In the first place, the figure is completely nude where the Egyptian statues are
either wholly costumed or discreetly draped about the loins. Nudity is singled out by
Thucydides as a mark of progress that distinguishes the modern from the old-
fashioned and the Greek from the non-Greek:
[The Spartans], too, were the first to play games naked, to take off their clothes
openly, and to rub themselves down with olive oil after their exercise. In ancient
times even at the Olympic Games the athletics used to wear coverings for their
loins, and indeed this practice was still in exercise not many years ago. Indeed one
could point to a number of other instances where the manners of the ancient
Hellenic world are very similar to the manners of foreigners today.
(1, 6)The Spartans even went so far as to have women exercising almost naked. In this
they were exceptional. The Athenians were more restricted about female nudity, and
their statues of young women were correspondingly draped. It is not until the fourth
century that the first female nude appears and then the pose is modest (fig. 65). There
must be some connection between the acceptance of male nudity in the actual life of
the athlete in the gymnasium (from the Greek word gymnoswhich means ‘naked’) and
the development of the male nude as the favoured form of Greek sculpture, whether
as young man (kouros) or young god (Apollo).
Second, whereas the Egyptian figures are supported from the back or given
some prop from the stone block out of which they are carved, the Greek figure is
autonomous and free-standing. In comparison with later Greek statues, of course, the
archaic kouros seems stiff and rigid, but in comparison with the immobile Egyptian,
there is more articulation in the body and more than a hint of the potential movement
that will be actualized in the freer and more flexible forms of the future.
Third, while the Egyptian statues seem to have been designed to show likeness
of particular individuals (and certainly there are individual features in the faces), the
Greek kouros is typical and ideal, without any attempt to render individuality. Both
the face and the body are sculpted with geometric patterns in mind. Most noticeable
are the corresponding triangles above and below the waist with the navel at the
centre. There are recessed triangles in the elbows too. The pectoral muscles form an
elegant double semicircle that can be seen to be repeated above the knees. The most
striking feature of the face (apart from the round frame of the stylised hair) is the large
eyes, the upper lids of which are semicircular. The semicircle is repeated in the line
of the eyebrows. The Greek is therefore more abstract than individual, though if we
compare the statue with the more rudimentary abstract figures of the Dipylon vase
(fig. 44), the abstractions bear a closer relation to the actual and the natural. In the
archaic kouros can be seen a characteristic preoccupation with proportion and
symmetry underlying the Greek quest for ideal beauty.
ART 227