After just glancing at the artwork in the chapter about the Ancient Near East and the chapter about Egypt, the one thing that strikes me the most is great size of some of these structures and the great detail that is shown in them. It is amazing to see that people that lived thousands and thousand of years before us, created such things in a society much less advanced then are society of today. For instance how did they build the Palace of Shapur, or the Great Pyramids? It is mind boggling to think that such great things were built without the help of a modern day crane or machine, but rather by just pure manpower. One quality I found to be quite different between the periods is the hair styles presented in the art work and the style of clothing presented in the art work. In the Ancient Near East the artwork shows men with long curly beards and most of the time long curly hair. In many cases it is easy to see that the artists concentrated greatly upon the detail they put into the hair. This shows that during this time period the hair was very important quality to men. The men almost always had on a skirt or kilt like garment with fringes hanging off of the bottom it. In the artwork presented to us from Egypt, most of the men and women have a “square” shape to their hair that it is very symmetrical, which is interesting because we also see lots of symmetry in their structures as well. The clothing pictured is somewhat similar to that of the Ancient Near East only it was a slightly different style with out fringes. I also found that women were pictured more often in the Egyptian art then in the art from the Ancient Near East.One quality I found to be quite similar between the artwork of these two periods is the reasons for their creation. In both cases I believe spirituality to be a great factor. In the Ancient Near east temples were meant to be homes for gods and goddesses. In Egypt they were great believers ...
