Meditation on Shaykh 'Abd al-Qurnah

"Shaykh 'Abd al-Qurnah: Egyptian dance." Online Photograph. Britannica Student Encyclopædia. <http://student.britannica.com/ebi/art-1427>.

This mural is dated to c1400BC (about 100 years before Tutankhamun). Now I'm no scholar of Egyptian art but the clarinet player looks distinctly "modern" in her portrayal ... not like the stylised images we are used to. The main figures at the wedding (not in shot here) are all stylised. So is it that we see the impact of The Tradition on ancient egyptian art rather than "primitavism".

What I mean is that we might interpret Egyptian Artists as not having been brought up on still-lifes and realism. It might be that they were unequipped to paint things according to modern conceptions of space and perspective. We know it wasn't until the Renaissance that perspective worked its way into painting in Europe. So we might dismiss it as primitive painting. But here in this painting the artist demonstrates another technique with the face and body painted obliquely - altho the legs are within the usual style.

Is it that rather than ability, painter's expectations of what they were to paint was dictated by the expectations of their audience and by style and 'tradition'? Painting has a cultural utility and exists within a culture rather than being some sterile objective representation of a reality - the naive view.

It was the Greeks who began to seek "realism" and this fits with other intellectual pursuits of the time and what came to be called science: the aligning of the mind with apparent reality. In the minds of Hippocrates and others the Truth lay not in social conformity but in eternal rules like maths. Ironically of course he creates a cult and a dogma of reality which leads to the death of one of his students. Society still remained supreme.

Certainly the meaning of artifacts can only be understood within the culture for which and by which they are created. One doesn't need to be a genius to see that this medaeval map of the world isn't very interested in the Longitude and Latitude of places or even the distances between them. These concepts hadn't even been invented. It is far more interested in a view of the world with Christ as over seer and centre of the world. Jerusalem is undoubtedly at the centre and everything else surrounds this centre of the world showing its relative significance. Who cares how far it is or even what direction it is as long as we know we are not forgotten by God!

So when people find artifacts from the current world what will they think of us? Will they say ah ha here were a people who knew the True Way of Life. Look at their art and their science! Look how they understand the facts of reality and the pure unillusioned vision they have of Life.

This is the question I have pursued for a very long time. It is hard to answer because I am from this culture and this time. Of course I think we are right and we are true and of course what we do makes sense and what other people do or have done is mysterious and odd. It is exactly this coincidence that I find what we do so sensible that immediately makes me doubt its validity! Exactly as I cannot believe that the UK has somehow always fought on the side of Good!

Can I make a bold step forward here. The sense that things "makes sense" arises only when we are members of the culture and the society that finds utility in them.

But quick SRH check. Such a statement must be independent of all society. So there are further territories to explore here!