Ancient Egypt

the two sides of an ancient civilization. A beautiful curated collection of 45 selected images from several books printed in the mid XIX century that illustrate the history of a great civilization. Or, actually, of the two sides of that ancient civilization: on one hand the splendid greatness of the palaces, the monuments, the tombs of the pharaohs and some glimpses of their almost divine life. On the other hand the hard ceaseless labor of innumerable slaves forced to spend their lives building gigantic statues of kings and colossal temples, or tanning hides, lathing vases, ploughing fields and in general doing all those menial jobs without which a civilization wouldn’t stand – and of course fighting and dying in wars, and getting killed once a pyramid was complete in order to protect the tomb secrets forever. There’s a third even gloomier aspect of ancient Egypt: in order to run smoothly for almost three millennia such a huge country they couldn’t help inventing and intensively practicing a scourge that survived and throve uncontrollably until today… yeah, I mean bureaucracy. Their omnipresent scribes took note of everything worth mentioning that occurred in Egypt: crops, properties, taxes, marriages, litigations, scandals… not so bad as today’s Google perhaps, but still doing such a job with stylus and papyrus was certainly no joke 😉 About the visual treatment Captions are presented in a clear modern format to assist interpretation while maintaining visual separation from the original engravings. – Detail (magnified). In my set you’ll find 18 color images of Egyptian mural decorations depicting with detailed vibrancy the custom of the time. A couple of them are the way I found them, as colored engravings, just restored and retouched (time is ruthless with old paper). The rest is from plain engravings, black and old white, that I colored myself after studying several archaeological photographs in order to retrieve the proper hue of the craftsmen’s and pharaohs’ skin, of the robes and so on: a creative plunge in a remote past, and a very satisfactory one too 🙂 A collage of the reduced 45 images is visible on the curated set page here Who this set is for Ideal for: – Editorial and publishing professionals – Graphic and type designers – Printing historians and researchers – Museums and educational institutions – Book design and publishing projects – Decorative wall art for studios, libraries, and print workshops Usage & rights clarity The images offered here are high-resolution digital reproductions and/or editorial reinterpretations created from verified 19th century-early 20th century printed sources belonging to the author’s personal collection and are not AI-generated reconstructions. You may use these images for editorial, academic, commercial, and creative projects without attribution. You may not resell, redistribute, or license the images as standalone files, nor include them in competing image libraries or stock collections. Derivative works, layouts, publications, and integrated uses are allowed. Uses intended to promote hate, harassment, or explicit harm are not permitted.