In ancient Egyptian art, the convention showing the head in profile while presenting the eye from the front is called composite view.
Egyptian artists used this system to show each body part in its clearest, most recognizable form rather than reproducing a single realistic viewing angle. A figure’s head and legs might be shown in profile, while the torso and eye were presented more frontally. The result can look anatomically inconsistent to modern viewers, but it was a deliberate visual language rather than a lack of artistic skill.
Composite view helped preserve the identity and symbolic completeness of people, gods, and objects in tomb paintings and reliefs. Egyptian art also followed related conventions, including idealized proportions, hierarchical scale, and a restricted range of formal poses.
It is commonly confused with perspective, but perspective attempts to represent depth from a particular viewpoint. Hieratic scale instead refers to changing a figure’s size according to status or importance, not to the way body parts are angled.