in a stark outline. Normally, in a profile image only half the eye is seen. In an Egyptian profile, however, the whole eye stares out from the side of the head at the viewer. Similarly, the body and legs are in profile, but the torso is turned fully to the front, making the figure's body appear uncomfortably twisted — despite the desire to represent a strong, powerful figure. Walking figures have both feet flat on the ground, rather than having part of one foot lifted. Most men are shown in pleated linen kilts and women wear short-sleeved linen dresses.

Yet another convention of Egyptian art was to depict gods, including the pharaoh, and other important figures much larger in size than everyone else in the scene. This was a simple way to indicate status.

This coffin belonged to a woman known today as "The Chantress of Amun."

Over the course of 3000 years, the most remarkable feature of Egyptian art is the lack of change. It is easy to recognize the differences between a Greek sculpture from 600 B.C.E. and one from 400 B.C.E., or a French painting from 1400 C.E. and one from 1600 C.E. While the Egyptians did learn very early how to represent standing or sitting human beings reasonably well, they did not study the movements of bones and muscles beneath the skin, nor attempt to represent figures relaxing, moving violently, or expressing strong feelings. No matter what the figure is doing, the muscles do not change shape. Little effort is made to show any individual characteristics.

The only notable exception in the Egyptian style comes during the reign of the New Kingdom Pharaoh Akhenaten (1365-1347 B.C.E.). He preferred artists to render him and his wife, Nefertiti, as realistically as they could. The work of this period features an emotional intensity not found at any other time in ancient Egyptian art. Otherwise, the conventions are adhered to tenaciously, and only a trained Egyptologist can tell the difference between Egyptian reliefs created a couple of thousand years apart.

Why so little change? Perhaps those who were interested in change were prohibited by the pharaoh from executing any but the official, conventional style of art that was accepted for portraying the pharaoh's importance and grandeur. The endurance of the style was an important element that allowed a new pharaoh to prove he belonged among the past divine rulers.

But continuity was essential for another reason. To an extent unparalleled in other ancient civilizations, the Egyptians were concerned with the afterlife. The pharaoh was wrapped as a mummy in order to preserve his original features in the next world. He was buried with all his possessions to ensure that the afterworld would resemble the earthly one. Painting helped Egyptians document this life and "keep alive" the world for the dead.

A skilled artist had the ability to record as completely as possible the animals, birds, servants, and activities of Egyptian life in general. If life was to endure, an Egyptian artist's work could not be haphazard or whimsical. It had to be ordered and complete to last forever in the afterlife.

Egyptian painting astounds in part because it's lasted for almost 5000 years and counting. More incredible is that Egyptian art — in all its detail — deals with the major questions that artists have wrestled with throughout time. Life, afterlife, religion, and the natural world are not just Egyptian concerns — they are eternal human concerns.