With the composite view, artists made each figure clear. With size, they made each figure’s importance clear.
Key idea
The most important figure is the largest: the king larger than his enemies, a tomb owner larger than his servants. In Egyptian art, size shows rank, not height or distance.
Why it works
Egyptian art did not try to show a scene as one person would see it from one spot, so it did not need distant figures to look small. Size was free to carry another meaning: importance. A king smiting his enemies towers over them because he is the king. Scholars call this hierarchic scale.
| Scene | Largest | Smaller |
|---|---|---|
| King defeating enemies | the king | his enemies |
| Tomb owner at work | the owner | servants and workers |
| King before a god | about the same size | (both at the top rank) |
| Family group | often the husband, the tomb owner | wife and children, though wives can be shown as large |
The rule is very old. On the Narmer Palette, one of the first royal monuments, King Narmer strides across the scene and strikes a kneeling enemy who is much smaller; the sandal-bearer behind him and the fallen enemies below are smaller too. Three thousand years later, temple pylons of the Ptolemies show the same picture.
Worked example: Who matters most?
A tomb wall shows one man three times taller than the farmers plowing beside him. Who is he?
- Size shows rank.
- In a tomb, the largest figure is usually the owner.
- The farmers are his workers.
Answer: The tomb owner.
Worked example: Not distance
In a scene, a small figure stands next to a large one on the same ground line. Is the small one farther away?
- Both stand on the same ground line.
- Egyptian art used size for rank.
- So the small figure is less important, not farther away.
Answer: No: it is of lower rank.
Common mistake
Reading size as height or distance. In Egyptian art, size shows rank. Quick check: find the largest figure and ask who that person is.
Wives are sometimes shown as large as their husbands, especially in pair statues. When a wife is smaller, it usually marks whose tomb or monument it is.