“I think Nebamun had all his paintings done for his tomb-chapel walls in three months,” says Parkinson. “Yet the draftsmanship was quite wonderful ... I have now spent a quarter of my life studying their handiwork.”
WINDOW INTO THE PAST
The panels’ importance to modern eyes is clear. They tell us a great deal about ancient Egypt and its everyday activities, and about differences and similarities between life then and now. “The straw crates in which geese are sold at market — you see these on just about every street corner in Cairo,” says Parkinson. “And the women’s jet-black hair and skin color are just the same as we see in Egypt today.”
However, Parkinson warns about drawing too many parallels between modern life and the scenes depicted in the panels. Objects and animals are often included because they had great symbolic importance. That great hunt scene is more than a depiction of everyday life: the birds and cat are symbols of fertility and female sexuality, and Nebamun’s expedition can also be seen as “taking possession of the cycle of creations and rebirth,” as one scholar has put it. Certainly, visitors should take care when trying to interpret the panels’ meaning.
Nevertheless, the paintings repay detailed inspection. On several of them, you can see where D’Athanasi’s grave robbers had started to crowbar a panel from a wall only to find it cracking, ready to split. They would then move on to splinter open the panel at a new spot. “Only 20 percent of the panels survived these attacks,” adds Parkinson. “Only sections that would appeal to British audiences were taken: the ones with naked dancing girls and scenes from gardens. Perfect for our taste, in short.”
One or two other fragments did end up in other museums, including several that are now kept in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Evidence also suggests that a handful of fragments may survive elsewhere. For example, records from the Cairo Museum show that, just after the World War II, a few sections from the tomb were about to be exported from Egypt, a move that was opposed by its government — so officials had the panel pieces photographed and stored in the great vaults below the Cairo Museum. And that is where they rest today, though their precise location has been lost. All that is known is that among the tens of thousands of other ancient treasures kept in the museum’s store, the missing Nebamun panels are today gathering dust in a dark, lost corner. It is a strange fate and it invites — irresistibly — a comparison with the fictional resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, dumped in a mammoth warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In other words, a fantastic end for some fantastic art.
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