Surveying the fields for Nebamun, fragment of a scene from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun

Thebes, Egypt
Late 18th Dynasty, around 1350 BC

Nebamun was the accountant in charge of grain at the great Temple of Amun at Karnak. This scene from his tomb-chapel shows officials inspecting fields. A farmer checks the boundary marker of the field. Nearby, two chariots for the party of officials wait under the shade of a sycomore-fig tree.

Other smaller fragments from this wall are now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, Germany and show the grain being harvested and processed.

The old farmer is shown balding, badly shaven, poorly dressed, and with a protruding navel. He is taking an oath saying:

‘As the Great God who is in the sky endures, the boundary-stone is exact!’

‘The Chief of the Measurers of the Granary’ (mostly lost) holds a rope decorated with the head of Amun’s sacred ram for measuring the god’s fields. After Nebamun died, the rope’s head was hacked out, but later, perhaps in Tutankhamun’s reign, someone clumsily restored it with mud-plaster and redrew it.

M. Hooper, The Tomb of Nebamun (London, British Museum Press, 2007)

R. Parkinson, The painted Tomb-chapel of Nebamun. (London, British Museum Press, 2008)

A. Middleton and K. Uprichard, (eds.), The Nebamun Wall Paintings: Conservation, Scientific Analysis and Display at the British Museum (London, Archetype, 2008)