Ancient Mediterranean

What this unit covers

The topics below follow the published Art History course framework for Unit 2. This unit is worth 15% of the exam, so budget your time against that rather than against how long the unit takes to teach.

Lessons in this unit

• The Ancient Near East & Egypt15 min · 3 objectivesDescribe how Mesopotamian and Egyptian art served rulership, religion, and the afterlife · Explain the conventions of Egyptian representation: hierarchy of scale, composite pose, and canon of proportions · Analyze how monumental architecture expressed political and divine power
• Greece, Etruria & Rome15 min · 3 objectivesTrace the Greek development from Archaic rigidity to Classical contrapposto to Hellenistic drama · Compare Etruscan and Roman approaches to the human figure, death, and portraiture · Explain Roman architectural innovations — the arch, concrete, and the dome — and their civic functions

What examiners penalize here

• **Hierarchy of scale** (bigger = more important) and the **composite view** are two of the most testable Egyptian and Near Eastern conventions. When a prompt asks how an image conveys power or status, name the convention and say what it communicates — that is the analysis the rubric rewards.

Practice Art History

Our practice bank is drawn from across the whole course rather than filtered to one unit, which is closer to how the exam asks anyway — it will not tell you which unit a question is testing.

Questions about this unit

All 10 units of AP Art History

1. Unit 1 · Global Prehistory
2. Unit 2 · Ancient Mediterranean
3. Unit 3 · Early Europe & Colonial Americas
4. Unit 4 · Later Europe & Americas
5. Unit 5 · Indigenous Americas
6. Unit 6 · Africa
7. Unit 7 · West & Central Asia
8. Unit 8 · South, East & Southeast Asia
9. Unit 9 · The Pacific
10. Unit 10 · Global Contemporary