Burial chapel of Nebamun

Nebamun in hieroglyphics
Surname	Nebamun (Neb Amun) Nb Jmn Amun is my Lord
Nebamun, detail from "Hunting in the Papyrus Thicket"

The burial chapel of Nebamun is an ancient Egyptian burial chapel that was discovered in 1820 by Giovanni d'Athanasi in Thebes-West and whose wall paintings were removed by order of Henry Salt . The eleven most important fragments of the wall paintings are now in the British Museum and are among the most famous works of art of ancient Egypt. They date from around 1400–1350 BC. What the reign of Thutmose IV. Or Amenhotep III. in the 18th Dynasty ( New Kingdom ) corresponds. After ten years of research and restoration work, the representations were made available to the public again in 2009. Since the location of the fragments was not noted, the burial chapel could not be rediscovered or assigned to a known grave until today.

discovery

A key figure in the discovery and acquisition was the collector Henry Salt , who worked as Consul General in Cairo from 1815 and who, with the help of Giovanni Battista Belzoni and Giovanni d'Athanasi, amassed a considerable collection of ancient Egyptian objects. Giovanni d'Athanasi found the burial chapel in 1820 in the necropolis of the nobles in Thebes-West , but not much attention was paid to the exact recording of the find's circumstances during this time, so that little is known about it. The preserved fragments of Nebamun's burial chapel are certainly only a small part of the paintings that decorated the tomb walls. It is possible that a large part of the walls were still intact when d'Athanasi discovered them, and that he and his team removed only the most beautiful scenes or those that best fit into Salt's collection, with scenes that appear alive with animals and dancers were preferred. A large part of the burial chapel was probably badly damaged by this work, which means that it can no longer be clearly identified today.

Ten of the eleven fragments in the British Museum were acquired with Salt's first collection from the British Museum for £ 2,000, which Salt described as a "poor amount", and shipped to London in 1821. Other smaller fragments are now in the Egyptian Museum Berlin , the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and the Musée Calvet in Avignon.

Grave owner

Nebamun's name is damaged on all of the wall paintings, but it can be clearly reconstructed. His full title was "Clerk and Grain Steward in the Granary of the Divines [Sacrifice of Amun]". This title places Nebamun in a lower class of persons with private graves, but his work was related to the Karnak Temple , one of the most powerful institutions of the time. He was not very high in the temple hierarchy because he was not an overseer. He was probably responsible for distributing grain to different places and people, as well as collecting and delivering the grain that was due to the king. Agricultural scenes like those in his grave were a common motif for people with such titles.

No surviving inscription testifies when Nebamun lived, but the style of his scenes indicates the reign of Thutmose IV (approx. 1397-1388 BC) or Amenhotep III. (approx. 1388–1351 BC) close. The stylistic similarity with the Tombs of Night ( TT52 ) and Menna ( TT69 ) even suggests some Egyptologists that they were painted by the same artist or group of artists.

The paintings

Victim scene

Sacrificial scene from the burial chapel of Nebamun

The offering of food for the deceased grave owner ( dead offering ) is a key scene of the burial chapel, as it depicts its main task and is one of the oldest motifs in Egyptian burial art. The burial chapel was the place where the cult for Nebamun was celebrated at the time of burial and on various festivals.

Based on remaining traces and from similar scenes from other graves, it appears that the fragment was part of a larger scene in which the son performs a sacrificial ritual for his deceased father. The scene was on the one hand an ideal image of how to survive after death and on the other hand a representation of the actual sacrificial practices that were carried out in this place. In the middle of the scene are the offerings that were performed before the representation of Nebamun. Of the sacrificing son, however, only the hand in the middle left and of the cult recipient can be seen the legs in the lower right. D'Athanasi's focus was probably on the representation of the offerings, as indicated by a saw cut in the upper right corner where a first attempt was made to remove the scene from the wall before removing a larger piece.

Banquet scene

The banquet scene consists of three fragments from the British Museum and two small fragments from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. The banquet is one of the main scenes in the 18th dynasty grapevine chapels. It shows the gathering of friends and relatives of the tomb lord, who are entertained by dancers and musicians and served with food, wine and perfume, and who sit together with the tomb lord and his wife, who hold an honorary position. Some guests are indicated as already deceased, which indicates an idealized and timeless representation of celebrations. But it also shows the life that Nebamun enjoyed during his lifetime, and the circle of relatives and acquaintances, how he finds himself in his grave for funerals and other festivals.

• 

  Part of the banquet scene: musicians and dancers

• 

  Detail of the banquet scene, musicians with lutes and flutes

• 

  Fragment of the banquet scene

Visit of agricultural products

This scene contains three fragments arranged in two registers. They show Nebamun how he supervises animals that came from goods that he supervised or that belonged to him himself. These domesticated animals were used to prepare exquisite dishes, and the careful composition of the scene shows prosperity and liveliness. This scene shows not only the wealth and abundance that Nebamun expects in the hereafter, but also his professional activity, which brought him prosperity and prestige in this life.

• 

  Nebamun, who is sitting to look at the agricultural products

• 

  Presentation of geese

• 

  Presentation of cattle

Hunting in the papyrus thicket

Hunting in the papyrus thicket

This crowded and lively scene, which shows the late Nebamun hunting birds in the papyrus thicket, is iconographically one of the most important scenes and is considered a masterpiece in its composition. The athletic figure of Nebamun dominates the scene, standing in a boat with his legs apart and holding a snake-headed throwing stick in his right hand and three fluttering herons in his left hand . Behind him stands his wife Hatshepsut with lotus flowers , buds and perfume cones on her head. His daughter sits between Nebamun's legs, holding one of his legs with her right hand and picking lotus flowers with her left. As a sign of her youth, she is naked and only wears a collar with flowers and a gold pendant. Her hairstyle also indicates her youth: She wears a single, thick braid of hair that falls down along her face, the so-called youth curl .

The hunt in the papyrus thicket has been a motif that has been known since the Old Kingdom, and interpretations differ on the question of how truthfully or symbolically it should be understood. Bird hunting is a means of procuring food and a leisure activity for the upper class, but it certainly also had a strong symbolic content. The papyrus is considered mythical place of fertility and regeneration and as erotic frequent place with the goddess Hathor associated . The bird on the bow of the ship and the woman's jewelry, clothing and wig are also erotically charged elements. The hunting aspects of the picture, for their part, are a symbol of victory over the chaotic forces that threaten the divine world order. These allusions combined create the reading of the scene as an image of erotic regeneration, rebirth and eternal entertainment triumphing over chaos, disorder and death.

Garden of the West

Garden of the West

This scene shows a garden in the afterlife with a goddess who receives Nebamun in a paradise-like property. In the center of the garden is a pond , where it of tilapia teeming fish species and where two geese and two ducks swim with three chicks. Lotus flowers , buds and leaves emerge from the wavy lines . Around the pond is a border with papyrus and other plants, which in turn is lined on three sides by rows of trees and bushes made of sycamores , palms and mandrakes .

In the upper right corner emerges from the sycamores the small figure of a deity offering fruit. She is the maternal sky goddess Nut , a patron saint of rebirth. She originally stood opposite a standing or sitting representation of Nebamun, possibly together with his wife, who welcomed her to the garden as a sacred place of eternal joy and comfort.

Research and conservation work

Between 2000 and 2009 the British Museum carried out extensive research and conservation work on the paintings, the aim of which was, among other things, to determine their origin and to display them in a suitable context. During the conservation, the paintings were removed from the gypsum plaster , which was applied to the back in the 19th century. This provided the rare opportunity to conduct a scientific study of the painting's techniques and materials. This made it possible to identify the original materials (plaster, pigments and paint carriers) and materials that were added during previous conservation and restoration work.

literature

• Lise Manniche: Lost Tombs. A Study of Certain Eighteenth Dynasty Monuments in the Theban Necropolis (= Studies in Egyptology. ). KPI, London / New York 1988, ISBN 0-7103-0200-2 .
• Lise Manniche: City of the Dead. Thebes in Egypt. British Museum Publications, London 1987, ISBN 0-714-11288-7 .
• Andrew Middleton, Ken Uprichard (Eds.): The Nebamun Wall Paintings: Conservation, Scientific Analysis and Display at the British Museum. Archetype Publications, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-904982-14-2 .
• Richard Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. Masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art in the British Museum. British Museum Press, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-7141-1979-3 .
• Matthias Seidel, Abdel Ghaffar Shedid: The grave of the night. Art and history of an official grave of the 18th Dynasty in Thebes-West. von Zabern, Mainz 1991, ISBN 3-8053-1332-2 .

Web links

Commons : Burial Chapel of Nebamun  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Richard Parkinson: The painted tomb-chapel of Nebamun (PDF; 979 kB)
• British Museum, The conservation and redisplay of the Nebamun Wall paintings
• British Museum, Egyptian life and death: the tomb-chapel of Nebamun (Room 61)
• Telegraph article: The tomb-chapel of Nebamun at the British Museum, review
• Times article: New Egyptian gallery at the British Museum

Individual evidence

1. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 13 f.
2. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 10 ff.
3. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 8.
4. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 39 f.
5. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 41
6. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 64 ff.
7. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 71 ff.
8. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 92 ff.
9. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 122 ff.
10. ↑ M. Seidel, Abdel G. Shedid: The grave of the night. Art and history of an official grave of the 18th Dynasty in Thebes-West. Mainz 1991, pp. 17-18 and R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 131 f.
11. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 132
12. ^ R. Parkinson: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London 2008, p. 132 ff.
13. ^ The British Museum: The conservation and redisplay of the Nebamun Wall paintings . On. britishmuseum.org ; last accessed on August 21, 2015.