3.1 Exploration

Now that you have had some practice in looking at Egyptian paintings, we can try and look more holistically at this decorative scheme.

Watch this video in which Richard Parkinson and Paul Wood talk about the ‘Viewing the produce of the estates’ and ‘The banquet’ fragments.

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INTERVIEWER:

There are contrasting scenes here from the lives of the ancient Egyptians, aren't there? I can see both scenes of work on the one hand, and leisure on the other.

RICHARD PARKINSON:

Yes. The cattle scene is a good example of how lively the work scenes can be. We have cowherds driving herds of cattle. And all of the animals, and all of the farmers, the herdsmen, are all facing towards the figure of Nebamun.

Here you've got a sense of the hierarchy. The farmers bow down before the scribes. The scribes will then take their records.

Here you can see one of them is turning. And he would face a figure of Nebamun, who would have been here. You move from the lowly people up through the scribes, up to Nebamun. And if you imagine it in real terms, it's a pretty filthy, messy scene.

There's cattle, there's even young kids running around. It's very lively. It's very messy. It's almost chaotic.

All Egyptian officials would have been very familiar with agricultural life. But it's something they probably wanted to distance themselves from a little bit. And if you then look at the scenes of leisure, you get a sense of how, how there's qualities in that scene that people didn't want to be sitting next to.

They're very restful, very relaxed, very informal, very different from the way in which the farmers are rushing about. But there's the same rule. Everybody here is facing towards the figure of Nebamun, who would have sat beyond these wonderful piles of offerings. They're very different aspects of ancient Egyptian life, but there's still the hierarchy, and it's still centred around the tomb owner.

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Now look at two more pieces also showing scenes of agricultural work.

One of these is a small fragment from what would have been a much larger scene depicting different parts of the centrally important activity of harvesting grain (Figure 14).

© Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 14 Agricultural scene fragment (EA 37982)

The second piece is another ‘agricultural’ fragment, perhaps one of the most captivating of all. Egyptologists have not been able positively to identify a location for this scene, but it is not hard to see why D’Athanasi would have removed it, given its intrinsic charm (Figure 15).

© Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 15 Offering bringers fragment (EA 37980)