The Egyptian artists produced first-rate work for close to 4,000 years.

The main reason for this extraordinary success will be found in their respect for tradition. They honored tradition in their paintings and sculpture just as they did in their daily life. It is therefore not difficult to understand why they were more interested in
the type of person they were representing (be it royalty or the common man) in their drawings and statues than the individual.

When they were told to make a statue of the Pharaoh, for example, they naturally took into account those features that were characteristic of his face; however, such details as the shape of this eyebrows, the width of his chin and the length of his nose were relatively unimportant.

The main concern was to represent their ruler in such a way that everyone seeing the statue would exclaim: "No question about it. That is a king!".
They would recognize qualities which they expected to find in their sovereign; that he should be someone above the concerns of everyday life, a person of this world but at the same time so identificable with his godlike predecessors as not
to be in any way like the rest of mankind.

The eyes of the statue always looked straight ahead. There was a complete absence of any mortal emotion: joy, anger, discontent, surprise, grief. The eyes did not stare but seemed to be looking intently at ordinary humans.

If we compare the statue of a Pharaoh at the time of the great Pyramids to the work of such modern-minded sculptors as Michelangelo and Rodin, we see a considerable difference. The gods and heroes of the latter two artists show evidence of possessing the same emotions as the poor beggar in the village square or the housewife down the street. It is human appeal that causes the sculptures of the last three or four hundred years to be so fascinating to us. The Egyptians would have disapproved of such an approach. To them a god was a god, a king was a king, and a commoner was a commoner. It was a simple arrangement and one that suit their needs very comfortably.