Tasting Life Twice - 4-18-08 to 4-25-08

Friday, April 18, 2008

"Primitive"
9:08pm

The Friday Illo theme is 'Primitive', and I had a really 'primitive' drawing for it:

"But it doesn't LOOK like anything!"
And 5000 years later, we wonder!

Five thousand years later, I _do_ wonder! I am doing a research project, trying to gather together all the images of the ancient Egyptian god named Set (aka Seth, Sutekh, Suti). I look everywhere, in online museum collections, in research findings, and in photos of rock art in the Egyptian deserts.

Some of the rock etchings are really quite clear. That long squared off eared, and snouted Set animal is really visible. But others are just TOO primitive, I can't tell what sort of creature it is supposed to be:

This is a photo Andie Byrnes took, only with increased contrast.

For instance nothing much is discernable about this critter, except it's some sort of four legged mammal with some head thing going on. Tall ears of the Set animal? Maybe? It's just TOO primitive...

But if you look at the rest of Andie's photos of Wadi Hammamat rock art, you'll see some are quite artistic. It is because it spans the history from prehistoric to ptolemic times that there is such variance.

Last night, I was amused by the 'variance' in various Egyptian Stelae in Field Museum of Natural History. There's a reason why these pieces ended up in a natural history museum, instead of the Met museum or the Louvre. Not everything they did was grand. This was the finest I found:

This stela from the Ptolemic period has a really nice Horus falcon...

...But that falcon is just sitting there under the clumsy wingspan and a really awkward sun disc with uraeus. It's a mystery. Perhaps the artist felt it would be useless to engrave hieroglyphs for a person who couldn't read them. Perhaps it was a practice piece. Maybe they made these to sell in the market for cheap? Who knows?

Maybe it was a piece that was enjoyed and given a place of honor in someone's home, despite its flaws.

Meanwhile, I turn to my own art. I was determined to clean up the drawing table, and made a little progress. I was going to put away the book about the recent Tutankhamun exhibit, but took time to look at it again, intrigued by a piece of paper I'd left as a bookmark. It wasn't long before I felt inspired, by a griffin (or perhaps more accurately, a sphinx, since it has a human head and no wings) on a ceremonial shield:

Oh, yes, not an 'exact copy', heh heh...

In the original, Tutankhamun as griffin is trampling the enemy.

"An inscription before the sphinx king reads, 'The good god, who tramples the foreign lands; who smites the great ones of all the foreign lands; lord of might like the son of Nut, ferocious like Montu, who dwells in Thebes; King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Nebkhepure, given life, son of Re whom he loves, Tutankhamun, like Re." (_Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs_, page 199)

All that ferocity, for the Pharoah was seen as leader of the army. (And it could be said that all that smiting is PRIMITIVE, too!) However, it amused me to have the griffin smiting a small trouble, a mouse. (If it pleases you, you can imagine that he is not even 'smiting', but merely catching the bothersome invader and removing him from his castle.)

Saturday, April 19, 2008 A

"Shelling Pistachios - Framed"
8:54am

All the pictures are back and on the walls they used to occupy. I hadn't yet found a place for 'Shelling Pistachios' yet. One glance at our walls, and I decided we didn't need two calenders up, so I used that nice sturdy nail for it. (That's why it shows a little higher than the 1978 painting)

(This one won a blue ribbon at Yuma County Fair...)

Julia likes the chosen location, and said she likes this drawing "because it is real." I think that's most people's preference in art, not for the conceptual or abstract or whatever, but what conveys to them a 'real' experience. (Also, those were her 'REAL' hands doing the shelling!)

Saturday, April 19, 2008 B

"Woman in Blue II"
11:56am

I was perusing the Phoenix Art Museum website, regarding a possible show we could attend, "Masterpiece Replayed". While there, I enjoyed the online site about it. The show explores "what it meant to be a working artist in the late 19th and early 20th century".

So many artists today think it is an awful cheat to copy or even be inspired by the work of another. In this society paranoid of copyright infringement, such efforts are considered less than honorable. (And certainly they would be, if the inspiring source is not acknowledged.) However, this opinion was not shared in earlier times:

Copy "Copying existing images available in museums or from fellow artists provided opportunies to improve observation and control, and to 'enter the mind' of another master. It was a form of practice. Copying was an accepted method of study; it had no negative connotations, as it was not intended to deceive the viewer."

It is something artists today would do well to emulate. I can't learn so well if I don't study what other artists have learned. I can't learn in a vacuum. So I will continue these works of study.

Thus it was, Matisse's "Woman in Blue" at the Philadelphia Art Museum, and temporarily in Phoenix called to me:

Larger detail underneath...

72 dpi version underneath
That is a painting of mine to the right, and on the left, a quick sketch of me pointing...

Sunday, April 20, 2008 A

"A Little Research"
11:39am

In between doing loads of laundry, I thought I'd take another look at the big book featuring images from Royal Tombs. I came across many intriguing images, but this one in particular puzzles me:

The Book of the Earth, Section C
KV 9, Rameses V/VI, burial chamber, back wall
"Another scene from this section depicts the corpse of the earth god Aker bending over a figure of his own ba...."
_The Royal Tombs of Egypt_, by Zawi Hawass, photos Sandro Vannini

I did a websearch on Aker, and found a few references to Aker as "one of the earliest gods". Touregypt.net declares, "In early representations, Aker is shown as a narrow strip of land with a human or lion head at both ends. But later he was shown as the foreparts of two opposing lions, sometimes with human heads, facing away from each other. One lion faces west while the other faces east. In between them is the sign of the horizon."

By that description, it is very difficult to see how the entity in the Book of the Earth scene was determined to be Aker. I did find one clue at Wikipedia, "Aker itself translates as (one who) bends, and thus Akeru translates as benders, though in what sense this is meant, is not fully understood." The entity is definitely BENDING. (Why is his Ba regarding him in that manner? If the entity has died, then, of course, the Ba left the corpse, and thus looks at the corpse. {A corpse which can stand? Of course, it is supported by the Was scepter as cane.})

I thought I'd find more about Aker in the various books I have. Oddly, I couldn't find any mention of him. (Maybe I just missed the one book with the one reference?) But I did come across a book I'd totally forgotten buying, _Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts_ by Jeremy Naydler. As I thumbed through its pages, I had a Set sighting:

Unas stands between Horus and Seth during a kingship rite. Reconstruction from relief fragments found at his pyramid temple at Saqqara

Unas has tied the cords of the shem-shem plant,
Unas has united the heavens,
Unas rules over the lands, the South and the North.
as the gods of long ago.
Unas has built a divine city as it should be,
Unas is the third at his accession.

Naydler explains
"In a possible reference to a baptismal ceremony associated with his accession, the king is described as 'the third at his accession.' As a third, he would be between Horus and Seth (or Horus and Thoth), who would be standing on either side of him and would pour baptismal water over him. The position of the king between the dual gods, receiving blessings from both, symbolizes his union of their opposing natures within himself."(pages 305-306)

(In Ptolemic times, when Set was demonized, Thoth would be there. However the idea of a 'union of opposing natures' only really works with Set and Horus there!)

Sunday, April 20, 2008 B

"Anubis and..."
9:29pm

There are so many beautiful photos in the _Royal Tombs_ book. I was looking at one of Nefertari with Anubis, and there was just something about Anubis, I had to have a try. I took the 14x17 inch paper, but sort of short changed Nefertari. I got all of Anubis, though!