Timeline 4 The Archaic Period.
One might be inclined to attribute this uniformity to a lack of imagination or a want of skill on the part of
the painter. That, however, would be to impose today’s values on the art of Archaic Greece. In fact, it
appears that artists of the Archaic Period, even after they had become much more adept at portraying the
human figure, were quite comfortable with the idea that figures serving the same function ought to be
uniform in appearance. We can see this particularly clearly in the case of a series of large-scale
sculptures representing young men, a series that begins around the end of the seventh century and lasts
until the start of the fifth century BC. The inspiration behind this series of statues can undoubtedly be
traced to the Greeks’ increasing contact with Egypt in the middle of the seventh century. The Egyptians,
unlike the Greeks, had a tradition of creating monumental stone sculptures, a tradition that had been in
existence for many centuries and that resulted in the creation of a standardized set of proportions and
poses. Those proportions and one of those poses are reproduced by Greek sculptors who adopted
Egyptian techniques and conventions for use in a Greek context. The Egyptian king from the mid-third
millennium shown here (figure 23) is striding forward with his hands held stiffly at his sides. Nearly
2,000 years later Egyptian sculptors were still depicting their kings in the same posture, a posture that is
reproduced by the Greek sculptor of the young man in figure 24. This is one of many similar sculptures,
mostly life-sized, created by Greek artists during the Archaic Period and now referred to by art historians
as KOUROI.