Children painting and drawings have in common the shapes and forms of their drawing. Ancient Egyptian art reached a high level in painting and sculpture, and was both highly stylized and symbolic. It was famously conservative, and Egyptian styles changed remarkably little over more than three thousand years. Much of the surviving art comes from tombs and monuments and now there is an emphasis on life after death and the preservation of knowledge of the past. The wall art was never meant to be seen by people other than the afterlife for when they needed them. Ancient Egyptian art included paintings, sculpture in wood (now rarely surviving), stone and ceramics, drawings on papyrus, faience, jewelry, ivories, and other art media. It displays an extraordinarily vivid representation of the ancient Egyptian's socioeconomic status and belief systems. The Ancient Egyptian language had no word for 'art', rather, art served an essentially functional purpose that was intimately bound up with religion and ideology. To render a subject in art was to give it permanence. Hence, ancient Egyptian art portrayed an idealized, not a realistic, view of the world. There was no tradition of individual artistic expression, since art served a wider, cosmic purpose of maintaining created order. Children's drawings have a similar way of art do to all the abstract colors, shapes, and forms.
