The visual perception of fatigue and sleep in bas-relief from the Old Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom

Abstract

Sleep is often viewed as one of the most intimate and private activities that we carry out. Therefore, it is not surprising that the motif of a fatigued or sleeping person is not common in Egyptian artwork. Compared to the written sources, the number of visual representations is considerably reduced. It is a challenge to identify sleeping or fatigued persons in art and to distinguish between these stages. A person lying in a bed does not necessarily have to be asleep, but the bed as a place can hint at other aspects such as procreation, birth, or death. There are several sign codes in modern perception, which can help to recognise whether a person is asleep or tired. In Western culture, yawning, for example, is a typical visual marker of tiredness, but in ancient Egypt, this does not seem to exist. This paper briefly examines the primary markers that visually indicate sleep or fatigue in bas-relief in ancient Egypt.