Piercing Cultural Hegemony
Writing performs a similar transformation. An experience begins within us as sensation, memory, intuition, emotion, or image. The writer gives that invisible experience an outline and sends it outward, where another mind can receive it and bring it to life again.
In this sense, writing itself can be imagined as a kind of Ka—a double of thought that leaves the mind of its creator and travels into the consciousness of another.
Centuries later, Pliny the Elder acknowledged an ancient Egyptian claim concerning the origins of painting. In Natural History, written in the first century CE, he reported that the Egyptians claimed painting originated among them thousands of years before it reached Greece. Pliny dismissed the claim as an extravagant boast.
Modern archaeology, however, has radically expanded the history available to us. Africa preserves artistic traditions vastly older than the classical Greek world, while ancient Egyptian painting itself extends back thousands of years before Pliny wrote.
The larger lesson, then, is more profound than simply proving Pliny right or wrong.
Inner world Ka Outer world Ka
Painting did not begin when someone learned to apply color to a surface. It began when human beings discovered that an inner image could cross the boundary between imagination and the visible world.
The silhouette stands at that boundary.
Before the fully painted figure comes the outline.
Before the outline comes the image.
Before the image becomes visible, it lives in the mind.
Painting begins in imagination.
