An artist’s process

Sketching in red ink is a common and known practice for ancient Egyptian artists. For example, sketches can be seen on artists’ trial ostraca An ostracon, plural ostraca, is a term for a potsherd. Potsherds were often used, in ancient Egypt and elsewhere, as a cheap alternative for, for example, papyrus. Written on them we find things like letters, sketches and school exercises(figs. 1-2), and on unfinished monuments such as these. Many tombs in the Valley of the Kings were unfinished too; they show sketches and grids similar to what we can see here.

This particular example is interesting, because it shows an order of working which seems for us today rather counterintuitive. We may expect an artist to work in phases; first sketching the design of the entire stela, then sculpting, and finally painting. But here we see that the top part of the stela had been finished, paint and all, while the design of the bottom part was not even sketched in. Did this artist work register by register? Did he finish the top before even starting on the bottom? On some New Kingdom tomb walls we can see that the artists worked section by section, but even so, on the significantly smaller surface of a stela, we would still expect there to be at least an overall sketch before the artist starts to carve out the reliefs. See: Peck, W., Egyptian drawings (New York, 1978).

Why this artist worked in this way is unclear. Perhaps he simply preferred to work register by register. Or he left the bottom part empty on purpose, awaiting more information or instructions from his client. Or maybe Sehetepibreankh’s family realized at this point that they did not have enough money to pay for the entire stela after all. In thinking about these issues, we are reminded once more that it is a shame we do not know in what context the stela was found.

Whatever their individual working process, however, it is clear that the makers of stelae like this one were highly skilled artists, working as scribes as well as draughtsmen, painters, and sculptors.