In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in

preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in

very late geological history, and generally continuing until
that culture either develops writing or other methods of
record-keeping, or makes significant contact with another
culture that has, and that makes some record of major
historical events. At this point ancient art begins, for the
older literate cultures. The end-date for what is covered by

 LASCAUX

BHIMBETKA
ALTAMIRA CAVE SPAIN
VENUS OF WILLENDORF

 Lascaux is the setting of a

complex of caves in southwestern

France famous for its Paleolithic
cave paintings. The original
caves are located near the village
of Montignac, in the department
of Dordogne.

 The Bhimbetka rock shelters are an archaeological site of the Paleolithic,

exhibiting the earliest traces of human life on the Indian subcontinent, and
thus the beginning of the South Asian Stone Age. It is located in the Raisen
District in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The Bhimbetka shelters
exhibit the earliest traces of human life in India. Some of the Stone
Age rock paintings found among the Bhimbetka rock shelters are
approximately 30,000 years old. The caves also deliver early evidence
of dance. They were declared a World Heritage Site in 2003.
The name Bhimbetka is associated with Bhima, a hero-deity of the
epic Mahabharata. The wordBhimbetka is said to derive from Bhimbaithka,
meaning "sitting place of Bhima"

 The Cave of Altamira is

a cave in Spain famous

for its Upper
Paleolithic cave
paintings featuring
drawings and polychrome
rock paintings of wild
mammals and human
hands.

 The Venus of Willendorf now known in academia

as the Woman of Willendorf is a 4.25-inch

(10.8 cm) high statuette of a female figure
estimated to have been made between about
28,000 and 25,000 BCE. It was found in 1908 by
a workman named Johann Veran or Josef
Veram during excavations conducted
by archaeologists Josef Szombathy Hugo
Obermaier and Josef Bayer at a paleolithic site
near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near
the city of Krems. It is carved from
an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area,
and tinted with red ochre. The figurine is now in
the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria

 A civilization (or civilisation in British English) most broadly is any complex state

society characterized by a social hierarchy, symbolic communication forms

(typically, writing systems),and a perceived separation from and domination over
the natural environment. Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further
defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including urbanization (or
the development of cities), centralization, thedomestication of both humans and other
organisms, specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideologies of
progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence
upon agriculture, and expansionism.

Mesopotamia encompasses the land between

the Euphrates and Tigrisrivers, both of
which have their headwaters in the
mountains of Armeniain modern-day Turkey

The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze

Age civilization (33001300 BCE; mature period 26001900 BCE)
extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and
northwest India (see map). Along with Ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia it was one of three early civilizations of
the Old World, and of the three the most widespread, covering an
area of 1.25 million sq km. It flourished in the basins of the Indus
River, one of the major rivers of Asia, and the Ghaggar-Hakra River,
which once coursed through northwest India and eastern Pakistan.

Irrigated agriculture spread southwards from the Zagros foothills with the Samara and
Hadji Muhammed culture, from about 5,000 BC. Sumerian temples functioned as banks
and developed the first large-scale system of loans and credit, but the Babylonians
developed the earliest system of commercial banking. It was comparable in some ways
to modern post-Keynesian economics, but with a more "anything goes" approach.

The cuneiform script proper developed from

pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium
BC. Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans
roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries. The first documents
unequivocally written in the Sumerian language date to
c. the 31st century, found at Jemdet Nasr.

 The ziggurat is the most distinctive form, and cities often

had large gateways, of which the Ishtar Gate from NeoBabylonian Babylon, decorated with beasts in polychrome
brick, is the most famous, now largely in the Pergamon
Museum in Berlin.

 The origins of philosophy can be traced back to early

Mesopotamian wisdom, which embodied certain philosophies of life,

particularly ethics, in the forms of dialectic, dialogs, epic
poetry, folklore, hymns, lyrics, prose works, and proverbs.
The earliest form of logic was developed by the Babylonians, notably in the
rigorous nonergodic nature of their social systems.

 In the epic, Gilgamesh is a demigod of

superhuman strength who built the city

walls of Uruk to defend his people and
travelled to meet the sage Utnapishtim,
who survived the Great Deluge.
According to the Sumerian King List,
Gilgamesh ruled his city for 126 years. In
the Tummal Inscription,[3] Gilgamesh
and his son Urlugal rebuilt the sanctuary
of the goddess Ninlil in Tummal, a
sacred quarter in her city of Nippur.

A bronze statuette dubbed the "Dancing Girl", 10.5

centimetres (4.1 in) high [14] and some 4,500 years
old, was found in 'HR area' of Mohenjo-daro in
1926.[14] In 1973, British archaeologist Mortimer
Wheeler described the item as his favorite
statuette:
"She's about fifteen years old I should think, not
more, but she stands there with bangles all the
way up her arm and nothing else on. A girl
perfectly, for the moment, perfectly confident of
herself and the world. There's nothing like her, I
think, in the world."

In 1927, a seated male soapstone figure was

found in a building with unusually
ornamental brickwork and a wall-niche.
Though there is no evidence
that priests or monarchs ruled Mohenjodaro, archeologists dubbed this dignified
figure a "Priest-King." The sculpture is 17.5
centimetres (6.9 in) tall and depicts a
bearded man with a fillet around his head,
an armband, and a cloak decorated
with trefoil patterns that were originally
filled with red pigment.

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeaster

Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile
River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is
one of six civilizations globally to arise independently.
Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC (according
to conventional Egyptian chronology with the political
unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the
first pharaoh

 The shape of the Nile

River Valley resembles

a lotus flower, the ancient
Egyptian symbol for the
regeneration of life. The
long, narrow river valley
is the stem, the delta that
spreads out in the shape
of a triangle is the flower,
and Fayyum Region is a
bud

The Temple of Edfu is an ancient

Egyptian temple located on the west bank
of the Nile in the city of Edfu which was
known in Greco-Roman times as
Apollonopolis Magna, after the chief
god Horus-Apollo.[1] It is one of the best
preserved temples in Egypt. The temple,
dedicated to the falcon god Horus, was
built in the Ptolemaic period between 237
and 57 BC. The inscriptions on its walls
provide important information on
language, myth and religion during
the Greco-Roman period in ancient Egypt.

 The Great Pyramid of

Giza (also known as

the Pyramid of Khufu or
the Pyramid of Cheops) is
the oldest and largest of the
three pyramids in the Giza
Necropolis bordering what is
now El Giza, Egypt. It is the
oldest of the Seven Wonders
of the Ancient World, and
the only one to remain
largely intact.

 The largest and most famous

sphinx is the Great Sphinx of

Giza, situated at
the Giza Plateau adjacent to
the Great Pyramids of Giza on
the west bank of the Nile
River and facing due east
(295831N 310815E). The
sphinx is located to the east of
and below the pyramids.
Although the date of its
construction is uncertain, the
head of the Great Sphinx now is
believed to be that of the
pharaoh Khafra.

 The stepped pyramid of

King Zoser, 3rd dynasty,

Egypt, was built around
2640-2621 BC at Saqqara.
It was designed by
Imhotep, the first known
architect, who was later
deified by the Egyptians.
The pyramid was the first
monumental royal tomb
and is one of the oldest
stone structures in Egypt.

The Rosetta Stone, found near the

Egyptian city of Rosetta by French
troops in 1799, was the key which
unlocked the meaning of ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The
black basalt slab was originally
inscribed around 196 BC with three
parallel inscriptions in hieroglyphics,
demotic Egyptian, and Greek, praising
the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy V. By
comparing the three versions of the
inscription, scholars were able to
decipher the meaning of the
hieroglyphics, thus laying the basis of
modern Egyptology

The Valley of the Kings contains 62

tombs, which have all suffered from
looting. The first to be discovered
was that of Seti I, which was found
by the Italian explorer G. B. Belzoni
in 1817. The body of Seti, along with
39 other royal mummies that had
been moved from their original
resting places, was discovered in one
great burial chamber on the eastern
side of the cliffs in 1881. The last
tomb to be discovered, by Howard
Carter in 1922, was that of
Tutankhamen

Amenhotep I (?-c. 1504 BC), 2nd pharaoh

(c. 1525-c. 1504 BC) of the 18th Dynasty in
ancient Egypt. After the death of his
father, Ahmose I, his mother, Ahmose
Nefertari became regent until he was old
enough to take the throne. During his 21year reign, contemporary biographies
described campaigns in Nubia, which he
pacified, erecting a temple on the island
of Sai marking the southern extent of
Egypts territory. Around the time of his
reign, the Book of the Dead, the famous
collection of ancient funerary ritual and
spells, was largely standardized.

Ramesses was the eldest son

of Ramesses II and
Queen Isetnofret . He had at least
two sister and two brothers. His
sister Bintanath was elevated to the
position of great royal wife later in
the reign of Ramesses II and
played an important role at court.
A sister named Isetnofret after
their mother may have married her
brother Merneptah and been his
queen. His known younger
brothers
are Khaemwaset and Merneptah.
Ramesses is listed on several
monuments with his younger
brothers Khaemwaset and
Merenptah. He appears as the
second princes in the list of
procession of Ramesses' sons.

Akhenaton or Ikhnaton, also called

Neferkheperure Amenhotep IV,
pharaoh of Egypt (c. 1353-1337 BC).
Akhenaton was the son of
Amenhotep III and Tiy, and
husband of Nefertiti, whose beauty
is known through contemporary
portrait busts. Akhenaton was the
last important ruler of the 18th
dynasty of the New Kingdom and
notable for adopting, and eventually
virtually identifying himself with,
Aten, the sun god or solar disc,
whom he believed to be a universal,
omnipresent spirit and the sole
creator of the universe.

 Cleopatra was a member of

the Ptolemaic dynasty, a family

of Greek origin that
ruled Egypt after Alexander the
Great's death during the Hellenistic
period. The Ptolemies, throughout
their dynasty, spoke Greek and
refused to speak Egyptian, which is
the reason that Greek as well as
Egyptian languages were used on
official court documents such as
the Rosetta Stone. By contrast,
Cleopatra did learn to speak
Egyptian and represented herself as
the reincarnation of an Egyptian
goddess, Isis.