How do verbal and visual elements combine
to honor a person in ancient Egyptian art?
Block Statue of the Overseer of Priests Sitepehu
, Dynasty 18, reign of Hatshepsut, 1470-1458, b.c., sandstoneTheme: Communication
Goal: To uncover and construct layers of symbolic meaning in a work of art
Grade Levels: 6-8
Curriculum Areas: Arts, Writing, and Communication
Materials
Block Statue of Sitepehu
Sketch paper
Pencils
Sheet of Hieroglyphic characters: phonetic vs. symbolic meanings
Sheet of hieroglyphic characters: human gestures
For Extension Activities
Translation of inscription on the Block Statue of Sitepehu
Collage materials
White shirt cardboard/tagboard, magazines (especially with images of people: Time, Life,
People), scissors, glue sticks, (optional: matte medium to cover completed images)
Talking Monuments: The Priest Overseer Sitepehu
The evocative Block Statue of the Overseer of Priests Sitepehu speaks to us over the centuries in many different ways. The statue honors a great communicator from the New Kingdom Dynasty of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh. Unlike a Christian priest, an Egyptian priest was not a communicator in the sense of offering sermons or spreading the faith. Rather, like the pharaoh, he was an intermediary between humans and the gods. Sitepehu was a mid-level official in Egyptian society. As Overseer of the Priests, Sitepehu managed other priests, oversaw the maintenance of temple lands and the performance of daily rituals to the gods, and provided judicial advice.
The block statue, which once sat opposite the central doorway of Sitepehu’s tomb in a cemetery at Abydos, expresses his role as great communicator in many ways. Sitepehu gazes into eternity with enlarged eyes and ears. His mouth is closed—he listens and
observes, rather than speaks. Sitepehu’s pose derives from a guardian stance and echoes the lines of an important hieroglyph, netcher, which means "seated god." We are meant either to revere him in the afterlife as a deified being, or again recall his role as attendant to the gods.
Sitephehu’s cloak becomes a wall of text that wraps him in praise as well as states his wishes for an abundant, harmonious afterlife. The hieroglyphics honor his exemplary work in this life, and prepare the way for him to reap his reward in the next.
"One kindly of heart was he, of winning face; he was the heir of one excellent in character, he was indeed the son that God giveth, whom he placed deep in his heart; his enlargement is to eternity, his hand is unbounded, he praised and there was no lack of his gifts."
Objective
1Students will observe, analyze, identify, and describe the symbolic elements of the Block Statue of Sitepehu.
Procedure |
|
What Teacher Does |
What Students Do |
| Show students the transparency of the Block Statue of Sitepehu. Ask them to look carefully at the image. | Students will carefully observe and analyze what they see. |
| Without identifying the title
of the piece or whom it represents, tell the students the sculpture is a symbolic monument
to an important man in ancient Egyptian society. Ask the students to define
"symbol," giving visual examples. Draw students’ attention to the abstract
nature of symbols, especially their simplified forms. Optional: Have students draw examples of symbols on the board or on a blank transparency on the overhead. |
Students will define
vocabulary term, "symbol," both verbally and visually, i.e., with visual
examples. Students will consider the abstract, simplified forms of symbols. |
| Tell the students that the man represented was a great communicator. Ask them to write down all the visual and verbal clues they can see that might be symbols of the man’s abilities as a communicator. | Students will infer and list possible symbolic attributes of the figure. Students may notice large ears and eyes, attentive facial expression, hieroglyphic texts on body. |
What Teacher Does |
What Students Do |
| Have students compare their lists in pairs or small groups. | Students will work collaboratively to compare assumptions. |
| Ask students to share their lists with the class. Write observations on the board. As each attribute is described, ask the students to point out how they see it expressed in the sculpture. Point to the various aspects of the figure as students describe them. | Students will support their assumptions with visual information from the sculpture. |
| As a class, ask students to
identify which symbolic attributes of the sculpture are universally understandable, and
which require specific cultural knowledge to interpret. Note: Universally understandable attributes might include: the facial expression, large ears and eyes. Other symbols such as the gesture of the figure and the texts themselves might require culturally specific knowledge to interpret accurately. |
Students will categorize their interpretations into those that are universally understandable and those that are culturally specific. |
Assessment Strategies
Objective
2Students will reflect on the evolution of the ancient Egyptian writing system based on symbolic characters and discover the dual nature of hieroglyphs as objects and objects as hieroglyphs.
Procedure |
|
What Teacher Does |
What Students Do |
| Explain that hieroglyphics is a system of writing that evolved from pictograms which came to represent both sounds (like our alphabet) and whole concepts or ideas. Show hieroglyphic alphabet sheet with the phonetic hieroglyphs (phonograms) and their symbolic meanings. Explain that we are going to focus today on the symbolic aspects of hieroglyphics. | Students consider the dual nature of hieroglyphs as both sounds and symbols. |
| Share that the ancient Egyptians had the same word for writing as for drawing—medu netcher—which meant literally "the words of the gods," or "divine words." Given that reading was concentrated in the temples and the royal residence of the semi-divine pharaoh, ask the students to consider why they might have assigned divine power to the written word. | Students will reflect on the ancient Egyptians’ respect for the written and drawn word and consider its power in a largely illiterate society. Students may consider the "divine" qualities of the written word to include its ability to remain unchanged over time and distance and to be universally translatable by any literate person. These attributes take on added power when the texts themselves are believed to be divinely inspired. (This is an interesting parallel for students to consider to contemporary Egypt where the Qu’ran is believed by Moslems to be the literal words of Allah.) |
| The Block Statue of Sitepehu
carries a message for the gods both in the hieroglyphs that cover its surface, and in the
form of the figure. Hand out sketch paper and pencils, and ask students to pair up. Have one student assume the pose of the figure and the other do a simple outline drawing of the profile of his/her partner. Then have the students switch roles and compare their drawings. |
Students will collaborate in analyzing the pose of the figure through alternating between kinesthetically assuming the pose and drawing their partners in it. |
| Hand out sheet with
hieroglyphics of human gestures. Ask students to select the hieroglyph that most closely
resembles their partner’s drawing. Have the class compare their results. Is there a consensus as to which hieroglyph the Block Statue of Sitepehu represents in three dimensions? Most likely the hieroglyph netcher, or "seated god." |
Students will compare their
partner’s line drawings with Egyptian hieroglyphs of various gestures and select the
closest parallel to the pose rendered. Student will transfer their understanding of their partner’s drawings to analyzing the form of the sculpture. |
Assessment Strategies
Extension Activities
Sitepehu’s Words
Have one student read the translation of the hieroglyphic inscription from the Block Statue of Sitepehu aloud. Explain that the ancient Egyptians believed that writing and reading the "words of the gods" made them come true. Encourage the student to read the inscription with dignity and poise, as s/he is proclaiming the merits of Sitepehu before the gods. Ask the students to consider what attributes of Sitepehu the writer praises most highly and how they would characterize Sitepehu’s wishes for the afterlife.
Explain that Sitepehu was an important official in Egyptian society—the Overseer of the Priests. Priests, like the Pharaoh, were intermediaries between humans and the gods. Sitepehu was a mid-level manager of priests. Ask students to reflect on the various symbolic aspects of the sculpture that they have explored—its facial expression, pose, and inscription—and explain how each aspect reveals Sitepehu’s role in his society.
Praise Poems Collages
Have each student select an important leader in their community, U.S. history, or world history, and research them in person or on the Internet. This activity can be linked to a current Social Studies or History unit by selecting figures from the culture or period the students are already studying.
Have the students write free verse praise poems for their selected leaders, focusing on the attributes of the leader that the student most admires and on the student’s best wishes for the leader’s continued happiness (whether in this life or the next).
Ask students to determine a characteristic gesture for their leader and do a line drawing of it. Using their praise poems, outline drawings, and images of their chosen leader from magazines, books, or the Internet, have each student create a collage portrait of their selected leader.
Moving Monuments
Have students research other monuments to individuals or groups of individuals which combine images and text, e.g., the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Birmingham, the memorial to Chief Sealth in Pioneer Square. Have students choose one of these memorials and write an essay comparing and contrasting its symbolism with the symbolism in the Block Statue of Sitepehu.
Which of the following hieroglyphic characters most closely resembles the pose of the
Block Statue of the Priest Overseer Sitepehu?
PRAISE (henu) |
MOURNING WOMAN (iakbyt) |
SEATED MAN (se) |
MA’AT (ma’at) |
SEATED GOD (netcher)  |
HEH (heh) |
(Source: R. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyhic Guide to Painting and Sculpture, pp. 15, 17,31, 35, 37, 39)
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
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The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system consists of several hundred picture signs. The signs can be divided into two classes, phonograms and ideograms. |
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Phonograms, or signs used to write the sounds of the Egyptian language. The particular sound value of a sign was usually obtained from the Egyptian name for the object represented. Since the Egyptians did not normally write the vowels, only the consonantal "skeleton" of the word is given. Although each consonant can be written with a single sign (the alphabet signs), most sound-signs express a series of two or more consonants. Some of the Egyptian consonants have no equivalents in most modern scripts, and Egyptologists use conventionalized signs to represent these when transcribing Egyptian. |
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Ideograms, or idea-signs, in which each picture stands for the object represented or for some idea closely connected with the object. |
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A particular word could be written using only sound-signs, or only an idea-sign, but most words were written using a combination of both. It was a particularly common practice to use one or more idea-signs at the end of a word to give the general meaning of the word. A sign used in this way is called a determinative. |
(source: http://www2.torstar.com/rom/egypt)
Inscription on the Block Statue of the Priest Overseer Sitepehu
"May the king give an offering and Anhert, god of gods, king of heaven, ruler of the two lands, universal lord, in every place of his, great god that came into being of himself, creator who formed creators, a leader prepared (?), coming forth from the primeval waters, giving light to mankind, making brilliant his glory for his cycle of deities, and by it they live and see.
"(May he grant) attendance to his call for food so that (?) he command and the plan never fail eternally, divinity in heaven, power on earth, magic triumph in the underworld, renewal of life after burial (?). These things are the pension of one without blame, just is he that receiveth it. He shall be honoured in presence of the
ancestors, his name shall exist remaining as a monument, what he hath done shall not be wholly undone; his should joineth the owners of offerings, "welcome" to him is in the mouth of men, and his image is among them (?). Pouring libations, there shall never again be an ending (?); bringing offerings without ceasing. Every man of knowledge puts forth the book-roll to him. One kindly of heart was he, of winning face; he was the heir of one excellent in character, he was indeed the son that God giveth, whom he placed deep in his heart; his enlargement is to eternity, his hand is unbounded, he praised and there was no lack of his gifts (?).
"The Osiris, the prince, superintendent of the prophets in This of Ta-ur (the nome of This) Sa-dep-ahu deceased.
"Behold thy heart, it shall lead thy other parts, and they shall obey; thou shalt have water at command from the stream, and the north breeze that cometh forth from Natho: thou shalt eat thy bread as thou desirest, even as thou didst while thou wast upon earth: thou shalt gaze on Ra daily, thy face shall see Aten when he riseth: there shall be given to thee food in Heliopolis, the gifts of This of Ta-ur: thou shalt reach the hall of the two Truths, the Amahet shall open to thee its gates, and thou shalt adore the god upon his throne. Thou shalt not be debarred from the chariot, thou shalt sail the boat whither thou wilt, thou shalt plough in the field of Aru: thou shalt walk with those who accompany the attendants of Horus."
Pub: Egypt Exploration Fund, London 1902
From: El Amrah and Abydos, 1899-1901, by D. Randall Maciver, A. C. Mace
PL. XXXIII. Squatting statue of Sa-dep-ahu.