You have been asked why scholars use the word "conservative" to describe ancient egyptian pictorial arts. how do you answer the question? describe the egyptian canon of proportion and how it was applied. make sure to discuss the significance of the amarna period and explain its formal and iconographic characteristics. why does a change in religion bring about a change in art in ancient egypt?

1.- Scholars use the word "conservative" to describe Egyptian pictorial arts since their art styles changed too little over time.

2.- A change in religion brings a change in art since it is throught art that the history is represented

Explanation:

1.- Being conservative means to preserve traditional stantards and do not tent to change in their way of being. For Egyptians it was important to preserve the knowledge of the past, they didn't change their style so much due to symbolic and ideology matters. For their art, they used canon of proportion that was a rational way to constructing beauty in art by measurements that gave aesthetically pleasing sense to the pieces and constructions.

Regarding to the Amarna Period (1353 - 1336 BC) it was a period of time in Egypt where a lot of social and religious changes happened, they changed from the pharaon to the Akhetaten King who decided to abandom every traditional believe in gods, it led to affect the artistic practices and its formal and iconographic characteristics, now it was mainly presenting family and royal scenes in an expresionist or  cartoonist style. This represented an importante change, going from a complete and traditional  hieratism* to a simpler and naturalistic representation with no blame on presenting deformities.

2.-   Akhetaten proclaimed the supremacy of the solar god Aton, going from a  polytheistic to a monotheistic religion. Before that, art was not considered an aesthetic element but it only had the purpose to show the realily and keep a registry of their religion and ideology. Since they were very conservative, they showed  idealized and unrealistic views of their world. Then when Akhetaten came to change religion, tradition and perspective of  life, art changed as well and it became more real, free and personal.

*hieratism: before the Amarna Period, Egyptian art were full of hieratism, which means rigidness, solemnity postures and statism in the art representations.