Venus Of Willendorf Analysis

Venus of Willendorf from Willendorf, Austria
28,000 – 25,000 BCE
Limestone
Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna
Paleolithic
- representation of a woman
- female anatomy is exaggerated
- serves as a fertility image
- no facial features, just hair/hat
- freestanding sculpture
Statuettes of 2 worshipers from the Square Temple at Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), Iraq
2700 BCE (early dynastic/Sumerian)
Soft gypsum and inlaid with shell + black limestone
Iraq Museum, Baghdad
- represent mortals praying
- tiny beakers were used in religious rites
- men wear belts + fringed skirts + have beard + shoulder-length hair
- women wear long robes
- heads tilt upwards with large open eyes
- not proportionate, eyes=too big and hands=too small
Bull-headed
falcon=Horus
- perfectly symmetrical, flawless, well-developed, muscular body to show that he was a divine ruler
- statue’s function was to make sure it lasted for eternity, so no breakable parts
Menkaure and Khamerernebty from Gizeh, Egypt
2490 – 2472 BCE (4th Dynasty)
Graywacke
Museum of Fine Arts,
Commune with dead Facts about Egypt
- houses = mud brick and were made to not last
- Nile river (longest river on Earth) floods 1 a year
- desert = sand, dry
- no rainfall for decades
- rich mud = good for growing plants
- ultimate god – Re = is the Sun, creates dry land, - - creates life by ejaculating/spitting, creates gods of dryness/wetness
- only wealthy people could afford mummification
- between the Old and Middle kingdom, Egypt was in a state of civil