The human form has been an obsession with artists and humans in general since at least the time f the first cave paintings, and likely for awhile before that. Given the current cultural fixation on the human from--especially the female--it seems likely that such an obsession is a natural and fundamental aspect of being human. Yet different cultures in human history have had vastly different views and interpretations of the human form, and the way the human body is depicted in art reflects this.
             Some of the oldest surviving art outside of cave paintings comes from the Ancient Egyptians. For this culture, the form of the body itself was not as important as what it represented. This is part of the larger Egyptian belief that the afterlife is the true existence; the body was preserved to ensure it’s usefulness in the afterlife, and art was used to depict scenes from tat afterlife in an effort to make them come true. One such example of Egyptian art is the painted chest that was found in Tutankhamen’s tomb. The central human figure of the front panel is virtually indistinguishable from the other people in terms of features; all of the figures in this painting are standing with their heads in profile and their torsos facing full-front, which is typical of Egyptian depictions of the human body, though an impossible pose for a real human to attain. Instead of using features and realistic representations to distinguish between the various people depicted here, the Egyptian artists used size and the storytelling capabilities of the human form to create meaning and difference. These aspects were more important to their worldview than realistic interpretations.
             Though the Greek artists of the classical period also found the storytelling possibilities of the human form intriguing, they were much more concerned with the actual form of the body than were their Egyptian counterparts. This can clearly be seen in a detail of the meto...