What Is The Portrayal Of Women In Ancient Art

Art in ancient Egypt always had purpose, such as being a substitute to represent someone in the afterlife in case their body had decayed. The depictions in art were far from realistic as they were representative of how that person would be forever in the afterlife. Women were depicted as beautiful and perfectly feminine with lighter skin, despite Egypt being racially mixed. Women were drawn slender while elite men and pharaohs were drawn with rolls of fat over their abdomen to signify that they could afford to eat plenty and did not burn off the weight with manual labor. Women were depicted in formal paintings in relation to a man, such as their husband or father, apart from the tombs of queens. Women were often depicted as smaller than and