Video Resource

Ancient Egyptian and Greek Art

Subject

Duration

84 minutes (total)

Language

Request a DVD

This DVD comprises four programs made in conjunction with special exhibitions on art and cultures of ancient Egypt and Greece. Location footage includes the Great Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings, and Deir el-Bahari in Egypt as well as several major Greek archaeological monuments including the Parthenon. This film is available to be licensed to affiliates.

The Ancient Egyptian and Greek Art DVD compilation includes the following titles:

  • Of Time, Tombs, and Treasures: Treasures of Tutankhamun
     This film tells the story of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter and reveals its fabulous treasure—jewelry, furniture, figurines, and a stunning gold burial mask.
    29 minutes
  • The Quest for Immortality in Ancient Egypt
     This film chronicles funeral practices of the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE) through the Late Period (664–322 BCE), from mummification and burial to the afterworld. This documentary includes original footage of Egyptian tombs and temples, as well as sumptuous photographs detailing gilded coffins, painted sarcophagi, jewelry, and other funerary objects. The program includes interviews with leading Egyptologists, who help unravel the complexities of ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife.
    27 minutes
  • The Quest for Immortality
    This short film illustrates ancient Egyptian practices based on the culture's beliefs in the journey from death to immortality. Produced in conjunction with the exhibiton The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt, the film includes location footage of the pyramids at Giza and tombs in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. Selected objects from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Luxor Museum, and the sites of Tanis and Deir el-Bahari are also featured.
    12 minutes
  • The Measure of All Things
    This film examines the evolution of Greek architecture, sculpture, and vase painting during the fifth century BCE, when a newly invented political system—democracy—encouraged unprecedented creative freedom. Includes dramatic footage of major archaeological sites in Greece.
    16 minutes

All programs are closed captioned.

You may also like

Educational Resource:  Beyond the Frame: Dorothea Lange

We look slightly down onto a crush of pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and streetcars enclosed by a row of densely spaced buildings and skyscrapers opposite us in this horizontal painting. The street in front of us is alive with action but the overall color palette is subdued with burgundy red, grays, and black, punctuated by bright spots of harvest yellow, shamrock green, apple red, and white. Most of the people wear long dark coats and black hats but a few in particular draw the eye. For instance, in a patch of sunlight in the lower right corner, three women wearing light blue, scarlet-red, or emerald-green dresses stand out from the crowd. The sunlight also highlights a white spot on the ground, probably snow, amid the crowd to our right. Beyond the band of people in the street close to us, more people fill in the space around carriages, wagons, and trolleys, and a large horse-drawn cart piled with large yellow blocks, perhaps hay, at the center of the composition. A little in the distance to our left, a few bare trees stand around a patch of white ground. Beyond that, in the top half of the painting, city buildings are blocked in with rectangles of muted red, gray, and tan. Shorter buildings, about six to ten stories high, cluster in front of the taller buildings that reach off the top edge of the painting. The band of skyscrapers is broken only by a gray patch of sky visible in a gap between the buildings to our right of center, along the top of the canvas. White smoke rises from a few chimneys and billboards and advertisements are painted onto the fronts of some of the buildings. The paint is loosely applied, so many of the people and objects are created with only a few swipes of the brush, which makes many of the details indistinct. The artist signed the work with pine-green paint near the lower left corner: “Geo Bellows.”

Educational Resource:  Exploring Identity through Modern Art

How do artists draw on memories and experiences to create art that reflects their identities? How does an artist’s connection to place spark inspiration? Through guided looking, sketching, and writing activities, students will consider how artists explore identity through their art.

Educational Resource:  Breaking the Rules

What is modern about modern art? Students investigate how artists "break the rules" when they depart from realistic representation, use innovative techniques, and engage the viewer as a partner in creating meaning-making.