Egyptian Statues (Shire Egyptology)

For over three thousand years, ancient Egyptian sculptors created statues of deities, kings and lite officials and their families. These were set up mainly in temples or tombs and played a vital role in temple and funerary ritual, being places where non-physical entities - deities, the royal ka-spirit and the ka-spirits of the dead - could manifest themselves in this world. This book examines the materials and techniques employed by sculptors and various statue types and poses that occur. Next it explores the function of statues and the different contexts for which they were made. This is followed by a chapter explaining the notion of the ideal image: statues were not intended to be exact likenesses but rather ideal images reflecting the identity, role and status of the subject. A final chapter considers what was constant and what changed over time and looks at the influence that Egyptian statues had on the origins of monumental Greek sculpture.