Lo que queda de la Tumba de Nebamun (1375 a.C.)en el Museo Britanico

Pues si no lo leo, ni me entero.Ya decia yo que esta sala era nueva...
En cuanto a los frescos, son preciosos, reales, tecnicamente parece
que se pintaron ayer tarde.Gracias Joanna.
En mi defensa dire que como
me van cambiando las cosas, pensaba que estaba cerrada y no la habia
visto. En fin:Despistes aparte, me habia compredo el libro y hecho fotos de
todo, lo que dice mucho en favor del Museo Britanico:Puedes hacer las fotos
que quieras, con flash, sin flash, cerca, lejos...que nadie te dice nada ni te molesta.
En el Louvre lo mismo. Pero creo que ultimamente se han puesto tontos en el Museo de
El Cairo.Que le vamos a hacer.Sera cuestion de no volver.

New Egyptian Gallery at the British Museum.
he Michael Cohen Gallery dedicated to the stunning Nebamun tomb paintings opens
.

© Trustees of the British Museum

Opens 21 January 2009

Room 61

Admission free

In early 2009 the British Museum will open a new Ancient Egyptian gallery

centred round the spectacular painted tomb-chapel of Nebamun.

The paintings are some of the most famous images of Egyptian art, and come from the now lost

tomb-chapel of Nebamun, an accountant in the Temple of Amun at Karnak who died

c. 1350 BC, a generation or so before Tutankhamun. They show him at work and at

leisure - surveying his estates and hunting in the marshes. An extensive

conservation project – the largest in the Museum’s history – has been undertaken

on the eleven large fragments which will go on public display for the first time

in nearly ten years.

The tomb-paintings were acquired by the Museum in the 1820s and were

constantly on display until the late 1990s. Since then, the fragile

wall-paintings have been meticulously conserved, securing them for at least the

next fifty years. The project has provided numerous new insights into the superb

technique of the painters called by one art-historian ‘antiquity’s equivalent to

Michelangelo’ - with their exuberant compositions, astonishing depictions of

animal life and unparalleled handling of textures. New research and scholarship

have enabled new joins to be made between the fragments, allowing a better

understanding of their original locations in the tomb.

They will now be re-displayed together for the first time in a setting designed to recreate their

original aesthetic impact and to evoke their original position in a small

intimate chapel. The gallery will include another fragment for the same

tomb-chapel on loan from the Egyptian Museum, Berlin. Drawing on the latest

research and fieldwork at Luxor, a computer ‘walk-through’ of the reconstructed

tomb-chapel will be available in gallery with an interactive version online.

Next to the paintings, 150 artefacts show how the tomb-chapel was built, how

it remained open for visitors, and also the nature of Egyptian society at the

time.

Most of the objects are contemporary with Nebamun and reflect those

depicted in his paintings.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/page/17/

Some, however, contrast with the idealised world-view

that is shown on elite monuments like the tomb-chapel and show that most

people’s experience of life was not necessarily all about leisure and prestige

as in the paintings. Spectacularly luxurious objects, such as a glass perfume

bottle in the shape of a fish, are juxtaposed with crude tools of basic

survival, such as a fishing net, to suggest that most of what we know of Ancient

Egypt is about the small wealthy elite.

The gallery is on the upper floor of the Museum next to the galleries of

Ancient Egyptian funerary archaeology (the ‘mummy rooms’) which are the most

popular galleries in the museum. This gallery will provide a new ‘must-see’

highlight for the Egyptian collections. The gallery is generously supported by

the R & S Cohen Foundation.

For further information or images please contact Hannah Boulton on 020 7323

8522 or [email protected]

For public information please telephone 020 7323 8000 / 8299

Notes to Editors:

· Publications on the tomb-paintings include a new book by Richard

· Parkinson, The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun (London and Cairo: British

· Museum Press and American University in Cairo Press 2008, £14.99), and a book

· for children by Meredith Hooper, The Tomb of Nebamun:

Explore an Ancient· Egyptian Tomb (London: British Museum Press 2008, £6.99). Also available is A.

· Middleton and K. Uprichard (eds.), The Nebamun Wall Paintings: Conservation,

· Scientific Analysis and Display at the British Museum (London, Archetype,

· 2008).

· The British Museum has teamed up with the Open University to offer a

· special course on the Nebamun tomb-paintings. The course uses graphic visual

· close-ups of the details of the paintings along with interviews with curator

· Richard Parkinson, podcasts and film clips to develop understanding of Ancient

· Egypt.

The course will be open for registrations, priced around £300, from

· October 2008 and a taster will be available on the OU and British Museum

· websites from July.

· New photographs of the conserved paintings are available in the collections database.

Facsimile of a scene depicting an estate (Tomb of Nebamun, ca. 1375 B.C.), ca. 1928
Charles K. Wilkinson, Graphic Section, Egyptian Expedition of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Tempera on paper; H. 39 in. (99 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1930 (30.4.57)

A Garden Pool Fragment of wall painting from the tomb of Nebamun
Thebes, Egypt
18th Dynasty, around 1350 BC

he Nebamun paintings are among the most famous images of Egyptian art, published in nearly every fancy illustrated book of ancient Egypt. These “jewels” of the British Museum have been part of the Egyptian collection since 1820. They depict different aspects of the idealized daily life of an 18th Dynasty noble, his family and friends in work and leisure activities concerning a man of his social status, such as surveying his estates, inspecting cattle and geese, enjoying banquets and hunting in the marshes. The Nebamun paintings are not merely a decoration of his tomb, but an account of his successful life and a recreation for his ka to enjoy for all eternity.

Replica by Ben Morales-Correa

Little is known about the man himself. His mummy has never been found. His tomb is now lost. By what may be surmised from the paintings, Nebamun (Amen is Lord) was a wealthy official, the “scribe who counts the grain in the granary of divine offerings”, an accountant from the Temple of Amen at Karnak, who lived under the reign of either Thutmose IV or Amenhotep III, at the peak of Egypt’s glory. One painting shows that Nebamun owned horses and chariots, quite a luxury fit only for royalty. But we must understand that ancient Egyptians did not consider actual facts as the only dimension of reality. Since life did not end at the moment of death, another possible explanation for the presence of these costly items in the tomb paintings is to represent property that the deceased wanted to own and enjoy in the afterlife. For all we know, Nebamun, whether filthy rich or not, might have been a nice fellow who befriended the best of painters and builders to create for him a small but truly beautiful house of eternity.

The Lost Tomb of Nebamun

Giovanni d’Athanasi found Nebamun’s tomb-chapel in the necropolis of the nobles on the west bank at Luxor in the autumn of 1820. The astonishingly beautiful and well preserved paintings were quickly removed and shipped to the British Museum, eleven painting fragments in total. The private journal of d’Athanasi disappeared soon after being written, and with it the actual location of the tomb, believed to be under the dwellings that presently populate the area.

Research at the British Museum and clearance and excavation work in Luxor might finally reveal the location of the lost tomb of Nebamun. At Luxor, villages are being bulldozed and their dwellers moved to new housing projects provided by the government with allegedly better living conditions, though there is resentment among the villagers. Once this area is clear and excavations begin, one of the tombs then unearthed might be that of Nebamun. At London, the mud plaster and fragments of the base rock of the Nebamun paintings are carefully studied to pinpoint the area where this exact type of soil exists in the excavation field. The composition of the pigments might also provide clues to the final identification of the lost tomb of Nebamun among possible sites.

NEBAMUN FOWLING IN THE MARSHES: A Masterpiece of Ancient Egyptian Design

Replica by Ben Morales-Correa

The artist develops a special theme dear to Nebamun as lord of his surroundings, a fowling scene in the marshes of his estate. The Osiris Nebamun is standing on a light boat and, in perfect balance, captured birds in one hand and throw-stick in the other, proceeds to enter into the thicket of papyrus where some birds have already noticed the intention of the intruder, while others tend to their nests on top of the flowers. Nebamun is not alone. Between his feet we see the small figure of his daughter, seated with one arm grabbing the strong leg of his father for protection, while picking lotus flowers. The child has no intention of being witness to the killing his father is about to commit and thus turns her head in the opposite direction where her mother, standing at the stern, seems passive but aware of the entire event. Her figure is poised as a second axis parallel to that of her husband, bringing perfect equilibrium to the composition. The fact that she is dressed as if to attend a formal banquet, while her husband is wearing a princely collar and fine kilt, betrays the fact that this scene is not an accurate representation of the sport, but a blissful recreation for the deceased, so he may be accompanied by his family as he wishes it to be forever in the afterlife.

What is truly remarkable about this masterpiece of the Egyptian style is the design, the proper arrangement of the elements in harmonious proportion where the interaction of positive and negative space reinterprets the arcane rules of hieratic representation and converts it into a living expression of shape, color, drawing and texture. Every element of the composition plays within the setting as a “perfect picture moment”. We can tell we are close to the end of the breeding season. A few birds are still sitting on the nests they have built on the papyrus reeds swayed by the winds, while others are flying about seeking food for their young. The cat is looking up to his master with a captured bird in its mouth, the large butterflies flutter wildly about the place, as the fish swim calmly unperturbed. The integration of the hieroglyphic characters with the composition is absolutely brilliant.

February 11, 2009

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The paintings from Nebamun’s tomb chapel are among the greatest and most famous of the British Museum’s treasures, yet much about them remains mysterious. The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun is concerned with the detective work undertaken to help us to understand and see them properly displayed in a new permanent gallery. Richard Parkinson discusses each painting fully, with reconstructions and translations of the hieroglyphic texts, a discussion of the other known fragments (now in Berlin and Avignon) and a reconstruction of the whole tomb chapel. Every fragment is fully illustrated in color, doing full justice to an artist who has been described as ‘antiquity’s equivalent of Michelangelo’.

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©2006-2008 All-About-Egypt / Ben Morales-Correa

Excavated from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun, now lost, the 11 paintings represent a pinnacle in Egyptian two-dimensional representation of fauna and flora. Created before the advent of more naturalistic art from the short-lived reign of the religiously revolutionary pharaoh Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (r. 1353-1336 B.C.), they’re joined by one additional fragment loaned to the prestigious London institution by Berlin’s Ägyptisches Museum.

Nebamun and His Tomb-chapel

Hieroglyphic inscriptions reveal that Nebamun (died ca. 1350 B.C.) was an accountant in the temple of the Theban god Amun at Karnak. His spectacularly painted tomb-chapel dates to a generation or so before the reign of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (r. 1332-1322 B.C.). The British Museum’s wall paintings depict the official both at work and at leisure, surveying his estates and hunting.

Hunting in the Marshes

On a small boat, the exuberant Nebamun is shown pursuing fowl in the Nile River’s fertile marshes, a place of rebirth in the ancient Egyptian cosmology. The official, his wife and young daughter are arranged in hieratic scale (according to social importance), Nebamun being the largest of the three figures. The water in the left-hand section of the composition overflows with blossoming lotus buds, delicate symbols of rejuvenation that recur throughout ancient Egyptian art and architecture.

Recent Conservation

Nebamun’s fragile tomb paintings, acquired by the British Museum in the 1820s, were on display through the 1990s. Almost a decade ago, an extensive conservation project, the largest undertaken in the British Museum’s history, required meticulous efforts by a cadre of scholars to secure the famous paintings’ fragments for at least another half-century.

In the 19th Century, the paintings were mounted in plaster and placed in glass-enclosed boxes. Water vapor and salt migration during the plaster’s setting destabilized the ancient works’ ground and their water-sensitive layer of paint.

During modern conservation, the artworks’ wooden cases were carefully dismantled. The plaster was painstakingly detached from each image’s original mud-straw backing. A foam resin was applied to each image. Once cured, the paintings became capable of display. As a result of this valiant undertaking, Egyptologists gained valuable insights into the ancient painters’ techniques, including their handling of textures. Experts were then able to reasonably reconstruct the fragments’ original order of presentation inside Nebamun’s tomb-chapel.

Reinstallation

Adjacent to the British Museum’s Nebamun paintings, 150 artifacts contribute to one’s understanding of the tomb-chapel’s construction and its original appearance. Examples of lustrous glassware from Nebamun’s era reflect objects depicted in the wall paintings on view. A nearby computer simulation recreates Nebamun’s funerary chapel and its setting.

An Egyptian Tomb
The Tomb of Nebamun

Meredith Hooper

Click to view a larger
image

The stories and secrets of the finest tomb paintings from ancient Egypt.

An Egyptian Tomb examines fragments of the remarkable wall paintings found in the tomb of Nebamun, a government official living in the Egyptian city of Thebes almost 3,500 years ago. Like the pharaohs, he wanted a beautiful tomb where his body would be kept safely after he died. Nebamun, whose job was to pay workers in grain, was neither important nor rich. Working for the government, however, he knew the right people and made the right connections. So he had a superb tomb built for his remains.

Meredith Hooper describes the many details of the construction of Nebamun’s tomb and its vivid, story-telling decorations. Photographs of the tomb’s walls and artifacts reveal the remarkable skill of Egyptian craftsmen. Hieroglyphics describe Nebamun “enjoying himself, looking at good things.” Other detailed illustrations reflect the hopes Nebamun had for his afterlife: enjoying a party with family and friends, hunting in the desert, and being with his daughter and his cat.

The Painted Tomb-Chapel of

 Nebamun

by Richard Parkinson

An Egyptian Tomb features photographs of the artifacts and tomb fragments that are held in the British Museum’s Egyptology collection, considered the world’s finest. Children will be fascinated by the stories and secrets held in the walls of this tomb, and will appreciate Nebamun’s wish for a happy afterlife.

Meredith Hooper is an award-winning historian and full-time writer of non-fiction and fiction. She is the author of many books for children on a wide variety of topics, including Who Built the Pyramids and Pebble in My Pocket.

Sources:

• Parkinson, Richard. The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. London and Cairo: British Museum Press and American University in Cairo Press, 2008.
• Russmann, Edna R., et al. Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum (exh. cat.). New York: American Federation of Arts, 2001, 28-32.
• Shaw, Ian (ed.), et al. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 260-271.