Offerings for Nebamun, fragment of a scene from the
tomb-chapel of Nebamun
Thebes, Egypt
Late 18th Dynasty, around 1350 BC
This is part of the most important scene in
the tomb-chapel of Nebamun, and it is painted in a formal style
with a white rather than a cream background to make it stand
out.
The whole scene showed a huge pile of lavish
food in front of the dead Nebamun and his wife, with wine and
ornate perfume jars. Their son Netjermes offers them a tall bouquet
of flowers at the festival of the god Amun, when relatives came to
visit the dead. The hieroglyphic captions contain funerary prayers
and a list of offerings.
Large jars of wine are garlanded with grapes
and vines. In many places the green and blue has been lost, since
these colours were applied as roughly ground pigments which have
fallen away.
The food offerings include sycomore-figs,
grapes, different shaped loaves of bread, and also a roast duck and
joints of meat, which only the wealthy could afford.
Traces of red grid-lines are visible in places
under the background colour. These lines helped the artists to lay
out the figures, but they only used them in this scene because it
was the largest and most formal in the tomb-chapel.
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)