Art and Decoration in Ancient Egypt, with Emily Teeter

Emily Teeter, manager of Special Exhibits at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, discusses the role Ancient Egyptian artifacts played in creating personal identities within society at the time.
The lecture was given in conjunction with the museum's "Before the Pyramids: The Origins of Egyptian Civilization" exhibit, which featured artifacts from 4000 to 2600 B.C.
Emily Teeter is also a research associate and curator at the Oriental Institute. She is the author of many scholarly and popular articles that have been published in journals worldwide, and has served as a consultant for the Seattle Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Teeter is widely traveled in the region, and has led tours to Egypt, Arabia, Turkey, Syria, and Tunisia.
For more information on the exhibit: oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special...
December 12, 2011.
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[@benpayne4663]

thank you for this interesting lecture on early egyptian art and consumer objects. as i watch these varied and credentialed academic sources on youtube i understand how similar we peoples and cultures are. far in distance or time we have the same talents, desires, and foibles. your observations and conjectures are astute and credible. and entertaining. always nice when education can be fun.

[@terrayjos]

when videoing these types of lectures it's not so important for us to watch the presenter or be looking at the room. it's the slides or what is being presented that needs more close up time.

[@andredeloucine7857]

An enjoyable, concise and informative presentation of a rarely-covered topic, ancient Egypt before the dynasties. This sort of detail and perception shows how relics from the past inform us about life then. It's always a pleasure to hear an expert with deep knowledge speak about their interests. A question that occurs is what was used for money then? That culture was beyond crude bartering.

[@BD-oc7fj]

I would love to go back in time to go shopping!

[@sonnycorbi4316]

I wanted to test my endurance I forced myself to watch this from beginning to end?

[@al2207]

just explain how the early ,,Egyptians '' carved and perfectly shape hard stone like basalt and granite without proper tools ???

[@andredeloucine7857]

Actually flints make good tools for cutting stone bit by bit. Abrasive stones and grit will do the job; these pieces clearly were finished by some kind of successive grinding and polishing. It's all hand work, with many hours of labor. the best and largest pieces would demand many days, or more. Time is the key ingrediant, and trained skills. You can try it yourself with egyptian alabaster and sand paper on a block

[@al2207]

@@andredeloucine7857 that is quackacademia are saying, i had worked cutting granite for 3 years and i know for a fact hard stone need very strong and resilient tools , to say it was done by hand is so insane , alabaster are on 3 hardness sand paper is made with silicon carbide that is 9 on Mohs scale and it was not available in ancient time

[@celerywhelan2988]

I totally freaking agree with your comment and the second reply, whereas the first reply, what a joke! Not trying to be mean but come on! Give me a BREAKKKKKK!! Laser fucking precision on thousands upon thousands of pieces of vases, vessels, etc., littering the tunnels under I forget which pyramid, but even with the ones in museums… I would really like to see the first replyer get someone to make even one tiny piece that precise using flint or anything else that academia proposed.

[@celerywhelan2988]

And besides, you’re talking about alabaster, which is very soft what about all the other substances? come on now

[@multimediasecurityconsulti4681]

Stone vaissels: how did they make the inside as smooth as the exterior ( not mentionning sometimes very thin walls? Something escapes us here in my humble opinion ( the tentaive experiment of reproducing the technic falls ultra short of beeng satisfactory. Microscopic surface analyses needed here among other considerations!)

[@plopdoo339]

Lasers😂😂😂

[@celerywhelan2988]

No offense intended towards the presenter, who provided some interesting insight into Egyptian consumerism, and who is coming from the prevailing academic paradigm that is, at last, finally starting to crack. Why? Because of the crucial question in your comment, for example, regarding the thousands upon thousands of UNDATEABLE pieces of stone, crystal and gemstone vases and vessels made with such PRECISION that we cannot even create them today, that are covering the uber ancient passageways under the pyramid of…. (Can’t remember which one, but not one of the big three) I have come to realize that civilization as we know it is really REcivilization, which explains why, in so many instances, the quality of objects and everything else decreases over time, like Göbekli Teppe where the first circles are the most perfectly created, then from there they get less and less well made and it’s the same in most cultures, including Egypt. So I couldn’t agree more with you!

[@plopdoo339]

Completely carved out and polished on the inside granite works. Why arent these educated HISTORIANS (and not engineers or artists) explaining to us how these art works were created?

[@adlibra1]

i agree

[@jermainestallenberg]

Question: When you refer to Egypt's geographic location as "Middle East", does that mean that Libya and Ethiopia are also in the Middle East, or more specifically, in Asia?

[@plopdoo339]

It means that they're simply lying to you. Egypt is in Africa.

[@jnsyrsl]

​@@plopdoo339 yeah I also found it a bit weird for ancient Egypt to be called as Middle East multiple times when it clearly was an African civilization.

[@Pidxr]

Wow, did the emcee major in Communication ?

[@gullahgullah6022]

All these stuff was created in ancient times they just simply research the history. Or found out the blue prints wothout no one knowing. Modified it, came out with patients so no one else could copy or copyright the same product.

[@gaslitworldf.melissab2897]

Just wondering how she knows that Egyptians didn't just love beauty for beauty's sake. I mean, how does she know that status was the central reason for wanting to own these things? I'm not saying she's wrong, but even today, some people collect art for art's sake, to look at it, to enjoy it, to create a certain atmosphere in their home and perhaps no one sees it or rarely sees it, beyond the homeowners. What method did she use to sous out their motives for wanting to possess beautiful things?

[@lukechamberlain7790]

Had she made the argument that Egyptians collected beautiful things for beauty's sake you could ask 'cite your sources'. We should ALWAYS keep in mind that we can only ever interpret the data. We will never know for certainty anything that has happened in the past. Hell, we even inadvertently invent our own pasts and incorporate them as fact. I think that her interpretation is perfectly valid but also doesn't outright deny that Egyptians liked beautiful things. She suggests, however, that status WAS a driving motive.

[@lukechamberlain7790]

Also, the focus on high value, difficult to obtain materials suggests to me, that status is important. That's her source. That's her data.

[@plopdoo339]

She made it up simple as that

[@celerywhelan2988]

No, the focus on high value difficult source objects just means that beauty is in the rare not have anything to do with status quo. That is so putting our western fucking idea of materialism on an ancient culture.

[@celerywhelan2988]

I agree, gaslit world, and love your name and the vision it creates in my head. From which, I take it, you are similar to me in that you love beauty, period, and it has nothing to do with what anybody else thinks.

[@geoffreystuttle8080]

I'd hardly call it "consumerism". We ought to resist the urge to label historical cultural tendencies with today's.

[@lukechamberlain7790]

She defined how she is consumerism pretty clearly and I think she makes a good case for it however I am interested in how you would describe the data she presents?

[@StyleWellnessHub]

Oh. m .g. am Egyptian and I have traces of Pharaoh

[@charlotte4573]

고리(고리아).새.십자가...

[@celerywhelan2988]

The chronology is based on a forced and flawed paradigm that can be perpetuated because stone and mineral cannot be dated, that and the academic system feeds on itself, a closed system. But there was some interesting information in this presentation by a, pardon me, kind of brainwashed or blinded academic

[@gaslitworldf.melissab2897]

Interesting, but she uses so much conjecture without pointing out how she drew the conclusions. Source?

[@lukechamberlain7790]

You don't understand how archaeology works. There is no 'source' that tells us about the material culture of an ancient civilization. The 'source' IS the material, the archaeologist interprets. It IS conjecture, but it's widely informed by an ever growing accumulation of data.

[@garyjaensch7143]

It is not true they used copper, Dominique goerlitz found iron plate and magnetite traces in the giza pyramid, which is 1200 years earlier than the absurd date we are taught in places of “ learning” other iron artefacts have been found well before the so called Iron Age, which matches the history of the Bible, iron is in the Bible in Genesis 4:22, before the flood, and when you consider that Cambridge University studies show that Australian Aborigines languages are only 4000 years old , the Biblical paradigm is proven true, by real science, testable and provable, and if you think that the creature found 3D with skin and guts is 110 million years old, then Hollywood is the place to go, you won’t find real nodosaur or allosaurus there!

[@79Cody440]

Hard stone vessels that thin made using "wobbly drill" and "spade" tool????? HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

[@Furzkampfbomber]

88blackstorm The first working computer, the Zuse Z3, was invented by a German, namely Conrad Zuse. Clearly a white guy. The first working computer that could be called a "Personal Computer" was the Xerox Alto, created by Alay Kay. Also white. The first commercial product that could be called a PC, the Apple LISA, was developed at the head of John Couch, also white. And the Apple Macintosh was mainly created by Jef Raskin, who was (you might have guessed it) also white. I suggest you do some homework yourself, before you make wild claims. This has nothing to do with racism, its just mere fact. And it is also a fact that flat and general claims assertions in regard to race or skin colour never do any good. For example - there surely is neo-colonialism, war mongering and exploitation happening in parts of Africa, which are clearly related to western politics and western companies. But it is also true that this often would not happen if corrupt africans would not gain benefits from this too, thus giving a crap about their fellow black africans. And some of the biggest slave traders in Africa were in fact black. Just saying.

[@andrewkingston6058]

Can you build a working computer, from scratch? ...First, you will need a factory to make the computer. But, to build the factory, you will need heavy machinery. But to make the heavy machinery, you will need a factory....So Mr. intelligent; which came first? The heavy machinery or the factory? If you can't figure it out, go out and ask every "smart white guy" you see; and, when they can't answer the question. Ask yourself, how are we living in a world with:skyscrappers: fibre optics: computers: the great Egyptian pyramids, etc. ;)

[@Furzkampfbomber]

Angelo King So? I´ve never claimed that I can build a computer from scratch. I am also familiar with the notion that every thing we produce is a product of the knowledge and the work of many people. My answer was to 88blackstorm, who claimed that a black person invented the computer and insulted someone else. I never claimed that the "smart white person" is the only one capable of creating something, so get a grip.

[@plopdoo339]

First of all 80% of all the world's coltan and cobalt is in Congo. Secondly, white people didn't even have CALCULUS until AFTER they raided and translated the manuscripts they found in West Africa. Even now you get young Nigerian kids living in land fill dumps makeing computers out of the scraps they find. It's not your fault you don't know history. It's not your fault the very establishments you support had to kill and steal the books and knowledge that has allowed your people to flourish and have a renaissance and then industrial revolution. All of your scientists had to study some African based(which includes Egyptian) manuscripts to attain the knowledge needed to develop these technologies.

[@celerywhelan2988]

What the hell are you talking about? How is this related to the presentation?

[@narkskank7762]

what sad beings that's love their trinkets...