fmetrol Wrote:
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> During the 1st and 2nd dynasties decorative art
> appears to be at its peak with thousands of
> painted murals and carved DESIGN work on wood,
> bone and ivory.
Of course there is, but attributing meaning to the "design", rather than the subject, is contentious at the least.
> There is very little evidence of
> freehand brushwork. The patterns are based on
> woven reed matting, squares. triangles,
> rectangles, circles and lozenge shapes. It's
> DESIGN work.
Copying designs was the object. The easiest, best way to do that is via a grid. This is demonstrated through nearly all of Egyptian history. This does not mean the grid had meaning... it was merely a convention, a tool, for re-creating artwork in different media.
> Then there are the circular silos
> which appear very early with wedge shape bricks
> specifically made for perimeters.
Still, it has no meaning outside of what some people wish to superimpose on it.
> In other words
> through DESIGN the early-dynastic Egyptians
> explored all the possibilities that were available
> to them and then exhibited the art in stone.
I don't think that is necessarily true. I don't think anyone can say with confidence that they explored "all the possibilities". I think they recreated what they wished to recreate, for specific purposes. Beyond that, the kind of intellectual exploration you are discussing is not, to my knowledge, evidenced as such.
> It
> goes without saying that proportionality played a
> role.
Of course it did. It was part of the grid pattern used to recreate art in different media.
>
> Now I'm not supporting Dave but to say there's no
> texts or documentation for traditional proportion
> in Egyptian art and architecture is like saying
> there's nothing either for successfully navigating
> down the Red.
Whoever said such a thing? I certainly didn't. I said there was no evidence that this kind of symbolic mathematics existed in their world... not that they didn't design things. That's a strawman argument.
>
> 3:4:5 triangles are so much part of DESIGN work
> that its unthinkable that they wouldn't have
> discussed and used it when the situation arose.
> Tiling teaches you 3:4:5
And yet they didn't appear to have discovered it. So what? It doesn't make them stupid or developmentally disabled. It just means they didn't discover it.
No big deal.
Anthony
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.