Why did the ancient Egyptians write on walls?

Page 1 of 2 [ 28 posts ] Go to page 1, 2 Next

Previous topic | Next topic

Titangeek
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 22 Aug 2010
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 7,696
Location: somewhere in the vicinity of betelgeuse

02 Jun 2012, 5:55 pm

This is a question that has been bugging me off and on for a while, so, why did they?

_________________
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
- Bruce Lee

edgewaters
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Age: 52
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,427
Location: Ontario

02 Jun 2012, 5:56 pm

Public visibility.

shrox
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Aug 2011
Age: 60
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,295
Location: OK let's go.

02 Jun 2012, 6:11 pm

To artfully carve their way to the other side?

Cornflake
Administrator

Joined: 30 Oct 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 70,672
Location: Over there

02 Jun 2012, 6:22 pm

Titangeek wrote:

This is a question that has been bugging me off and on for a while, so, why did they?

Propaganda and/or self-aggrandisement.
It was only on ceremonial monuments, temples and tombs etc as a way of telling everyone about the glorious achievements and benefits bestowed by whoever the monument/temple/tomb was for.

Everyday stuff like lists, poems, recipes, tax and financial details etc were just written on clay or papyrus.

_________________
Giraffe: a ruminant with a view.

Timeconsumer
Raven
Raven

Joined: 4 May 2012
Gender: Male
Posts: 110

02 Jun 2012, 6:34 pm

So that you'd create a thread on the wrong planet forums thousands of years later asking why they wrote on walls :p.

It's quite a powerful motivator to just have done something that people in the future will see. Everyone wants to make their own difference in their own way, to be remembered by history. What more reason do you need than that?

naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 70
Gender: Male
Posts: 35,189
Location: temperate zone

02 Jun 2012, 7:10 pm

why do they hire craftsmen to chisel dedications into the buildings and into monuments in washington dc?

Why are you so puzzled that the Egyptians act the same way that we do now?

Titangeek
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 22 Aug 2010
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 7,696
Location: somewhere in the vicinity of betelgeuse

02 Jun 2012, 7:16 pm

Humans puzzle me, doesn't matter what millennium they live in.

_________________
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
- Bruce Lee

unduki
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 21 Oct 2011
Age: 65
Gender: Female
Posts: 652

02 Jun 2012, 7:33 pm

Hmmm, are the adornments the first graffiti or the first political election billboards? Self-aggrandizement makes sense, as would memorial honor.

I was here.

_________________
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain.

ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 88
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

02 Jun 2012, 8:34 pm

edgewaters wrote:

Public visibility.

Close to the truth. Walls were the early version of CGI. After that papyrus. After papyrus and parchment writing surfaces did not improve for the next 2000 years. Then of course came wood pulp paper, rag paper and celluloid.

Humans are always doodling stuff on flat surfaces.

ruveyn

Fogman
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 19 Jun 2005
Age: 58
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,986
Location: Frå Nord Dakota til Vermont

03 Jun 2012, 11:14 am

ruveyn wrote:

Humans are always doodling stuff on flat surfaces.

ruveyn

This backs that up:

As does this as well:

_________________
When There's No There to get to, I'm so There!

Last edited by Fogman on 03 Jun 2012, 11:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 70
Gender: Male
Posts: 35,189
Location: temperate zone

04 Jun 2012, 2:13 am

Titangeek wrote:

Humans puzzle me, doesn't matter what millennium they live in.

So you didnt phrase question properly.

You meant to say "why have humans always drawn/written on walls from the time of cave paintings at Lascaux, through, the Egyptians, down to the modern day redneck guys who have to climb latters up water tower with brushs and paint cans to defend the honor of their sisters?

The answer is - if you're gonna write what better place than on an upright visible flat surface.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 04 Jun 2012, 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

WorldsEdge
Velociraptor

Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Age: 61
Gender: Male
Posts: 458
Location: Massachusetts

04 Jun 2012, 8:09 am

Titangeek wrote:

This is a question that has been bugging me off and on for a while, so, why did they?

I think your question is a bit like asking why did cave men only paint in caves. Well, they probably didn't. It is just that anything painted outside wouldn't have survived into the modern era, so we don't get to see it.

The Egyptians had documents in papyrus, but these obviously decayed or were burnt or just thrown out over time, so the oldest of them extant is around 2000 BCE (if Will Durant is to be believed), while inscriptions on stone go back to at least 5000 BCE. But this does not mean there weren't papyrus documents coincident with these oldest stone carvings, just that they weren't written on as durable a material.

A weird counterpoint to the above is Babylon, and perhaps Sumeria. Given the building materials available to them, they built their cities out of porous, water absorbent brick, and did their writing on clay tablets which were later baked. The architecture returned to the mud they made it from, but the clay tablets were virtually indestructible, at least via weathering or bugs or even immersion in water. So, there's extant writing on clay tablets from Babylon, but not much architecture. And lots of architecture in Egypt, but a lot of long-gone papyrus. For all we know the Babylonians wrote on their walls and pillars every bit as much as the Egyptians did. Or not.

_________________
"The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken." ? Bertrand Russell

Rakshasa72
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 9 Sep 2009
Age: 51
Gender: Male
Posts: 655

06 Jun 2012, 5:48 pm

Maya did the same thing. Although it's more carvings then paintings. They did have a "book" based writing system but, saddly very few texts survived the Spanish Conquest.

MyFutureSelfnMe
Veteran
Veteran