Page 78 - All About History - Issue 56-17

Graffiti

Through the ages

From Roman Pompeii to modern day, a secret history

has always been written on the walls

Written by Ben Gazur

umans have always sought to leave their
Greek letters and symbols
scrawled into a rock in the mark since the dawn of civilisation, but
Eastern desert of Egypt when history has been recorded, the
voices of the masses have usually been
Hleft out. It seems many more ordinary
events were not thought important enough to write
down. Luckily, graffiti has helped fill that gap by
offering us an unfiltered view of the period in which
it was created, and we can find familiar themes in our
lives like boastful comments, lewd jokes and caricatures.
Graffiti cannot be easily defined, but for our purposes
it is any illicitly made marking. Cave art, however
powerful, can’t really be thought of as graffiti in spite of
the tempting similarities. An ancient handprint doesn’t
look forbidden and we don’t have enough information
to say for certain if it was. For the same reason,
petroglyphs, ancient marks incised in rock, are
not true graffiti.
“Ancient foreign

visitors left their

marks, too”

Vandalise like an Egyptian
Most people’s reaction to the words ‘ancient graffiti’ hieroglyphs and symbols set out in red paint, left of Djoser at Saqqara and decided to mark the
is to ask, “Oh, like hieroglyphs?” While the Ancient behind by work gangs as they constructed the occasion with a graffito.
Egyptians were seemingly addicted to decorating pharaoh’s monument — and they have revealed He described how he “came for a pleasant
their monumental buildings with entire walls of much about those unknown toilers. stroll… with his brother Panakhte, the scribe of the
text, these were sanctioned by the pharaohs and so The crews charged with building the pyramids vizier.” Another scribe who visited left a slightly
were closer to state propaganda than street art. liked to sign their work, perhaps revealing a ironic complaint about those who had come
However, hidden between the official marks, rivalry between groups. The ‘Friends of Khufu’ before. “I feel sick when I see the work of their
we can find more modest ones that can truly might compete with the ‘Drunks of Menkaure’, hands… Their work is awful.”
be called graffiti. These might be as simple as a or the ‘Purples’ with ‘The Craftsman Gang’. These Ancient foreign visitors left their marks, too.
crude representation of an animal or as complex markings supports the growing evidence that In the tomb of Ramesses IV in the Valley of
as a lovingly rendered image of a god. Unlike the the Great Pyramid was built by willing, proud the Kings, 1,000 ancient inscriptions in Greek
acclamatory inscriptions of the pharaoh, which labourers, rather than slaves. and Latin have been found. Some just record
display his name proudly, we will never know the It seems that as soon as you teach someone the names of the visitors, while others read like
identity of most of these early graffiti artists. to write, they will want to scribble somewhere modern trip reviews — “I visited and I did not like
When cameras penetrated the hidden shafts they shouldn’t. In 1240 BCE, the treasury scribe anything except the sarcophagus!” or “I cannot
and chambers of the Great Pyramid, they found Hadnakhte took a trip to the sacred temple read the hieroglyphs!”
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