Wen 丨 Qi Ge historical view
Editor丨Qige Historical View
First, the production of Egyptian murals
The aristocracy in Egyptian murals was not primarily associated with religion, politics, or fashion, but with luxury; They thus parallel the Greek motifs found on the Roman walls.
The painting "Palace of Augustus" is the first direct evaluation of political interpretation.
Since these paintings are a broader political interpretation of Egyptian subjects and also serve as a basis for evaluation, this is a critical first step in assessing the significance of the corpus as a whole.
Analysis of these paintings shows that there is in fact no reason to think that the prince himself commissioned them as a manifestation of his conquest of Egypt.
Especially considering that their Faroese, semi-fantasy imagery does not appear in his Victory Monument.
Nor can these paintings symbolize the triumphal return of Apria from Egypt to Rome, as their abstract representation is unparalleled in the depiction of Shiplia. So a careful analysis of this view of Egyptian iconography is essential.
My analysis is by being the first to judge many "Augustus" themes.
This approach goes beyond the purely iconographic methods used so far. Because while iconography is really important to understanding these paintings, I think the forms of these Egyptian motifs are just as important.
They are vegetative, elongated, and sometimes even fused with parts of the animal.
While some aspects of traditional Fallonic iconography are still recognizable, many others have also undergone certain shifts, sometimes on the verge of recognizability, despite the best efforts of scholars to identify them.
These are all artistic reimaginings and are essential for everyone to understand these paintings.
Because these fantastical renderings of Egyptian themes did not appear in other media, neither in Egypt nor Rome. Here, painters reinvent old portraits into something new. And focus on distinguishing these images from those used in the service of religion or politics.
We see above that the Egyptian themes depicted in the temple go far beyond fantasy, and the same description of political monuments is given. On the contrary, the flourishing of painting pointed to what I considered to be the main meaning of the subject.
- The appearance of mural motifs
Egyptian motifs in the "House of Augustus" are not a unique commission from the royal family, but symptoms of the general trend towards frescoes in Rome during this period. That is, they represent the translation of precious collector's objects from three-dimensional to two-dimensional.
This artistic practice has been recognized in the Greek objects depicted on Roman walls, and in carefully analyzing Egyptian motifs, I show that for them we can also identify many luxuries as models.
These objects have proven to be collector's treasures both archaeology and textually and are considered one of the most popular objects internationally.
Comparing Rome, the Gulf of Naples, and Egypt from the first century BC to AD, one can see the objects that Roman collectors cherished the most, and therefore probably wanted in their frescoes as well.
I therefore think that the already extraordinary preciousness of these objects is enhanced by their mural form, because the painter increases the connoisseurial pleasure that luxury offers by adding another layer of art and elegance.
Third, the correlation between Egyptian murals and patterns
For how the audience responds to these themes in the context of Roman residences. The Palace of Augustus argues that the paintings, as depictions of luxury, contributed an atmosphere of elegant pleasure and were primarily intended to please the Roman audience.
It achieves this in several ways, two of which are detailed here.
On the one hand, pharaonic themes from luxury were included in the frescoes as part of the hallucinatory art collection. The viewer, on the other hand, uses the surrounding decoration to engage in an erudite discussion of myth, art, legend and love.
Fallon motifs, on the other hand, are used in luxurious garden spaces, harmonizing with the display of water and plants, creating a space of sensory pleasure. These two aspects became the main literary sources for our reference.
The ancient writer Pliny once said that the main purpose of this elaborate garden decoration was to create an atmosphere, which was not about politics or even religion.
In fact, this conclusion reflects the great contribution of this new reading to the study of Roman painting.
First, it urges us to reconsider the broad political interpretation of Roman domestic art, especially those long known as "Augustus."
Second, it encourages us to view the multiple visual cultures of Roman dwellings as a whole, rather than confusing frescoes with other materials, most importantly, luxury goods and other furniture.
Taken together, these two contributions opened up a new perspective on Roman collecting, artistic practice, and family life.
IV. Decoration in Egyptian murals
In the decoration there are many elements with an Egyptian theme. Even more notable of these are those Fallon crowns, as these have been eagerly discovered and used as symbols of victory over Egypt.
But it must be emphasized that these crown motifs are not crowns, they are just decorative motifs transformed into whimsical ornaments, often very different from their models.
This is crucial for understanding in everyone's mind, and we can see it from the following aspects. Several different crown motifs appear in narrow black friezes, showing the normality above the walls.
Themes from outside the wall to inside the wall, and on the same wall, the length of different walls has the same theme.
The right areas along the walls reflect each other, as well as their left areas. The left area contains a row of fuzzy imitation of the Faroese "Horus Feather Crown".
This type of double-feathered crown, an important attribute of the Egyptian pharaohs since the Fourth Dynasty, usually consisted of two feathers standing on ram's horns flanked by bull horns.
It's like all crowns are made up of different constituent elements that can be recombined into a set of subtypes, other attributes can be added to feathers and horns, such as a solar disk or small feathers in front, and two sets of horns are not always present.
And on the façade of the temple of Hassol in Dendra, Egypt, wears a crown of Horus feathers. Standing behind the next pharaoh, Caesaron, she wears a crown with two pillar-bill-like feathers covered with a pair of upright, curved horns.
A huge sun is located between the horns of an ox, but it does not emerge from the horns of a ram, but from a modifier.
These two tall, straight, smooth feathers, perhaps those of a falcon, distinguish the Horus feather crown from other types of double crowns, which are characterized by ostrich feathers, recognizable from their curved sides and lobes at the apex.
In the black frieze above, a whimsical reimagining of the crown of Horus feathers preserves a pair of upright feathers, but reduces them to an elongated shaft with a groove in the middle.
The horns were reshaped into curved horns, and it is no exaggeration to say that now more, from two to four, and longer, almost as tall as a feather, now also more curly, one pair twisted inward and the other pair outward, more than any horn.
A degenerate sun disk at the bottom is now a red or green circle, enhancing the jewel-like effect of the golden "feathers" and "horns".
The feathers have a golden disc. The blue wings stretch gracefully upwards to the sides, perhaps two mature flanking feathers that can be paired with a crown, like the statue of Isis in Pompeii, but such large wings are unprecedented in existing examples.
The delicate jewel-like appearance of the crown motif is made up of whimsical gadgets, a row of inverted bells, and pearl-like bells extending to the sky, these bizarre ornaments seem to defy gravity.
Like the crown motifs, they may be recognizable replicas of real-world models, but they have been transferred to a purely fantasy realm.
A variation of the same Horus feather crown appears in other parts of the black frieze. The western side of the side wall is characterized by a huge enlarged solar disk topped by a row of "feathers".
Two serpentine curves attached to the disc and then branching out from its top, perhaps reminiscent of a bull's horn, but barely recognizable.
Further removing the crown motif from its Fallon model and placing it in the decorative field is the Arabesque tripod on which it sits, one leg consisting of a dangling pendant and the other two legs consisting of exaggerated branching swirls as tall as the crown itself, with lion's paws grasping tendrils.
The longest-lived crown in Egyptian art, appearing from the early Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period. In the New Kingdom, it was decorated with further symbols, earning it a new name, the Andean Crown, which also appears in paintings.
On the tower of the Temple of Horus in Edph, there is a relief depiction of Ptolemy XII. The reed crown consists of a bunch of reeds near the top, producing a flaming apex, ostrich feathers on either side of the reed bundle.
The elaborate rendering of the crown can be seen in the marble pilasters of the palace, with the head of the goddess Hathor topped by a shrine flanked by cobras, the snake on the left wearing the "red crown" of Lower Egypt, and the Crown of Atef in Upper Egypt on the right.
Here, like many descriptions from Egypt, the reed core of the crown is smoothed into the shape of a bowling pin, neatly framed by two ostrich feathers.
Like the Horus Feather Crown seen above, the basic framework of the Atif Crown can be enhanced by further reorganizing elements.
In the relief of Ptolemy XII, it becomes a crown with a solar disk at the bottom and top of the reed bundle, supported by ram horns, and the top of each side has its own solar disk.
This "enhanced Atef" type of crown, mainly complemented by a solar disk, is themed in a black frieze on the back wall of the upper copper seat.
The theme of this crown is an oversized solar disk at the bottom, a tapering central core at the top and two slightly withered feathers.
They are painted in the same golden hue as the crown of Horus feathers on the side walls, and also have a gemstone in the center of the solar disk, but they are stronger and have not only bells but also flowers. Just like on the side walls, the motifs are connected into a chain by circular stems, highlighting their elegance.
Another variation of the anterior leaf crown does not appear in the black ground frieze but as a kind of crown that goes beyond the partial crown on the side wall or the combined plant gable.
Here, the pattern of the crown is so integrated into the twisted organic decoration that it seems to be a nutritional creature, a swampy creature with winding tentacles. It is clear that it is no longer a pharaoh's headdress.
The last change shows how extensively the wall painters modified their halo models.
The top pattern is entirely red because it has no solar disk and is closer to the basic Attifian crown, but even the simple shape is twisted to the point that it is almost unrecognizable.
The core of the reed is just a rough triangle with a burning tip, and the feathers of these two ostrich do not grasp it, but stretch outward. The two protrusions below the "feathers" may mimic Andean Uruguay.
Supporting the whole whole are two large arcs, somewhat reminiscent of the horns of a ram, twisted, wide, and pointed, like reliefs from Ptolemy XII.
Or like Uruguay, as they widen at the end of the raised head and wear three curved petals like Uruguay.
However, to discern even the coronal element in this mixture of plants, we must turn to the comparison on the island, located near the upper corner band of the palate, probably decorated at the same time.
A white floor frieze that wraps around the top of the wall, with a familiar alternating canopy pattern and flowers connected by a series of circulating stems.
The feathers of the crown pattern are easier to identify, and the careful lines indicate barbs, while the Uruguayan flanks of the crown are more easily recognizable as snakes, carefully shaded and detailed. They feature the same feeding position and three-pointed decoration as an extended arm for the upper pointed head and are likewise attached to the vegetation tower.
But in fact the last crown motif on the copper strip was not only vegetized to the brink of recognition, but has been radically altered, as the painter made this crown out of the ibis.
Their long beaks are thin and almost invisible, which makes their curved necks and heads more Uruguayan-like. Their tail feathers are straight upwards, forming the core of the crown, and the wings are ostrich feathers on the sides. But potential references to the phaloon headdress are buried deep in this fearsome plant.
Bibliography:
"Ancient Egypt, I'm Coming"
Research on Decorative Treatment in Mural Painting Creation