Ancient African Art
Naqada II clay jar (Egypt, 3500 BC)
Metropolitan Museum, NYC
The earliest art from Africa is from Egypt, where people started to paint pictures on pottery about 3500 BC. By around
King Zoser of Egypt
But there is art. There's a great deal of art from ancient Egypt, where they did have good stone. Some of the earliest life-size stone statues come from Egypt too.
South of Egypt, in the kingdoms of Kush and Aksum (modern Ethiopia and Eretria), there were also people building small pyramids. After the people who lived here converted to Christianity, about 300 AD, they built magnificent stone churches and painted them with Christian images showing influences from Rome and Constantinople.
