Pyramids
The first standard type of tomb in Ancient Egypt was the
Mastaba
This monumental, sloping gateway marked the formal entrance to many New Kingdom Egyptian temples.
What is a pylon?
This predynastic artifact served as both art and functionality. Made of greywacke, this stele, depicting the unification of upper and lower Egypt, was carved in low relief and used to mix eye makeup.
What is the Palette of King Narmer
This New Kingdom mortuary complex uses colonnaded terraces built into a desert cliff to honor a female pharaoh and reinforce her divine legitimacy.
What is the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut?
In order to preserve bodies for the afterlife the Ancient Egyptians performed what process?
What is mummification
This material was used to sheath the massive stone blocks of Khafre’s valley temple, creating a smooth, durable surface that contrasted with the core masonry.
What is granite?
This drawing convention combines a frontal eye with a profile head and body to show the most characteristic view of each part.
What is composite view?
This object was found in one of the largest graves in the Royal cemetary at Ur. The theory suggests that it formed the soundbox of a musical instrument. Made of shell, red limestone, lapis lazuli, and bitumen.
What is the Standard of Ur
This Achaemenid Persian palace in this modern day country features reliefs of processional figures bringing tribute, expressing imperial power and unity across a vast empire.
What is Persepolis in Iran?
Ancient Egyptian god Amon-Re was god of what?
What is the sun god and god of creation
This architectural feature connected the pyramid base to the valley temple and symbolically linked the pharaoh’s mortuary complex to the Nile floodplain.
What is the causeway?
This temple space is defined by a dense forest of columns supporting a roof, often leading toward the sanctuary.
What is a hypostyle hall?
This statue depicts a royal couple, both connected to a single rock, with no negative space between them. They are both depicted stable and strong, walking forward to represent the permanence of their kingdom.
King Menakure and his Queen
This Old Kingdom limestone statue shows a seated man with crossed legs and inlaid eyes, emphasizing literacy and administrative authority.
What is Seated Scribe?
The Mesopotamian Stele of Hammurabi uses hierarchical scale and relief carving to show what?
What is a ruler receiving laws from a sun god, emphasizing divine authority and justice.
The pyramid’s form likely referenced this solar concept, symbolizing the deceased king’s ascent and regeneration in the afterlife.
What are the rays of the sun (or ben-ben stone )
This architectural feature allowed light to enter a temple by raising the central roof section above the side aisles.
Clerestory
Assyrian guardian in the from of a man-headed winged bull. These statues were placed as guardians at certain gates.
What is Lamassu?
This New Kingdom funerary object, made of gold and inlaid with semi-precious stones, served to protect and eternalize a young pharaoh in the afterlife.
King Tutankhamun's Death Mask
This stepped mud-brick structure, built in the 21st century BCE in southern Mesopotamia, served as a temple platform for the city’s patron deity.
What is the Ziggurat of Ur, a religious temple platform?
This is a built raised platform with four sloping sides—like a chopped-off pyramid. Made of mud-bricks—the building material of choice in the Near East, as stone is rare.
What is a ziggurat
This upright stone slab was often carved with relief sculpture and inscriptions to commemorate individuals, record laws, or mark sacred or funerary spaces in ancient Egypt as well as the Ancient Near East and Greece.
What a stele?
This New Kingdom funerary papyrus depicts the weighing of a deceased official’s heart against the feather of Ma’at, using registers and composite view to illustrate judgment in the afterlife.
The Last Judgment of Hu-Nefer from The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
These small, stylized figures with large eyes were placed in temples to stand in perpetual prayer on behalf of worshippers.
What are Sumerian Votive Figures
Carved in the 14th century BCE, this painted limestone relief depicts a royal family beneath the rays of the Aten, emphasizing intimacy and divine favor.
What is Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Their Three Children