Preface

Smith, W. Stevenson; Simpson, William Kelly

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Preface

W. Stevenson Smith, William Kelly Simpson

The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

~Since Smith’s Art and Architecture was revised in 1981, mainly along bibliographical lines in the notes, the activity and productivity on the art and architectural history of Ancient Egypt have been impressive. Many changes have taken place in outlook. Well into the twentieth century the Egyptologist was a generalist with several areas of...

Author

W. Stevenson Smith, William Kelly Simpson

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31543

Preface

Since Smith’s Art and Architecture was revised in 1981, mainly along bibliographical lines in the notes, the activity and productivity on the art and architectural history of Ancient Egypt have been impressive. Many changes have taken place in outlook. Well into the twentieth century the Egyptologist was a generalist with several areas of specialization. He (and rarely she) might produce excellent research on history, philology, grammar, archaeology, and papyrology, as well as art and architecture. Today research tends to be restricted to fewer and fewer aspects. Art and architecture have lagged behind historical, literary and philological studies, yet several scholars after the Second World War distinguished themselves in the field of art history and paved the way for a new generation with their students. Two in particular were Bernard V. Bothmer of the Brooklyn Museum and the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and Hans Wolfgang Müller of Munich. Today there are many outstanding interpreters of Egyptian art and I am embarrassed to single out a few at the risk of slighting others. In the United States several of Bothmer’s students have contributed to various periods of sculpture, painting and relief, especially Robert Bianchi, Edna Russmann, Richard Fazzini and James Romano of Brooklyn, Biri Fay and Marianne Eaton-Kraus now of Berlin, and Rita Freed of Boston. At Emory University in Atlanta Gay Robins continues her valuable research, particularly in the area of proportions. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Dorothea Arnold has organized major exhibitions and written on the Middle Kingdom and the Amarna period. Elsewhere active scholarship is exemplified by the late Cyril Aldred, as well as Nadine Cherpion, Maya Müller, Karol Mysliwiec, Sylvia Schoske, Hourig Sourouzian, Claude Vandersleyen, and Dietrich Wildung. Architecture was given an important impetus by the work of the late Herbert Ricke of the Swiss Institute for Architectural Studies in Cairo, ably followed by the work of Horst Jaritz, as well as Dieter Arnold of the Metropolitan Museum, the pre-eminent scholar in the field, represented by many of the bibliographical entries below. In terms of theoretical analysis of the phenomena of ancient Egyptian art, the works of Jan Assmann, John Baines, and Roland Tefnin should be singled out.

The past decades have seen an unprecedented increase in the level of activity in excavation and the copying of monuments by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, the Egyptian universities, and the many foreign missions, frequently in association with an Egyptian team. Only a few can be singled out: the work of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with associated institutions, at the sites of Giza, Saqqara, Bersheh and Gebel Barkal in the Sudan, the joint British and Dutch project at Saqqara, the Egypt Exploration Society expeditions at Saqqara and Amarna, the British Museum project at Hermopolis, the copying and publication of significant Fifth Dynasty tombs along the Unas causeway at Saqqara by Egyptian Archaeologists and the German Archaeological Institute, along with the excavations at the pyramids of Snefru (Rainer Stadelmann) and Amenemhet III (Dieter Arnold) at Dahshur. The outstanding work of the Czech Republic Archaeological Mission at the Fifth Dynasty site of Abusir has been directed by Miroslav Verner. The Middle Kingdom pyramid sites of Sesostris I at Lisht and Sesostris III at Dahshur have been re-excavated by Dieter Arnold for the Metropolitan Museum. Work at the early cemeteries at Abydos has been carried out by the German Archaeological Institute under the direction of Werner Kaiser and Günter Dreyer, while the Pennsylvania–Yale Expedition there under the general direction of David B. O’Connor and myself has concentrated on several areas, in particular: the Ramesside ‘Portal’ Temple, the cenotaph area, the townsite (Matthew Adams), the Sesostris III temple area (Josef Wegner), the Ahmose installations (Stephen Harvey), the overall survey of buildings and tombs (Janet Richards), and the Thutmose III temple (Mary Ann Pouls).

The activity in the Theban area has been extraordinary, especially in the copying of the tomb chapels on the west bank by a series of scholars, mainly from the German Archaeological Institute, as well as the Dynasty II tombs and the Mentuhotep complex at Deir el Bahri by members of the same institute. The work of the Polish Mission at the Hatshepsut temple is at the publication stage. Several major late period tombs (Ibi, Ankh-Hor) have been excavated, copied, and published by Austrian and German teams. At the mortuary temple of Merneptah extraordinary reused blocks of Amenhotep III have been found (Horst Jaritz of the Swiss Institute). Individual private tombs have been studied and published by a variety of scholars, many from Germany as well as Betsy Bryan and Daniel Polz from America (see blibliography).

The outstanding excavation and reconstruction of the temples on the island of Elephantine by Werner Kaiser, Günter Dreyer, Horst Jaritz and others will result in a multivolume series of reports. The publications by Labib Habachi and Detlef Franke of the Middle Kingdom sanctuary of Heqaib on the island, with its magnificent photographs of the statuary, is a lasting achievement. For these and many other projects, see the annual report on archaeological activity in Egypt and the Sudan edited for many years in the journal Orientalia by Jean Leclant and his associates.

Major museums have embarked on ambitious programmes of publishing their collections in well-illustrated monographs. Both the British Museum and the Louvre have been particularly productive in this area. The loose-leaf project with the title Corpus Antiquitatum Aegyptiacarum (CAA) has been used by other museums to record objects in detail, with photographs, drawings, translations, comparative material and bibliography: the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (11 vols to date); the Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim (8 vols, including the important statuary and reliefs from Junker’s work at Giza); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (3 vols, one on canopics and two on stelae); the Kestner Museum, Hanover (3 vols); and the Czech Republic (all museums, 1 vol. to date on sarcophagi). Other volumes seek to include the entire Egyptian collections of smaller museums or countries: Oslo, the Ethnographic Museum; Bremen, the Übersee Museum; the Museen der Rhein Mainz Region (2 vols); and Cuba, all collections. The quality of scholarship is high and the results laudable, but the ideal of publishing in this format all of the categories of all of the museums and collections is daunting and can never be achieved. In general the volumes/fascicles of these projects have not been included in our bibliographical references.

In reviews and otherwise, critics have noted that Smith’s coverage of the earlier periods is quite disproportionate and that the later periods are not well covered. No attempt was made to alter this in the revised edition of 1981 and the original limited bibliography reflects the emphasis on the earlier periods. The additions to the bibliography in the present edition may be useful. In many cases extensive bibliographies are included in some of the entries cited and individual articles therein are not included here for that reason. I apologize for not including items which have escaped my attention. Similarly, items of minimal interest may not have merited inclusion. In a few cases the items have been annotated to give the reader some idea of the contents. When an article or report encompasses more than one period, the reference is made under the earlier period: for example an article covering the Old and Middle Kingdoms will be listed under the first. In several cases, bibliography before the 1981 revised edition (in the footnotes of that edition) is included. When a volume is published in more than one language, the English version is generally cited. I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the aid of Dr Donald Spanel. As this chapter was about to be completed, he read the text and made many valuable additions, particularly in the areas of the later periods and Egyptomania.

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