EGYPTIAN SPACETIME

What was it like for the Greeks to look back at the art of their predecessors, the Egyptians?

“We must never forget that we look at Egyptian art with the mental set we have all derived from the Greeks.  So long as we assume that images in Egypt mean much the same as they did in the post-Greek world, we are bound to see them as rather childlike and naive.”  Gombrich.  p122.

The understanding that Gombrich provides to us is that of an unfamiliar quality to Egyptian visualization.  The static images are not meant to be read in any sort of order or hierarchy.  Instead, a sequence of scenes is non linear.  That is to say, each of the sequential images can be seen as making an independent yet interdependent contribution to the general meaning that is being conveyed.

“In this conception of representation, ‘making’ and ‘recording’ would merge.  The images would represent what was and what will always be and would represent them together, so that time would come to a stop in the simultaneity of a changeless now.”  Gombrich.  p125

We have established in these pages the concept of Byzantine Spacetime.  Now let’s add the concept of Egyptian Spacetime to our understanding of what we draw.

Just as we saw for the Byzantines, we might surmise that there is a greater sophistication in Egyptian Spacetime than there is in Representational Spacetime.  For in the Egyptian understanding, it was non linear.  The layers of meaning could be added or subtracted with no regard to linear time.  This makes the layers of meaning, in a way, transparent.  You can overlay them as you need to in order to derive meaning.  You make the meaning from the depiction.  You assemble the meaning.  Time is suspended, or at least expanded.

Now imagine a representational depiction of the wall painting above.  All of the knowledge would need to be depicted within one coordinated representational spacetime image.  All of the harvest and food related activities, information, and knowledge would need to be shown in one rationalized scene frozen in an instant of time.  How boring is that.

So which is more sophisticated?  As you might guess, my answer is that Egyptian Spacetime is more sophisticated, because it requires an assembly, a making, for full knowledge transmission.  Do we really need our visual information assembled into a pretty picture?

It may very well be that this schematic layering, this making, is indeed the default natural mode of humans.  It may very well be that representation, or matching, or recording, is what Gombrich calls the great exception.  P118.

1.  Gombrich, E. H. Art and Illusion. Princeton University Press: Princeton. 1984.
2. Pieter Brueghel, 1565,  “Hay Harvest”.