Fragment of painted plaster from the tomb of Itet

Meydum, Egypt
4th Dynasty, around 2600 BC

Man feeding an antelope

The mastaba of Itet was a joint tomb with her husband Nefermaat, a vizier in the reign of Sneferu. His tomb contained decoration in an unusual style, with the shapes deeply cut out and filled with paste. Itet's chapel, however, contained some of the earliest painted scenes known to us from Egypt, one of which, the geese in the Cairo Museum (known as the 'Meydum Geese'), is world-famous. The painting on the two British Museum fragments is of almost equal quality: this example shows a man feeding an antelope. The clarity of the colours and the skill of the draughtsman is outstanding.

W.M.F. Petrie, Medum (London, D. Nutt, 1892)

A.J. Spencer, Early Egypt, The rise of civil (London, The British Museum Press, 1993)