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Art Siropatoy here, but you can call me Art.

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This is Explorations in Art History, starring me.

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And the hand.

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Well, what about the rest of me?

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How embarrassing, people watching from around the world,

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and I'm stuck waiting on some five-fingered prima donna.

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Oh, well, that's better.

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It looks like we'll be talking about the Mesopotamian and Egyptian period.

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We're going back 5,000 years to a place the Greeks called Mesopotamia,

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which means land between the rivers.

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Those rivers were the Tigris and the Euphrates,

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which formed a fertile crescent, sometimes called the cradle of civilization.

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Very funny.

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Mesopotamia actually refers to an area rather than a country.

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At different times, it was ruled by the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Babylonians,

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the Assyrians, and the Persians.

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They lived close to the natural world,

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and like this lion that decorated the walls of the Ishtar Gate,

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their animal art was pretty realistic.

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Their human art, not so realistic.

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Both Mesopotamian and Egyptian artists stylized the human body.

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In Mesopotamia, they invented the first written language called cuneiform.

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They started with pictographs,

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But over time, the writing evolved into more abstract symbols.

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They also got to invent cool names for their buildings, like Ziggurat.

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In Ur, they built a massive ziggurat to pay homage to the gods.

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Ziggurat. I love the sound of that.

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The ziggurat was the center of the city.

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Moving on.

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Mesopotamia may have started the civilization craze, but Egypt took it to a new standard.

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Egypt depended on one great river, the Nile, and developed a civilization that lasted over 3,000 years.

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When Tutankhamen became Pharaoh, the Great Pyramids were already 1,000 years old.

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And it was another 1,000 years after that when Cleopatra held power.

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Egyptologists invented an ingenious system to classify the different periods of Egyptian rule.

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There's the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom, and the Later Kingdom.

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How did they think of that?

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Interestingly, artistic styles never changed much over 3,000 years.

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The best artist was probably the one who could most closely copy the classic style of the past.

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What was good enough for Khufu was good enough for Ramses.

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Except for one brief moment called the Armana Period,

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when a pharaoh named Akhenaten ushered in a new style and a new religion.

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All of a sudden, faces got stretched, bodies got streamlined and lengthened.

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Thin was in.

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But when Akhenaten passed away, Egypt quickly reverted back to the old familiar ways.

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That doesn't mean Egyptians weren't creative.

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Just look at their pantheon of gods.

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They imagined jackal-headed gods and hawk-headed gods, lion-headed goddesses,

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hippo-headed goddesses.

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Oh my, crocodile-headed gods, and ibis-headed gods, cat-headed gods, and, well, you get the picture.

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Of course, the pharaohs themselves were considered the living gods.

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Pharaohs were portrayed according to specific rules that emphasized their perfect, unchanging nature.

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Usually, these representations included some symbols of authority, like the royal headdress, the crook, and the flail, and a false beard.

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Even the female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, commissioned statues of herself with the false beard

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to reinforce her position of authority.

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Oh, attractive.

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Egyptians obsessed over death and the afterlife.

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Paintings on the walls of tombs often showed the Ba, or soul, on its journey through the afterlife.

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When an Egyptian artist painted a figure, every body part was shown from its most recognizable angle.

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The face was shown in profile, except for the eye, which was shown head-on.

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The body was shown head-on, and the legs and feet were twisted back into profile.

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Don't try this at home.

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Alexander the Great admired the Egyptian kingdom so much that he decided to conquer it in 332 BC.

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While in Egypt, he founded the city of Alexandria on the northern coast of Egypt

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and installed his general Ptolemy as pharaoh.

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Greek elements were introduced into the arts.

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The Ptolemaic dynasty lasted 275 years and included several Ptolemies and Cleopatras.

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The most famous of these was Cleopatra VII, whose son, Ptolemy XV, was the last pharaoh of Egypt.

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In 30 BC, Rome conquered Egypt.