6 Tomb decoration

The tomb-chapel was filled, practically from floor to ceiling, with painted decorations and accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions (Figure 21). On the basis of a study of decorated Eighteenth Dynasty Theban tomb-chapels undertaken in the 1980s, Lise Manniche drew up a summary of the paintings they would typically contain:

• representation of the reigning king
• scenes relating to the office of the tomb-owner
• the tomb-owner making offerings
• the tomb-owner fishing and fowling
• hunting in the desert
• agricultural scenes
• wine making
• offering bringers
• banquets
• the funeral procession
• the deceased's voyage to Abydos
• rituals before the mummy, including the ceremony of Opening of the Mouth.

Courtesy of Boyo Ockinga, Macquarie University, Australia

Figure 21 Long hall of Theban Tomb-chapel 147

Watch this video in which Richard Parkinson and Paul Wood talk about interpreting Nebamun paintings.

Download this video clip.Video player: chap3_sec3_pg11.mp4

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript

INTERVIEWER:

This is such a curious balance to the modern eye, isn't it?

RICHARD PARKINSON:

Yes, yeah.

INTERVIEWER:

You have this naturalism on the one hand, the detail of the cat's fur, the detail of the bird's feathers. And yet, as you say, this is not a portrait of Nebamun. He's dead. Or he would have been an old man. He's in the prime of life. So there is this symbolic dimension as well as ...

RICHARD PARKINSON:

It's intensely symbolic, with the detail of the cat's eye, which is gilded. And the cat, it's not just a domestic pet. It's also representative of the Sun God who, like Nebamun, is imposing order by killing the animals that can symbolise in Egyptian thought, forces of chaos, death, and disorder.

But in a way, it's like a Renaissance Madonna. We look at a Renaissance Madonna, and she's the Mother of God. But she's also Renaissance lady, here and now, in the land that we're familiar with.

End transcript

Download

 

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

© The Open University and its licensor

One of the effects of this information is to underline just how much is missing from Nebamun's tomb-chapel. The surviving fragments are, of course, parts of paintings; but more than that, many of the paintings have simply not survived at all. Neither has the sculpture of Nebamun and his wife, which would have been placed in a niche at the far western end of the rooms (Figure 22), nor the stela which would have contained a biographical text.

© Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 22 Statue of a couple from a Theban tomb-chapel (EA 2301)

Even if not all of these were present in any one tomb, it is easy to see how little of the decoration of Nebamun’s tomb has survived. What has seems mostly to be from the outer room, which normally contained the scenes concerning the life of the deceased person. Very little has come down to us from the inner passageway and room containing the scenes of the funeral and entry into the afterlife; and it is likely these would have been there. Manniche writes that ‘there is scarcely a single tomb of those with completely preserved decoration that omits it’.