Egyptian Thursday

Welcome back! It's Thursday and (as of last week, at least) that means it's Egyptian Thursday! I'll be doing a piece of art relating to that ancient world power. Maybe photo-realism, maybe comics, maybe something else... whatever strikes my fancy.

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First a little background. Egypt is generally divided into vast periods called Kingdoms (Old, Middle and New). These were divided into Dynasty; usually grouped by families (like say the Tudors or the Hapsburgs), these were listed numerically one through thirty.

The period I'm working in is the New Kingdom, and within that the Eighteenth Dynasty. The Eighteenth Dynasty is in fact the first dynasty in the New Kingdom. It's a time of big conquest, big trading, big monuments... Frankly, it'd be hard to not find a great story to tell in all of this!

Hatchepsut, Egypt's first female pharaoh, comes from this period and lies right in the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty. I did a drawing of her a month or so back but I'm pretty unsatistifed with it. Let's try this again!

(Oh, and just an aside: This is an example of the vast spans of time we're dealing with in Egypt. The United States has existed 234 years. The Eighteenth Dynasty (one of thirty remember) lasted for 243 years. Yep, long time.)

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Hatchepsut here is wearing the Blue Crown (also known as the Serpent Crown) and it's generally associated with the Pharaoh as military ruler. This is a pretty good first pass on this drawing. I'll post the next step sometime next week!