Reference no: EM131621829

There are many conventions within Egyptian imagery that go against our own iconography. One example is the stylization and formalization of royal portraiture while making those lower on the social hierarchy more naturalistic, and presumably a closer approximation to how they might have actually looked. Some art historians have also argued that Egyptian culture was far more matricentric then once thought. They look to the importance of Hathor, the mother goddess within Egyptian culture and in examples like Double Portrait in FIGURE 3-13 as evidence. In this image we see the woman holding the man in complete reversal of how our own images of male and female coupling are depicted. the argument has been made that although the Pharaoh had absolute power, that power came from his marriage to the woman and the female line of power. If true, it shows how we privilege our current world view and transpose it to the past. Discuss these and other ways in which our interpretation and view of Egyptian art might be determined by our own cultural prerogatives.