Impact of Trade Between Egypt and Knossos
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Discuss the impact of trade between Egypt and Knossos. How did this trade affect the art of the Aegean? Use examples to support your statements.
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Solution Summary
The impact of trade between Egypt and Knossos on the Art of the Aegean is examined.
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Egyptian texts record evidence of a trade relationship with a culture they referred to as the "Keftiu." Archaeologists accept this to be what is currently known as the Minoan culture. The Minoans were a strong sea-faring people and are known to have traded with a wide variety of other countries and cultures. There are remains of Minoan settlements throughout what is now the Greek mainland and islands, Asia Minor (Turkey), Cyprus, Egypt (Faros on the Nile Delta, for example), Syria, and even Libya. These regions traded a wide variety of products including wood, oil (often scented), wine and beer, herbs and spices, metals, stone (including precious stones), textiles, and pottery, to name but a few.
While there would have been significant influence in a socio-political sense, there would also have been some influence in terms of language, music, religion, and of course art. It is difficult to be in contact with other cultures without taking something away from that meeting - even if what is taken away is inspiration. There have been Egyptian artifacts found in Minoan territory (for example, Egyptian pottery fragments found in the earliest layers of earth at Knossos, in Crete), and Minoan artifacts in Egypt.
Here are some of the possibilities of this relationship in terms of influence in the arts:
1. The picture plane: Both Egyptian and Minoan artists painted scenes with a decidedly two-dimensional, or "flattened" space. Figures and other elements of content are lined up in a kind of procession across the picture plane. The exception appears to be the frescoes found at Akrotiri ...
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