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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

We have a fairly good idea of how sculpture evolved in the past 5,000 years or so. By 2500 BCE, the Egyptians had already mastered realistic sculpture:

https://www.mfa.org/gallery/masterpieces-of-egyptian-sculptu...

But this discovery is a whopping 7,500 years older. It would have been inconceivably ancient to the pyramid builders too.

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Those statues clearly show some development, but I wouldn't say the Egyptians had mastered realistic sculpture. There is clearly still some kouros-like stylized anatomy here, especially visible in the standing figures. Compare to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polykleitos#/media/File:Doryph...

It’s of course difficult to say how much of the perceived non-realism was simply about cultural aesthetic preferences with regard to style. Especially given that the statues that have survived are those with special cultural or religious significance.

The non-realist aspects were definitely tied to cultural and religious signifiers.

There's actually a fascinating case where Egyptian artists were briefly allowed to abandon the established style and adopted a quite different one during the so-called Amarna period:

https://artsandculture.google.com/usergallery/amarna-period-...

Much of the art became almost caricatures with elongated features, but there was simultaneously a realist tendency where portraits of royalty were suddenly allowed to have a likeness. The famous Nefertiti bust is from this era.

It seems clear to me that the artists' skills was not the limitation, but the permitted range of expression was quite narrow until this rebel pharaoh unleashed the short-lived style revolution.

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