The Main Imperial Tombs

The excavation and discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb was as a result of the efforts of the Archaeologist Howard Carter and his team. Carter’s discovery of the tomb came by finding steps to the burial near the entrance to the tomb Ramses VI. The subsequent excavated of the site by Carter and his team revealed the greatest ever treasure found from an Egyptian tomb and showed the existence of Tutankhamun. Carter’s methodology for the excavation was that of maintaining records for each artefact and that every artefact that was brought out of the tomb was preserved appropriately. The discovery and excavation of the tomb was a long and complex process but with it revealed much about Tutankhamun.

The artwork I chose to talk about is on page 232. Figure 8.16, Funerary Relief of a Circus Official, Ostia, 110-130. The medium of the artwork is made from Marble relief. The Tombs in the old days of roman families built outside of the city walls, along roadways entering the city. The vision of the monuments is to preserve individual’s fame, family honor, and status in the society. The extended family of the deceased also held feasts and putting out food and drink for the dead for enjoying. The large figure in the picture is the official himself, holding hands with his wife at the left side. The handshake symbolizes in the Roman art the indication of marriage. The palm branch symbolizes the victory. There are many accents in the artwork

Funerals in Ancient Rome were as they are in most modern cultures, important. Those of nobles and aristocrats were particularly lavish and attended by many. Generally, Roman funerals consisted of the procession, cremation or burial and eulogy. Julius Caesar, dictator during the first century of the Rome, whose actions lead to the fall of the Roman Republic and in turn, the rise of the Roman Empire. Plutarch, a Greek historian, wrote about Caesar and noted that one of his first inclination that the people of Rome saw him as a fit leader, was during a funeral.

Before 3000 BCE, members of ancient Egypt’s aristocracy were buried in mounds of sand known as mastabas. The very first method of this were pits in the sand where the deceased was placed along with personal items. Due to the sand the body was preserved but not as well as mummification. The primitive form of the pyramid were mastabas. Mastabas were meant to give protection from tomb robbers and wild animals. Mastabas are bench like, rectangular structures with sloping sides and a flat roof. They were meant to represent the mass of the Earth, mastaba means “bench” in the Arabic language. Mastabas were only meant for aristocrats and members and family of the monarchy. The first construction sites of these buildings were on the west side of the Nile River, in a place called Saqqara. They were built there because that was a

Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, along the the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt.It consisted of many farms along the Nile. They are known for the Pyramids of Giza. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering Cairo, Egypt. The Great Pyramid is the main part of a complex or set of buildings that include two mortuary temples in honor of Khufu. King Menes is whom founded Egypt.

From 1922 to 1934, an archaeologist names C. Leonard Woolley excavated the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. ("The Royal Tombs of Ur.") During this excavation, Leonard Woolley was accompanied by his wife, Katherine Woolley, and a team of assistants to help excavate. Starting out by digging two trenches, after twelve seasons of digging, The Woolley's and their team discovered 18,000 graves. Among these graves were sixteen 'Royal Tombs' as Leonard Woolley described.

Us Etruscans are well known for our grand funerary practices, which involve creating enormous multi-chambered tombs, especially for us wealthy families, with some exceeding 130 feet in diameter and reaching nearly 50 feet in height . Banditaccia necropolis, the Greek word that translates to “the city of the dead”1, started becoming an orderly arrangement of subterranean tombs along a system of streets in the seventh century and now, in the fifth century, or the Archaic Period, our tombs are continuing to expand in great size, taking up more than 100 acres of land!

The Sphinx was built as a tomb for the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The mixed form, both animal and human, is significant, especially since they were normally just built as regular pyramids. It is an important symbol of Egyptian kingship and religion because pharaohs were expected to be a form of a god that is capable of living on earth in person form.

The exhibit consisted of 40 vitreograph prints from Littleton studios, of the 40, I would definitely have to say that "Giza" was the most interesting. The print was a promised gift of Carol Littleton Shay to the University. Harvey Littleton was the founder of the studio glass movement. Glass art is what Littleton was known for, his pieces consisted from ceramics to blown glass all the way to printing with glass, such as his work on "Giza". Littleton promoted the idea of glass as a course of study. His studio invited many artists to explore and work on glass art, which really created the trend and allowed the work of glass in the art world to become

In 1977 when renowned excavator Manolis Andronikos founded the Vergina tombs the main debate was, and still is to this day, about whom could the remains in Tomb II be identified as. Three tombs were discovered at Vergina and the evidence found in these quickly allowed researches to conclude that those buried at Vergina were from a family of royalty. The evidence from the grave offerings suggested that they were buried in the later half of the 4th Century and the age that researches identified the remains as left only two options as to who could be buried in Tomb II; Philip II King of Macedon or Philip III of Arrhidaeus. There is a copious amount of evidence towards both sides of this debate and no one is yet to have a definitive argument. However, when looking at the evidence I am going to argue that Philip II is the most likely candidate for the burials in Tomb II in Vergina.

The Colossal Statue of King Tuthankhamun and the Lamassu are amazing works of art. Of the eight works assigned, these two particularly caught my eye. The two pieces, though very different, have many similarities. In this paper, I will discuss these similarities and differences of style in terms of their overall shape, proportions, and individual parts.

The theme I have chosen is the Quest for immortality/ creation of legacy. Ancient Egyptians believed that there was a life after death; they focused much of their life preparing for the afterlife. The afterlife did not come easy to them, as they felt like they needed to live the best life possible otherwise they would not be accepted into the afterlife.

The earliest Egyptian grave sites were called Mastaba, which meant “House for eternity” or “Eternal house”. A Mastaba consisted of a rectangular structure, with a flat roof, and outward sloping sides. Mastabas were made out of mud-bricks, or sometimes stone. Usually Mastabas were four times as long as they were wide, many of them were at least 30 or more feet in height.

The shrine of Tutankhamun uncovers the burial customs of the New Kingdom Egyptians. The Canopic Shrine positioned on the east wall of the Treasury holds Tutankhamun's embalmed internal organs. A gold chest held four Canopic jars containing the dead pharaoh's internal organs in each jar. Undoubtedly, through the process of mummification, the embalmers must have removed the internal organs and preserved them in the Canopic jars, perhaps to be taken with the pharaoh to the next world. The third and innermost of three coffins of Tutankhamun is made of solid gold and is inset with semiprecious stones and coloured glass. It is covered with carved decorations and inscriptions inside and outside. It bears the names and epitaph of the deceased king and also protective texts. From this we discover the significance of the importance of the decoration of the mummy was, and the power the coffin was believed to hold. Originally, mummification was so expensive that it was a privilege enjoyed only by the Pharaoh and few nobles. Everybody else was given a simple grave burial in one of the vast cemeteries or "necropolises" of the time. But the promise of eternal life was so appealing that it wasn't long before other classes of Egyptians began signing up for mummification, too.

As I continued researching on the tomb, I would have expected that the second burial chamber would be more extravagant and complicated than the first. In fact, it was never finished. Those who built the tomb had barely begun working on the decorations of the second chamber. From the unfinished scenes it is clear that it was intended to include the same two hours of the Book of Gates that are found on the front wall of the first burial chamber. In the middle of the chamber lays a badly damaged royal sarcophagus. It was made of red granite, and was later reconstructed. A figure of the king was carved on its lid, and at the foot end of the sarcophagus are figures of the god Isis, which shows her kneeling. On the sarcophagus’