<nettime> Re: Book of the Undead

["scotartt" <scot@systemx.autonomous.org>]

> MacKensie:
>
> The point you might wish to ponder -- regarding old Egypt -- is that 
> there is actually *no* continuity with these folks at all.  None.
> Because "they" weren't conscious.  Thus, they had no "art."

They had no 'art' because 'art' wasn't invented yet. That had to wait for
the Greeks, a thousand years to the future.

I don't really understand Ken's comments about Egyptian 'art'. Firstly its
unreadable, I'm sure most any egyptologist would disagree, in fact although
keeping its pictogrammatic form the writing is in the main phonetic and
syllabalic - its definitely *writing* although by the Middle dynastic
period they had developed a type of script very similiar to the
still-existant Coptic for the writing of everyday documents and kept the
heiroglyphics for monuments and tombs. Second its purpose (which most
definitely makes it 'not-art') being that of a *machine*, a machine for a
safe journey through the afterlife, means it's addressed to the souls of
the newly dead and buried person in who's tomb it resides. Sure, that may
appear to be from our (not quite) 21st century perspective, addressing "to
eternity" (but doesn't one address Eternity with a copperplate font, Ken?),
but to the ancient Egyptians, those souls are as every bit real as we
believe each other to be here in this virtual space, it's not meant for the
void.

People should bear in mind, of course, the Egyptian civilisation lasted a
lot longer than ours has thus far; and even if you date our civilisation
from the founding of Athenian democracy, rather than say the founding of
the British Empire or the start of the Enlightenment, we're still younger.
Herodotus went to Egypt and probably marvelled at monuments of a greater
antiquity then, than the Parthenon, or its stolen marbles, is today!

regs,
scot.

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