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This Saturday some of my friends and I took a trip into Philly with the intention of seeing the new Amazonia exhibit at the Penn Museum.  Of course, when we arrived at the museum we discovered that in fact the Amazonia exhibit didn’t open until next week.  Instead, the featured exhibit was the Ancient Egyptian Amarna Period.  Cool, I thought, mummies are always a good time.  But almost immediately after I entered the exhibit, my mind began to wander back to our Evolution class.  This time, I started to ponder the evolution of the idea and its potential effect on art.  As my friend explained to me, Egyptian art is very unique in that for the most part, the style/attitude never changed.  This static art, she continued, was representative of the dominant Egyptian view at that time: there was such a thing as eternal life.  Therefore, Egyptian art, pyramids, ceremonies, seemed to govern and reflect this way of life.  But it got me thinking, when did this overarching idea change/evolve, and how does that relate to evolution?  It may have changed as the Egyptian society came in contact with the Greeks and later the Romans.  After all, much of the later art after the fall of the Egyptian empire reflects heaven and death and emotion-so a change definitely did occur.  But, it is just interesting to think that such a huge concept-the evolution of the idea concerning life, death and the afterlife-could be reflected and documented so accurately in art.  Going back to the debate about whether or not art was an evolutionary “waste of time”, while I said yes in class, I am not sure it is such an easy decision to make. 

Also, for entertainment value I have included a quote from the museum along with my rendition of the quote…enjoy.