Video Review

1. Explain why you selected the video you choose from the selection listed above.
 I selected the video Cairo Museum because I have always been interested in King Tut.  Also, the Cairo Museum has only of the largest collections of artifacts in the world.  This makes it even more intriguing to learn about.


2. For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned.

For the video More Human Than Human, I learned that nomads moved around in large groups often.  This made it hard to find their works of art from that time period.  Also, the statue The Venus of Willendorf, was the first statue to ever depict a human.  After it was found, archaeologists started to find more statues of humans that had the same exaggerated features as The Venus of Willendorf.  The second big thing I learned from this video was that Egyptians carved unrealistic pictures of the human body.  They did this because they wanted to show the interesting parts of the body from the right angle.

 For the video Cairo Museum, I learned that Egyptians were very advanced for their time period.  They performed surgery on people if they lost appendages.  For example, on man lost a toe and they replaced his toe with a look-a-like toe for him to walk.  Also, the Egyptians decided to send mummified kings done the banks of the Nile river to their final resting place.  This ended up sending them to the now Cairo Museum.

3. How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?
The text talked about the statue The Venus of Willendorf.  It was created during the Paleolithic time period about 25,000 years ago.  They feel statues were made like this to promote pregnancy and childbirth.  However, today experts feel that it is unlikely that a single simple explanation can account for all of them.

The text also talked about the typical pose of Egyptian art.  When they depicted an important person, the Egyptian artist tried to show each part of the body from the best angle so it could be "read" clearly by the viewer.


4. What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts?
I felt that both films were interesting to watch because we don't learn about ancient civilizations from an art standpoint in school.  Also, the More Human Than Human video helped me understand where the first statues of humans came from and possibly why they were created.  The video about the Cairo Museum helped me understand more about why Egyptians did what they did during their time period.