This settles it - dondelion and I are going to London in 2010 and I'll spend the entire time inside the British Museum. (One of the scenes from Nebamun's tomb - with the tabby cat mentioned in the article "floating" in mid-air above the boat!)
Rachel Campbell-Johnston
Who says accountants are boring? Some of the ancient world's most entrancing paintings celebrate the life of a man who kept tallies for a living. And this month, freshly restored, they at last go on show again for the first time in almost ten years, when the British Museum opens a new gallery.
This will be dedicated to the display of 11 large wall fragments from the tomb chapel of a relatively low-ranking Egyptian official named Nebamun, a grain accountant who, almost three and a half millennia ago, served the great deity Amun, then the official god of the state. A golden age of Egyptian painting unfurls. These preserved images are among the most famous, most fascinating and most artistically fresh of their day.
When we think of the Ancient Egyptians, we tend to think of the rituals of death. Certainly, the hordes of schoolchildren who daily head for the British Museum's Egyptian galleries come to gaze at the eerie solemnity of the elaborate mummy cases; to thrill at the corpses in their horror-movie bandages; to squirm at the stories of brain-extracting hooks. The mummies are to this great historical collection what the dinosaurs are to the Natural History Museum. They are a guaranteed crowd puller - and all the more popular for their gruesome whiff of the grave.
But if you imagine that the visitors who can now wander on from the mummies into the museum's newest gallery will find only more of the same, think again. The paintings might have come from a tomb; but they have far more to do with life than death.
Here, in what surely counts among the British Museum's most celebrated treasures, is a virile young Nebamun hunting in the Nile marshes, navigating his slender barque among feathery reeds that teem with birds of all species and fluttering butterflies. His fat tabby cat clearly can't believe its luck: as it seizes one flapping waterfowl in its whiskery jaws, it pins down the two songbirds that have already fallen prey to it with greedy claws. Or here, in three wonderfully preserved fragments, is Nebuman in his role as master of great estates, counting the flocks and the herds that slaves bring for his inspection, the ranks of driven cattle and the thick flocks of jostling geese. And here too, in one of the most seductive images the era, is a luxurious banqueting scene, its richly attired guests entertained by a group of female musicians while sinuous dancing girls, naked but for their jewellery and a girdle so slender that it cannot even cover their pubic growth, entwine with the serpentine grace of a pair of cobras.
These still richly coloured pictures, now displayed all together for the first time, are reunited also with a lively quail-hunting scene on long-term loan from Berlin (there are other fragments in France that for the sake of scholarship should also be lent). And what will strike the first-time viewer most about them is how wonderfully vivid, how exuberantly lifelike they are.
You don't need to have the hieroglyphs translated or to be familiar with the complex mythologies or iconographical conventions of the era to relate to these images on a sensual and emotional level. Look at the charioteer who sits on the back of his vehicle while his horses, still in harness, drop their heads to feed. You can almost imagine his legs swinging idly as he waits. Or notice the way that one of the driven cattle panics and tries to barge its way backwards against the flow, or how delicately a worker folds a fragile gazelle in his encircling arms. You can almost hear the kerfuffle and squabble of the chivvied geese, feel the cold pimpled skin of a freshly plucked fowl, run your fingers through the fur of the cat or smell the pungent ointments of the wealthy banqueters.
Very little is known about these works. No one knows precisely where they came from. The Greek grave robber who sawed them from the walls of a tomb chapel sold them to a British collector, who in turn passed them for what he considered “a miserable sum” to the British Museum in 1821, and fell out with curators to whom his erstwhile treasures were valuable prizes. He died penniless a few minutes' walk from the British Museum, taking the secret of where the paintings had come from to his pauper's grave. No one knows exactly when Nebamun lived or much about his personal life beyond the fact that he was married and had two children, who appear in the paintings, and that he worked as a scribe and accountant for the god from whom his name - meaning “my lord is Amun” - comes. Nor does anyone know who the creator of these magnificent works was, nor why someone so talented should have ended up working for some middle manager. It has been suggested that he may have been moonlighting from a job on a far grander burial site near by.
But what is unquestioned is the calibre of this artist. Curators have nicknamed him the Egyptian Michelangelo. And it is worth investing in a copy of the clearly written and fully illustrated book that accompanies this new gallery to find out why.
Though the delightful narratives and ebullient realism are what will first catch the eye of the spectator, there is much that will not be immediately obvious, from the rigorous conventions that dictate the overall design (compositions are divided into four bands or registers) through the meanings conveyed by even the simplest gestures (a hand held up in front of a mouth means that the character is speaking) to the translations of the hieroglyphs - “shut up and get on with it” seems a more or less colloquial translation of one caption. These scenes would once have been read by Egyptians like cartoon strips.
What becomes increasingly apparent is how skilfully the artist reconciled traditional iconography with his own artistic freedom. Here is someone capable of presenting the most complex narratives. We see him mapping out his designs with underdrawings on plaster and then painting them swiftly - occasionally making changes - with mineral pigments. In a world in which anything from your tummy fat to your toenails has its own precise meaning, he attends to every detail. He renders every living organism from the pied wagtail to the pond weed so that it can be precisely identified. It was important, for instance, that his ancient viewers could tell that that fish was a tilapia, because these creatures were commonly associated with rebirth (because they supposedly harbour their young in their mouth). He carefully renders the patterns and textures that make all these things feel real: the mottled hides of the cattle, the pricked crusts of bread, the fluff of bird's feathers, the plaiting of baskets. The eye of the cat, it has been newly discovered, was overlaid with gilt.
And yet even as he attends to such scrupulous detail he improvises, trying out a radical and very rare full-frontal pose complete with foreshortening, tangling the dancers' fingers with expressive sweeps of the brush, sending the musicians' tumbling plaits shaking to their lively rhythms. Improvisations such as this bring the Ancient Egyptians back to life.
In the Natural History Museum they have spent thousands of pounds on an animatronic T Rex that tries to do the same thing for their dinosaurs. It amounts to little more than a fairground entertainment. The British Museum, instead, has invested in a highly sophisticated restoration that, lasting almost a decade, is probably the biggest project of its type yet undertaken. It must be commended for this decision. These wall paintings, spaciously displayed among cabinets of artefacts from the same period, bring Ancient Egypt to life far more fascinatingly than any animatronic mummy ever could.
Even poor Nebamun should be pleased about the project. The reason he would have wanted his tomb painted so vividly would have been to attract visitors who, hearing of the marvels on display, would have been tempted to pop in after visiting their own ancestral burial sites. By remembering his name they would ensure his safe afterlife. But when the god Amun was deposed in ancient Egypt, his name was erased from wherever it was written. Nebamun was nearly forgotten.
Now he has a new chapel - far more visited than he could ever have hoped. Remember to say his name aloud. It was the actual pronunciation that mattered. And besides, Nebamun was an accountant: he will certainly be adding up all those mentions.
The new Egyptian gallery opens at the British Museum, WC1 ( 020-7323 8299), on Jan 21
Right now, there is more than adequate space on either side of the bed and plenty of room to pass at the foot of the bed directly to the closet and to the other side of the bed and window, because the dresser in on the hallway wall parallel to the bed (this wall has the entry door and is opposite the window and closet wall). The wall that is currently opposite the headboard, most importantly, is totally bare and that is where I had planned on putting my beautiful (and large) New York posters. (Photo: inside wall, New York - guest - room. That lamp on the dresser is the second buffet lamp, I put it together earlier today. You see my favorite still life print now above this headboard, and on the wall next to the mirror is one of dondelion's photographs of the "optical illusion" floor at the Venetian in Las Vegas).
However, by rearranging the guest room to mirror my room arrangement would free up space for a comfy wing chair in the corner - I love having a chair in my bedroom and I know that wing chair was used for reading and watching t.v. when it was the guest room! On the other hand, the nice bare wall perfect for hanging the posters would disappear, consumed by the triple dresser and tall mirror. I suppose I could put one poster on the closet side of the dresser, andput the other poster on the wall above the table next to the wing chair...
Guess I'll just have to try it and see if it works. So, it seems more shoving, pushing and heaving of furniture is on the agenda for tonight. Ay yi yi. (Photo: outside wall, New York - guest room. The framed photographs in the space between the window and the closet will have a companion joining them and will be repositioned as needed to evenly fill out the space. One of the black and white striped curtains I had tried out in my room looks much better here. One of my water colors anchors the space next to the headboard; its frame matches the frame on the clock/photo on the table behind the lamp. It holds a picture of Michelle taken in Las Vegas during dondelion's and my November, 2003 visit. In front of the lamp, not really visible, are two couple of inch tall silver-tone plastic models of New York skyscrapers that dondelion found in a dollar store in Montreal.
On the plus side, my room is approaching the perfect degree of doneness. Today I put up the new print I ordered (turns out I only ordered one, not a pair as I thought I had, but that worked out just fine because the one new print is LARGE and fills the space above the headboard quite nicely - two would have been too big for the space); the frame is lovely and the bird motif ties in quite nicely with two framed Christmas cards from years ago - bird motifs in matching cheapo plastic frames! They hold down the narrow area of wall between the closet door and the window on the wall opposite the entry. Hey - those for free bird prints work for me, I don't care if they're Christmas cards. They're pretty! One of the birds is a blue bird and is, therefore, that unexpected dash of oddness and/or color that turns the room human - it's my room, not a layout in a decorating magazine. Also, I think the freshly hung print above the headboard is just a wee bit off of center. Oh well. I'll be damned if I'm going to get back up on the mattress and bounce around trying to find perfect center, drive a new picture hanger and plug up the old nail hole with spackle! It can be an inch off center.
Still lots to do: I want area rugs on the floors of both rooms, that will entail much shopping online to find the best price for the best rug. I want to switch-out the single rod curtain rods in my room for double rods and try out the red/black/white floral print valances over the toile curtains (entails yet more ironing) to see if they "work" in the room or are just too overwhelming for the small space, and move the white bedskirt from the New York (guest) room to my room, layered over my new 18 inch drop black bedskirt. I'll replace the guest room bedskirt with the cream and black stripe tailored bedskirt that came in the "bed in a bag" set with the paisley comforter and pillow shams, but I have to iron it first.
It's going to be a busy weekend. On the plus side, when I'm finally finished I'll have two bedrooms that I absolutely love (about time, I've been in this house nearly 20 years) and I'll have had a great work-out! I am just a couple of pounds off my 2003 Las Vegas weight. I want to be down to my 2002 Madrid weight when we go to New York in May and I'm actually aiming for an even higher weight loss. I've resumed my nightly "dances" around the larger space in my former bedroom to my favorite Youtube videos (Sway; Smooth; old and new versions of Lady Marmalade, including the Mad T.V. take-off of same; the We Will Rock You Pepsi commercial featuring Pink who absolutely, totally ROCKS, Beyonce who sure can shake her booty, and a pre-Las Vegas marriage Britney Spears who almost actually sang; Keep Your Hands to Yourself; Wild Wild West, etc. Better than running three miles in below-zero temperatures...
