Egyptian: Nebamun Hunting in the Marshes

Nebamun Hunting in the Marshes

What caught my eye in this Egyptian tomb painting was the variety and vividness of the colors. It's well-preserved and is quite aesthetically pleasing. I particularly liked the vibrance of the light blue of the rushes, some of the wings, and in the water. I also liked how it has hieroglyphs on the corner. That particular aspect of this portion of the tomb painting makes me think of books and stories with illustrations--just as illustrations "bring to life" the story and its characters, tomb paintings seem to bring the deceased to life, or to the afterlife. The plaque next to the work states that the hieroglyphs describe Nebamun "'enjoying himself and seeing beauty' in the afterlife."

This is one of several fragments of a tomb painting now stored in the British Museum. The tomb is one for Nebamun, a scribe who was over the grain collection in Thebes around 1325 BC (see www.britishmuseum.org). It's remarkable that such beautiful tomb paintings celebrate the life, not of a pharaoh, but of a clerk, as pointed out in this article published just before this piece and its ten companion wall paintings were revealed in the British Museum in 2009. The position of the tomb where the paintings were found is not known. The man who first found it and collected the paintings did not reveal where the tomb lay before his death.

In this other post on Egyptian art, I describe some of the characteristics of Egyptian art, including art as symbolic and as something that embodies life, and that higher classes were depicted significantly larger with formal poses. In this particular wall painting both of those characteristics are exemplified. For example, this painting embodies Nebamun and is symbolic of his life in the afterlife. Also, he is depicted towering over everything around him because he is from a superior class.
Another Egyptian characteristic evident in this work is the mixed use of perspectives in their paintings. Again, symbolism is more important than realism. Thus, Nebamun's eye is on the side of his head staring straight out at us, though his head is turned. And though he is moving forward, his body and shoulders are also turned towards us. This mixture of perception is usual in Egyptian depictions of people in wall paintings.