Arts of the Islamic, Early Japanese, and Egyptian Civilizations, Essay Example

Civilization

Civilization is the entire process of civilizing or being civil. A civilized society characteristics include advanced minimal government, agriculture, long-distance trade, occupational specialization or urbanism. In addition, civilization comes forth as a combination of many other elements including developments in the transportation system, standards of measurement, writing, contract legal systems, sophisticated metallurgy, monumental architecture, great art style, mathematics, and astronomy. These characteristics sum up the civilizations within various society including Islam, Egyptians and the Japanese cultures (Chisholm & Millard, 1991). In my travel to meet these cultures, I had the zeal and goal of understanding respective civilizations among these groups and this entails as the subject of this paper.

Egyptian Civilization

Geography is the basic element common in the history of Egyptian civilization. Egyptian Civilization indicates not more than two inches in the total amount of rain per year. This made most of the Egyptian land inhabitable. The geographical factors determine Egyptian civilization. People only farmed along the Nile. This was the only part with fertile soil fit for agriculture. This therefore dictates the area where civilization for the Egyptians all begun. From the Nile was the Nile silt ware featuring more in the making of pottery of use in utilitarian purposes way back in 1,550-1,069 BC (Walter, 1975).

The source of Egyptian civilization also features foreign influence from other cultures. Their Predynastic culture was the source of the major civilization though the neighbouring communities had an influence. It borrowed successful civilization from other cultures in terms of technological advances.

My experience in Egypt was dictated by the influence of other studies. I wanted to correlate the civilizations in visual arts, specifically pottery. Pottery in Egypt civilization was made because of the necessity to use rather than for decorations like in the Islam and the Japanese culture. Even the smallest pottery was important. They were used to hold perfumes. The other large pieces of pottery were commonly used to hold grains, wine, water and meat for later consumption.

The Greeks had a great input in the Egyptian civilization. They introduced containers in different forms as well as functions. In their cultures, Greeks used these containers in preservation of ashes for the dead that was mostly of the cremated deceased. They also brought in the amphora container principally used to transport and store different types of goods including olives, wine and oil. In the same group of containers were containers for transporting fruits and bitumen and preserving salted fish. The amphorae were of clay in the making to help in softening water (Briton, 1984).

Some of the Egyptians pottery was a part of the ancient hieroglyphics. They depicted the day to day living of the Egyptians showing how great and valuable the pottery was to the community. From the experience with the communities, the pottery was made to suit the occasion. They were of many sizes accommodating the respective needs of the users. I was able to find various pieces with a range in size. Some were about three or four feet of measure in height. Pottery was very common to the Egyptian community just like the modern appliances helping to make life smooth and better.

I observed that, in ancient Egypt civilization, pottery was also of major use in the sacred burial rites. I encountered pottery pieces holding certain body organs after removal from the body. This was through the embalming process in preparation for burial. Some of the common organs include liver, small intestines, heart, lungs, and the stomach. They could place the organs in separate pottery containers and buried together with the body (Walter, 1975).

All these pottery developments and innovations have been of influence in the developments of modern products including kitchen utensils and appliances. This was the base into the modern culture utility of products. The use of these modern equipments resembles the pottery utility and a direct coloration of the two major innovations from the earlier periods.

Islamic Civilization

The Islamic civilizations begun in the early in 13th century A.D. this is the time when most of the Islamic culture took after the Chinese culture. It was the base of influence in bringing in the new civilizations.  This period marks the Mongol Period and it happened in Easter Islamic lands. It was the beginning of more intensive Chinese influence according to the records of the Islam culture. The influence led to more innovations and inventions in the areas of Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, and Temurid & Safvid Iran (Chisholm & Millard, 1991).

My first encounter of the Islamic civilization spotted pottery. From sources within the local community, I learned that pottery as an art also as a luxury object started way back in the earliest years of the century and was an innovation of Abbasids. This innovation came under the influence of the white ware of China. At first, the pottery was with relief decorations in abstract. Then more developments came in and Baghdad school came up with developments of the remarkable technique involving painting of metallic pigment on glazed surface referred to as “luster.” In this case, I realized that the pottery in display was of various colours as well as figurative styles. Some consisted of birds and other animals.

The group behind the invention was the Samanids at Nishapur who gave the support of the polychrome under-glaze painting holding figurative representation. They started all over by mixing colors with earth perfecting the make of a “slip.” This was a brilliant idea because the glaze could not destroy the pottery (Kradin, 2006). Another ware under Samanids had a background with black, purple or dark-brown abstract designs and sparse calligraphy. I was informed the in Seljuq Iran, the standard of all art element, the pottery was then a major art form. Pottery art was made stronger by artist’s migration that came from Egypt. The artists came with new techniques involving luster painting as well as a form of ceramic body made of glassy matter, for instance quartz.

Pottery was specifically for beautification. The Islam culture valued beauty especially in women houses. This was necessitated by the pottery with various forms of painting making it essential to the community. In Islamic culture, such inventions especially the input from the Egyptians met a new dawn of the pottery world and gave value to the art of pottery in the community. Since then, it has been receiving more inventions contributing to the classic nature of pottery valued by the Islamic community to date.

Early Japanese Civilizations

My visit to Japan was fruitful in realizing the civilizations in the same field of pottery. From the records in many monumental museums and other designated places, their civilization dates back to an early period. This is estimated to be twelve thousand years or more ago. The Jomon culture was the main inhabitant of Japan and they developed ceramics in that early period. This is a period earlier by far than all other civilizations who took after what they initiated (John, 1984). In anthropology, it is traditional to consider pottery as a development in human nature occurring only after agriculture invention around the world. Pottery and agriculture, separates Neolithic from Mesolithic cultures. However, some years before human beings engaged in agricultural activity, the Jomon culture in Japan were practicing pottery and made great designs in the same field. Pottery from this culture used stacked coils with raised lines marking the coils boundary to give the pottery a “roped” appearance and this is where the name Jomon came from meaning, “roped.”

Despite having the earliest pottery appearance, the Jomon community did not make developments to the pottery, as it would be the case of many civilizations. They were very slow in their developments. They however produced visual designs with the use of strings or fingers to impress great repeated designs on the pottery surface. Between (2500-1500 B.C.), which is the Middle Jomon period, the people of the community settled beginning to produce figurines. The simple decorations developed into energetic decorations within that period. Other developments in the Late 1500-1000 B.C. and 1000-300 B.C. were highly developed and stylized (John, 1984).

Yayoi, a period in the Japanese history that lasted from 300 B.C. to 300 A.D., brought changes that are more dramatic in Japanese pottery. Because of the Japanese changing into class-based culture from agriculture communities, the pottery was better stylized to make them more appealing and for use in class societies. The Yayoi people resulted to development of settlements in the Japanese community. This facilitated the development of better ceremonial objects for instance bells. The metal vases design in museums is a great evidence of sophisticated designs of pottery.  Many of these vases were imported directly from China (Felipe, 2000).

All these Japanese pottery were visual arts with a particular purpose. Culturally, people believed that they would use the pottery in the other life after death. They believed that they would carry the visual arts to the other world and therefore held them preciously. The Hein Period is the major period when the Japanese pottery came to being. It rolled into the Nara period between 710 and 794 AD. Most of the civilizations in pottery had a major influence from Buddhism religion and the Chinese culture. By the end of Hein period, major changes from the earlier century were observed. At least the pottery came to reflect the Japanese ways of life.

References

Briton, C. et al. (1984). A History of Civilization: Prehistory to 1715 (6th Ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Chisholm, J. & Millard, A. (1991). Early Civilization: London, F.F. (2000) Civilizations: London: Macmillan.

John, G. (1984). Ascent to Civilization: London: Collins Kradin, N (2006) Archaeological Criteria of Civilization: Social Evolution & History, Vol. 5, No 1 (2006): 89-108.

Walter, A. Jr. (1975). The Threshold of Civilization: An Experiment in Prehistory: New York: Scribner.