In ancient art, representations of the body in statues or images were not mere copies, but actual incarnations that could affect the physical and spiritual health of the creator or viewer. There was no distance, or directionality, between the viewer and the viewed; these objects acted as intermediaries between the worlds of the living and the dead, the divine and the mortal, the teacher and the pupil. Later artistic genres, such as Gothic art in Late Medieval Europe, would drift away from this concept, enforcing a greater distance between the artwork and the interpreter, yet, through the utilization of emotional resonance, would still suggest the all-encompassing importance of divinity. The intersections between numerous representations of the body in the pre-modern world, seen across three millennia in ancient Egyptian, Neo-Sumerian, Peruvian, and Medieval art, testify to the power of depiction to evoke cultures’ variable, yet converging, ideologies of interpretation — that is, what was believed about the world as portrayed and created by artwork.
 

Egypt was the kingdom of eternity, lasting roughly 3000 years. Embodied by ma’at, the principle of harmony and order based on the cyclical flooding of the Nile, ancient Egyptian artistic culture expresses eternity, stability, and unity, an ideology depicted as underwritten and preserved by divinity — and thus guided by the pharaohs, who were revered as manifestations of the divine on the mortal plane. This principle of balanced stability is incarnated in the Statue of Menkaure and Queen, from Old Kingdom Egypt circa 2532 - 2503 BCE. Found in the valley temple connected to the pyramid of Menkaure, the pharaoh’s tomb and a monument to his grandeur, the slightly smaller than life-size funerary statue is carved from black slate and depicts a striding Menkaure with his fists clenched at his sides, as well as his queen with her arms around his torso. Menkaure wears a nemes, or cloth headpiece, and a facsimile beard, both symbols of power and

kingship. Menkaure’s muscles and stance emphasize the relatively more submissive posture of his queen at his side. The frontal aspect of the statue confers legibility, with faces and
bodies extremely visible. Rigid and simplified, Menkaure and his queen are represented with symmetrical, balanced bodies, smooth skin, and inexpressive faces. Their shoulders are level and they gaze directly ahead; Menkaure holds his arms straight by his sides, while the queen’s right arm is sharply bent at the elbow. The idealized, stiff aspect of the statue suggests both the immortality of the pharaoh in the afterlife and the eternity of his kingdom. The statue’s frontality and solid, forceful presence communicates a sense of immovability and further underlines the pharaoh’s power and kingship. Here, the human body is stylized and abstracted in order to imbue it with the qualities of godhood. Not only did funerary statues such as these embody the pharaoh’s spirit and life, but they contained it as well. Ka, or life-force, inhabited the funerary statues, and family members would leave offerings whose essence would be consumed by the spirit. Therefore, these statues were not only reproductions of the pharoah’s likeness, but acted as their immortal, unchanging, and forever youthful body after death, a proper receptacle for the king’s quasi-divine life-essence.
 

Depictions of rulers in the Neo-Sumerian Period of Mesopotamia adopted some of the same themes of Egyptian funerary statues. The statue of Gudea from Lagash, from 2150 BCE, is depicted with much of the same rigidity as Egyptian art. Wearing a curled wool cap and drapery covering his torso, the ruler is depicted with muscled arms and symmetrical features but no idiosyncratic identifiers. Carved in a sitting position, he clasps his hands in a pose of veneration, ready to hold a libation cup. His large eyes are especially accentuated and stare straight ahead. This votive statue was created as an offering in the temple of a god, the patron protector of the city-state who was worshiped and honored in order to preserve the sovereign and state. Depicted as worshipful and reverent, this statue of Gudea would perpetuate the act of prayer, gazing forever at the temple god. Gudea’s value as a ruler is derived from his piety, suggested by his pose and expression of serenity; his idealized power is further underscored by the blueprint of a temple he holds in his lap. Gudea’s ability to both build infrastructure and honor the gods testifies to his paternal guiding role as the leader of Lagash. Both the statue of Gudea of Lagash and the statue of Menkaure and Queen serve to portray and perpetuate the strength and leadership role of their respective rulers, yet the statue of Gudea is much humbler, honoring not the ruler specifically, but the patron deity of the city. While the powerful, imposing statue of Menkaure and Queen serves to act as both a representation of, and a repository for, the eternal divinity of the pharaoh, the small statue of Gudea subtly suggests his wisdom and faith, depicted through his reverential posture and large eyes. While the statue of Menkaure was carved in slate, a stone common in Egypt, the statue of Gudea is made of diorite, a precious material that had to be imported to Lagash and thus would communicate the reach of Gudea’s rule and influence. However, both the schist and diorite statues are hard, smooth, and bright, portraying the eternal presence of both statues and leaders. Menkaure’s forward step, symbolizing him crushing evil beneath his foot, indicates his protective, guiding role as ruler; similarly, the temple plan Gudea of Lagash holds depicts his ability to provide safety and divine resources to his subjects by building infrastructure. Both statues display similar formal appearances and symbolic meanings, yet their characterizations differentiate, with Menkaure upright and immutable, and Gudea small and deferential to the temple god.

 

Both Egyptian and Mesopotamian statues’ figurative rigidity would be destabilized by the Chavín artistic culture of Peru. The Chavín artistic culture developed around a religious cult that built a large temple in the Andean hills to attract believers. Inside, pilgrims would pass through a dark, twisting maze, eventually finding the Lanzón, a stele built circa 500 BCE featuring an abstract god-figure composed of both human and animalistic features, at the center. With tusks, talons, snakes for hair, a belt of fangs, and a snout, the god grins, filling the space of the stele. The curves of his tusks and grin, as well as the coils of his snake-hair, contribute a sense of motion that is mostly lacking in the rigid Egyptian
and Mesopotamian statues. Together, the Lanzón’s elements contribute a sense of the wild and uncanny, capturing the inhumanity and feral power of the god. However, the image
is still mostly symmetrical, conferring unearthly grace onto the deity. The Chavìn cult used contour rivalry, in which animalistic traits substitute for other characteristics, both to

communicate transformation and make the stele hard to decipher. Since the image’s contour lines could be interpreted differently, only believers in the cult could understand the image, differentiating the Lanzón from the purposeful legibility of Egyptian and Mesopotamian statuary. The figure also suggests the importance of hallucinogenic drugs in Andean culture. Mimicking the experience of hallucinating, the figure is difficult to read, combines multiple interpretations, and evokes metamorphosis and duality of being. By substituting some aspects of the human body with bestial features, the Lanzòn depicts a being that transcends humanity. Similar to the statue of Menkaure and Queen, the Lanzòn seems to reference humanity melded with godhood. This artistic duality is also encapsulated in Peruvian geography, which is divided into jungle, desert, mountainous terrain, and coastline. Corresponding artwork often reflects the multivalence and diversity of the Andean environment; the Lanzón, for instance, is formed in the shape of a plow, signifying both the food production on which Andean society relied and the abundance of nature. Similarly, Egyptian art is based on its environment, with the regular cycle of the Nile river suggesting organization and eternity, and the contrast between the fertile river banks and the desert supplying a sense of dualism and balance to Egyptian art, which can be seen in the symmetrical, solid funerary statue. Furthermore, both the statue of Menkaure and the Lanzón display power through their gestures. With one foot forward, Menkaure trods on evil, while the Lanzón deity’s hands, one pointing towards the sky and one towards the earth, signifies the vast extent of the god’s domain. Within the dark, echoing, dripping maze traversed by pilgrims in search of spiritual enlightenment, the Lanzón would loom out of the darkness, contributing a dramatic, portentous aspect to the experience of deciphering its patterns. Even across different cultures, landscapes, and thousands of years, similar symbolic meanings are evoked by the three statues.

 

The Medieval period transformed the purpose of religious imagery and symbolism. Gothic devotional representations induce a sense of emotion, rather than undiluted awe. The Roettgen Pièta depicts, in wood, the scene when Mary, overcome with grief, clutches the dead Christ, a powerful lament that captures both the ravages inflicted on Christ and
Mary’s corresponding intense sorrow. Perched on Mary’s lap, Jesus is emaciated, his head and right arm falling back limply. Gaping wounds on his side and hands weep carved blood down his limbs, while his forehead is covered in blood from his crown of thorns. Christ’s eyelids are closed and his brow knit, suggesting that this is no peaceful death. The red blood contrasts starkly with Jesus’ white body. While not completely naturalistic — the heads are somewhat enlarged, similar to the statue of Gudea of Lagash — Jesus’ draping limbs and realistic face hold a compelling pathos, underlining the sacrifice he made to save humanity and eliciting pity and compassion from the viewer. The composition of the sculpture, with Mary leaning over a twisted Christ, contrasts profoundly with the three previous statues. The artist realistically delineates fabric, which spills in shades of green and white over Mary’s lap, and makes use of negative space, with gaps between Christ’s limbs and Mary’s body. Menkaure, Gudea, and the Lanzòn deity are all carved from stone, and retain a compact blockiness, with no gaps between their limbs and very limited use of negative space. Menkaure and Queen occupy the same position, and assume the same posture, portraying the and their slightly-incised garments are minimal. The statue of Gudea is similarly boxy, with his limbs closely folded and his feet tucked under his robe. His head sits close to his shoulders, which approximate the width of his torso and lap. Both statues seem solid, and even slightly compressed, testifying to the rulers’ symbolic attributes of stability, strength, and balance. The Roettgen Pietà, however, is far from symmetrical, with Mary and Christ assuming different positions. There is a clear separation between Christ and Mary’s forms, and details such as clothing or blood have different textures and depths. Mary’s headdress, for instance, is not closely attached to her body, but seems like a realistic article of clothing that would move and shift. Idiosyncratic features, such as Christ’s beard and emaciated form, are applied as well. The relative elongation of the forms and the use of negative space contributes an airiness and atmosphere to the statue that is not displayed in the others. Along with Mary’s gentle
embrace of Christ, depicted in the way her hands lightly rest on his body, these attributes contribute grace and fluidity to the figures. Though the Lanzón’s incised details imbue its

represented deity with a wild, animalistic quality, the confined composition limits the deity’s expression of movement, so that it is immovable, confronting, and larger-than life, yet constrained. The wood Pièta is less substantial, but indicates more motion. Its slightness relative to the other statues contributes to its ethereality, and also would draw the viewer in closer in order to understand the sculpture’s details, allowing a focused communion to occur between the viewer and the statue. All four representations of the body express religious symbolism in diverging ways, using different compositions, forms, styles, and materials to delineate the different roles and traits of the different figures. While statues from the pre-modern world, such as the statue of Menkaure and Queen, are built to impress the viewer and suggest the figures’ divinity, this pièta scene drives home Christ’s mortality through depicting the suffering inflicted on his human body, alluding to one of the major themes of Catholicism — sacrifice. Mary’s face is quiet but intense. With a partly opened mouth and a knit brow, her eyes focused on the face of her dead son, Mary seems caught a moment before fully realizing his death. The relative stillness of the scene contributes to its effect, drawing attention to the focal point of the dead Christ and underlining the loss of death, which, after all, is the eternal absence of emotion and activity. The scene draws the viewer in close, compelling them to identify with both Mary and Christ in their humanity.

 

From Mesopotamian to Medieval art, the body was represented in art not as a simulacrum, but an animate entity infused with, and perpetuating, the ideology of its origins. Pre-modern art is deeply transformative, imbuing bodies with the presence of stone, the fierce wildness of animals and plants, and the powerful grace of the divine. These four statues engage with complex symbolic meanings, reflecting the belief systems, values, and identities of their respective cultures as understood by the denizens of those cultures. They profoundly capture the spiritual and ephemeral qualities of the body, depicting it in life and death, in kingship and humility, in divinity and mortality, in triumph and in grief. Visual and contextual intersections between various representations of the body portray an essential unity of belief systems across time and place — ideologies that are not just depicted by the artworks, but continue to reside within them. Menkaure did live after death, his body never decaying. Gudea is forever a worshiper, humble in his strength. The Lanzòn deity still draws pilgrims who seek to decipher its patterns, and the arcane knowledge of the Chavìn cult is forever protected. Mary’s grief and Christ’s sacrifice are still profoundly felt when gazing at the statue. Pre-modern representations of the body fulfill their titular promise of embodiment, justifying ancient ideologies into eternity.