The Painted Tomb-chapel of Nebamun

Book excerpt: "The eleven sections of wall-painting from Nebamun's lost tomb-chapel from c. 1350 B.C. are among the greatest and most famous of the British Museum's treasures." "The paintings decorated the walls of an Egyptian official's tomb-chapel, displaying his status and activities in this life and the next. The accountant Nebamun, eternally youthful and vigorous, is shown hunting in the marshes and overseeing his servants and animals on the estates he managed. The paintings offer us fascinating glimpses of the world of ancient Egypt as the governing class wished it to be seen. Ancient visitors would bring offerings and prayers to Nebamun in this colourful chapel, and the paintings were intended to be seen and appreciated by them. Their beauty and vitality are admirably captured in the new detailed photography which has been taken especially for this book." "The process of conservation and analysis in the Museum's specialist laboratories has revealed new information about painting techniques in ancient Egypt, and a detailed study has resulted in new reconstructions of the paintings. This work, together with research in the Museum's archives, is helping to solve the problem of the tomb-chapel's location near modern Luxor, last seen in the 1820s when the paintings were removed." "Richard Parkinson discusses the history of the paintings from ancient to modern times. He describes each painting fully, with translations of the hieroglyphic texts, and reconstructs the full scenes from which each fragment comes. Discussions of the other known fragments from the tomb-chapel (now in Berlin, Avignon and Lyon) are included. Every painting is illustrated in colour with numerous close-up details, doing full justice to these artists who have been described as 'antiquity's equivalent of Michelangelo'."--BOOK JACKET.