1. Pre-Historic Title Artist Category @ Size Media Great Hall of Bulls
unknown
Category
Paleolithic @
Lascaux, France
15,000 years ago
Size
1 of the bulls is 17 ft. long
Media
Charcoal, Pigmented earth
The cave of Lascaux, France is one of almost 350 similar sites that are known to exist—most are isolated to a region of southern France and northern Spain. Modern Humans (early Homo Sapiens Sapiens) coexisted in this region 30,000 years ago. Life was short and very difficult; resources were scarce, these early artists used charcoal and ochre (a kind of pigmented, earthen material, that is soft and can be mixed with liquids, and comes in a range of colors like brown, red, yellow and white). We find images of horses, deer, bison, elk, a few lions, a rhinoceros and a bear—almost as an encyclopedia of the area’s large prehistoric wildlife. Among these images are abstract marks—dots and lines in a variety of configurations. Why were these created? What are they trying to communicate?

2. Pre-Historic Title Artist Category @ Size Media Running horned woman
unknown
Category
Mesolithic @
Northern Africa
6,000-4,000 B.C.E.,
Size
12.2” tall
Media
pigment on rock
Frenchman and archaeologist Henri Lhote made African rock art famous by bringing some of the estimated 15,000 human figure and animal paintings and engravings found on the rock walls of the many gorges and shelters to the wider public. Lhote swabbed the wall with water to reveal a figure he called the "Horned Goddess": we have here the figure of a priestess of some agricultural religion or the picture of a goddess of such a cult who foreshadow—or is derived from—the goddess Isis, to whom, in Egypt, was attributed the discovery of agriculture. Was she indeed a goddess, and her rock shelter some sort of sanctuary? What does the image mean?

3. Pre-Historic Title Artist Category @ Size Media Palette of King Narmer
unknown
Category
Predynastic @
Located in England
B.C.E
Size
63.5 cm (more than 2 feet) in height
Media
greyish-green siltstone
Discovered among a group of sacred implements ritually buried in a deposit within an early temple of the falcon god Horus at the site of Hierakonpolis (the capital of Egypt during the pre-dynastic period), this large ceremonial object is one of the most important artifacts from the dawn of Egyptian civilization. These scenes show a king, identified by name as Narmer, and a series of ambiguous scenes that have been difficult to interpret and have resulted in a number of theories regarding their meaning. There are a number of formal and iconographic characteristics appearing on the Narmer palette that remain conventional in Egyptian two-dimensional art for the following three millennia. Do we have ceremonial pieces today for our leaders in society? Are these behaviors ritualistic?

4. Pre-Historic Title Artist Category @ Size Media
Last judgment of Hu-Nefer, 
Artist
unknown
Category
Predynastic @
Located in England
1300 B.C.E.
Size
44.5 x 30.7 cm
Media
Paint on Papyrus
Hunefer's high status is reflected in the fine quality of his Book of the Dead, which was specially produced for him. The scene reads from left to right. To the left, Anubis brings Hunefer into the judgement area. Anubis is also shown supervizing the judgement scales. Hunefer's heart, represented as a pot, is being weighed against a feather, the symbol of Maat, the established order of things, in this context meaning 'what is right'. The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the seat of the emotions, the intellect and the character, and thus represented the good or bad aspects of a person's life. If the heart did not balance with the feather, then the dead person was condemned to non-existence, and consumption by the ferocious "devourer," the strange beast shown here. Where in modern times do we see this type of judgement?