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Lot 76*

Salah Abdel Kerim
(Egypt, 1925-1988)
Pharaonic Symbol

2 June 2021, 16:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £10,200 inc. premium

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Salah Abdel Kerim (Egypt, 1925-1988)

Pharaonic Symbol
mixed media on carton, framed
signed in Arabic (lower left)
37 x 92cm (14 9/16 x 36 1/4in).

Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Cairo

Note:
The present work is likely a preparatory painting for a sculptural frieze

"We could argue that the ancient Egyptians were positively constrained by their hieroglyphic system of writing to express abstract qualities in a physical way. Against such an interpretation, it is important to bear in mind that language is not simply the vehicle of expression of a given mentality, it actually is that mentality giving expression to itself. The very structures of language are the articulation of the mentality.

We should be wary of thinking that the ancient Egyptian mind was "really" like ours, but was constrained by the hieroglyphic script. Rather, the hieroglyphic script was the medium most appropriate for the articulation of the ancient Egyptian mentality. Far from being crude, it reflected richly symbolic modes of conceiving and relating to both the physical and the psychic spheres of existence.

It has already become apparent that these two spheres were not experienced as separated from each other—as we today tend to experience them. It is now necessary to go further, and seriously consider the idea that psychic attributes were indeed experienced as "situated" in various parts of the body. The pictorial character of the hieroglyphic form of writing made possible a quite effortless translation of this experience into the written word. For the hieroglyphic script, because it was pictorial, had not yet created a division between concrete and abstract, between "outer" and "inner." And it had not done so just because the ancient Egyptian mentality had not done so."

― Jeremy Naydler, Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred

Additional information

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