Transitioning into talk about Egyptian culture and art this week, I was interested to learn about something in Egyptian art that was not just a part of the pyramids. I have studied the pyramids in school before, and while I find them very interesting, I was hoping to talk about something just as important and similar in its historical meaning, but without hearing the same things I've heard before. The Narmer Palette, therefore, intrigued me because it is a set of modest-sized carvings into green schist that conveys a very pertinent message from Egyptian history without being the size of a cruise ship. The use of heiroglyphics spells out in pictures on the palette that upper and lower Egypt were to be united. This was done by including the symbols papyrus and lotus flower, which represent lower and upper Egypt respectively.
These two palettes also explain much about the social classes at that time in Egypt. By having the middle figure be the largest and placed in the compositional pose, he is designated as the character in this story with the most power. This figure is meant to represent the king named Narmer who is shown with a fairly ambiguous face and no signs of his age at the time that the palette was completed. This was custom in Egyptian art that portrayed powerful rulers because the Egyptians believed that a person would assume the identity they were portrayed with in carvings when they passed over into the afterlife.
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