Week 2 History of the Nebamun paintings

Introduction

This week you will explore the answers to a number of questions:

• What are the key differences between painting in modern life and painting in ancient life?
• How should you read a piece of art, and in particular a piece of Egyptian art?
• What are the Nebamun paintings?
• What is their background? Where did they come from and how did the British Museum acquire them?
• What do they reveal about ancient life?

To do this, you will examine the Nebamun paintings in detail and begin to put them into context. Finally, you will learn about the ‘period eye’ of their nineteenth-century discoverers, and how they ‘translated’ the ancient paintings into a modern idiom.