The Palette of King Narmer Discussion

Welcome to the Palette of King Narmer discussion. I'm Ms. Moran and I'm here with. Mrs. Wyatt. Let's begin with your art history ID and let's talk about the artist first. So the artist for this tablet is actually unknown. However, it's important to note that this is not just your everyday Egyptian artist. This person would have probably been a very skilled craftsman. So the historical period that we're looking at here, do you want to go ahead and tell us about that? We're still going to be in the ancient Mediterranean. It is Egypt and Egypt does have a lot of different periods that are divided up into dynasties, but we're not going to get too deep into that. We're going to keep it ancient Mediterranean. Excellent. And then the materials that we're looking at here is this is actually siltstone, and which is a type of slate and it is carved. And we're talking about relief carving again here. If you look at it, it's very low relief and you could actually take your finger and bring it across the tablet and feel the bumps and grooves of each of the carved items on here. So Ms. Wyatt, could you tell us what the intended purpose is? Yes, this is actually a palette and it is for eye makeup. It is very large, it's about two feet. So it is made for statues. They would have ground up the eye makeup in one of the areas on it and then they would have used it to paint on the black around the eyes. Both men and women wore this type of makeup and the reason they wear it is as a sun type screen for their eyes. And then finally on your patron and audience, we have here, this was actually made for King Narmer, who was the, believed to be the first, well, he did, he unified the upper and lower Egypt. So let's look at the symbols here that were carved into this palette. And let's start off here with the very top. The reason we know this was made for him, this was his, is because his name is actually on it. And it's important to note that this was his name. He did not carve this. Somebody put his name on it. And then we have here the head of the goddess Bath or the goddess Hathor. She had horns like a bull as her symbol. We also have on one side, a boat preceded by Swallow, an open door, meaning unclear. So there are, we're still learning a lot of things about Egypt. There's a lot of things that were lost, lost in time. And we're, as we learn things, we learn how to decipher some of these meanings. This one thing in particular, we don't know exactly what it was meant to be. And then we have King Narmer with a sandal bearer behind him. Do you wanna talk a little bit about like kind of that sandal bearer thing? Yeah, we've just, we talked about it amongst ourselves and we just think it shows that he's very, very important because your average person doesn't have somebody walking behind them carrying their shoes. So that's kind of what we think. There's also, this is a good one to talk about hierarchy of scale. And so the more important you are, the bigger you are. So note the size of him and then the sandal bearer and then all of the other people as you go across. You can see this is King Narmer right here and he's wearing the lower Egypt costume. And it's, it looks kind of like a red hat kind of thing, headdress. And right next to him, this is his sandal bearer. And then we see a priest, which is smaller than the king here. And then his procession. And then over here, it gets a little grotesque. Very grotesque. You can see that there, these are actually slain foes that were decapitated and then severed parts placed together between the legs. Oh, and we should note here that they were also castrated. It's a very cruel thing to do to somebody. And you can see that they were displayed, they were kind of humiliating them in a sense. So the serpapods are the mythical animal with entwined necks. And this is where they are, this is where they would mix the makeup. So right in between the two animals here, and you see this on multiple tablets, these serpapods kind of making this little space here. And at the bottom, this is where we are seeing the representation of King Narmer as a bull. And he's breaking down the walls of the city and he looks very powerful. And you can see too that there's somebody here that's just kind of being trampled on. So King Narmer, we can see him a little more up close on this side. So would you like to go through this one, Mrs. Wyatt? Yes, we'll go through it real quick. So Narmer is holding a mace and he's fixing to smite, and that's the same as hit the other person that is beneath him, okay? He still has his sandal bearer. I do want you to note that he is wearing a bull's tail because they do think about him as a bull and being very masculine. You also have to remember that the pharaoh is God on earth. And so that's why he is always bigger than everybody else. He is wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, and he has the royal beard that is also associated with being pharaoh. Then you go over to the other side, the falcon with the human arm is the god Horus. He's holding up a rope and binding the foe's head, which is emerging from a marsh, which is probably a personification of Lower Egypt, which means that Narmer has unified both upper and lower. Then the last thing at the bottom, you have deadly foes in a walled city. And it's perhaps a personification of all cities. And when you're talking about a personification, you're just talking about the idea of the Statue of Liberty, that it is a person, but it's more about an ideal. So there you have it. There is plenty of information in Khan Academy if you want to read even more. But that is everything you should need to fill out your little art history ID and get to know the Palate of King Narmer better. Thank you for watching and see you next time.