Ancient Egyptian Concepts of Space and Spatial Constellations in Pictorial Representations (Topoi C-I-1)

The main question of this project is how in ancient Egypt visual perception of objects and spatial constellations could be transferred pictorial representation. The Egyptian pictures do not show nature as human beings perceive it, namely, in a binary fashion, instead of that they represent the world in a structured and tabulated way. The measurements and arrangements of persons and objects in the illustrations represent the importance of the different entities and they have normally nothing to do with our binary means of representation. Generally natural perspective foreshortenings were not used. Describing the exact spatial correlation of persons and objects was not of primary importance for the ancient Egyptians. Thus ancient Egyptian art did not aim for optical illusion in it place, it aimed at producing a readable meaningful picture, which represents the meaning not the perception of the world.