This paper highlights how introductory textbooks on Egyptian art inhibit understanding by reinforcing student preconceptions, and demonstrates another approach to discussing space with a classroom exercise and software. The alternative approach, an active model for spatial representation, introduced here was developed by adapting classroom approaches to multimedia computer applications, and differs from textbook approaches in the following ways: (1) establishes connections between students' patterns of thought and those of Egyptian artists, rather than concentrating on comparisons which reinforce differences; (2) invites student participation in other methods of thinking; and (3) concludes with a comparison that reveals the limitations of a traditional approach. The classroom exercise involves an eye and hand exercise, and the interactive multimedia software, "Thinking Egyptian," which uses animation, interactive responses, and problem solving approaches to involve the user in the visual logic of Egyptian art. To help students stretch beyond the comfortable visual assumptions of a lifetime, instructors are encouraged to develop active methods for involving students in different approaches to visual thinking. The classroom exercise and software present methods for expanding visual thinking and helping students recognize the logic and limitations of both the familiar and the foreign. Twelve figures offer examples of Egyptian art and provide reproductions of screens of the "Thinking Egyptian" software. (Contains nine references.) (MAS)