The artists appear to have shown the hands attached to the wrong arms in their pursuit of maat or true depiction.
In ancient Egyptian artwork, the human form is shown in an aesthetically pleasing manner, with every part of the body depicted at its most recognisable angle. Detailing of the hands and feet was carefully marked out, but – if you take a closer look – you will see that not everything is as you would expect.
Statues and wall paintings
Comparison of an Egyptian statue with a wall painting depicting a similar figure suggests that the artist working in two dimensions followed subtly different rules from those applied by the sculptor. It was not that artists were unable to accurately reproduce what they saw; rather they chose to represent solid objects according to a particular set of conventions that had been established in the earliest periods of Egyptian history.
