Art Embodied: anatomical drawing 1

mixed media, 16.5" x 23.4"

This anatomical drawing corresponds to my first two weeks of study focusing on the eras of the Ancient Egyptians and Classical Antiquity.

I decided to focus on the Ancient Egyptians, because I had been surprised by the intricacy of their anatomical understanding, and their singular yet logical way of explaining how the body works. The inspiration for this piece comes from the Ebers Papyrus, one of the main Ancient Egyptian medical papyrus scrolls written around 1500 B.C. The 110 page scroll contains medical remedies, as well as explanations of select aspects of human anatomy, such as the "Treatise on the Heart" section. Feel free to check out the University of Chicago translation of the papyrus here.

To create this piece I focused on the "Treatise on the Heart" (located in Chapter XX of the translated version). On page 129 the translation reads: 

In the Heart are the vessels to the whole of the body...there are four vessels to the nostrils, two of which convey mucus and two blood. There are four vessels in the inside of either Temple...when the breath goes into the Nose and makes its way to the Heart and Intestines, and the last-named vessels give to the body richly thereof... 

Based on this treatise, I created a diagrammatic representation of the human body and its vessels. I used Ancient Egyptian wall drawings as references for the two figures. In the background I recreated some of the heiroglyphs on the actual Ebers Papyrus. The two red hearts are emphasized in the piece, as the Ancient Egyptians believed the heart was not only the "centre of the vessels to all the limbs" but also the source of thoughts and the home of the human soul.