PowerPoint presentation: notes for teachers

Nebamun: ancient Egyptian tomb painting

Aims

 To provide students with visual encounters with the equipment and

techniques used to create ancient Egyptian tomb paintings.

 To provide teachers with an opportunity to build student familiarity in terms of

object identification and object vocabulary.

 To provide a visual starting point for cross-curricular work on ancient

Egyptian paintings.

Description

 A sequence of 13 slides

Teaching ideas

 If you are planning to visit the British Museum, use the images to familiarize
the students with some of the objects they will be seeing in the galleries.

 Introduce vocabulary associated with the objects such as materials (e.g.

carbon, red ochre, mineral, reed) and names of objects (e.g. brush, palette,
pigment).

 Try creating paint brushes from a range of materials. Ask pupils to consider
where they will hold the brush and how to create ‘bristles’. What results do
you achieve from each type of material?

 Where might you find examples of modern wall paintings (indoor and outdoor
murals)? What tools are used to create them (brushes, tins of paint, spray
paint)?

 Research the process of tomb painting in ancient Egypt – what happened

and in what order? Create a flow diagram or an instruction manual.

 Try out some of the painting techniques. For example ask the pupils to
choose an animal, draw an outline, paint in with a single colour (let this dry)
and then decide what colours and brush stokes to use to best represent the
animal’s coat (fur, feathers, scales etc).
 PowerPoint presentation: notes for teachers

Notes on the pictures

Painting surfaces

Two fragment of Nebamun’s tomb painting

Nebamun’s tomb was cut from crumbling limestone on the west bank of the
Nile at Thebes leaving a rough surface that had to be rendered and plastered
before painting. The first coat was a thick layer of mud render; a mixture of Nile
mud and plant material that helped bind the render together and prevent it
cracking. Among the added straw and reeds were flower heads, suggesting
that the work was carried out during the summer. Once the render had dried, it
was given a smooth top surface of white plaster made from local gypsum.

(left) This fragment shows where a layer of white plaster has been applied to
the underlying mud surface to create a smooth painting surface. The detail
comes from the banqueting scene.

(right) This fragment shows a procession of servants bringing offerings of food

(including sheaves of grain and desert animals) to Nebamun. The border at the
bottom shows that this scene was the lowest one on this wall. The rough edges
of the fragment show the background layer of thick mud render applied directly
to the tomb walls with the white plaster surface of painting on top of the render.
In the top right hand corner the thin layer of white plaster has cracked.

Fragment of wall painting showing woman

The ancient Egyptians applied a layer of white plaster to other stone surfaces
too. This fragment of sandstone shows a female figure from a wall painting. The
stone underneath is sandstone which can be smoothed to create a flat surface
over which the artist has applied a layer of white gypsum plaster before starting
to paint the main figure. The fragment dates from the New Kingdom period.

Painted high relief fragment of Kemsit

The ancient Egyptians also applied paint to carved wall pictures. Usually the
limestone background was left unpainted to create a white background and the
raised parts of the relief were coloured. Many limestone reliefs in museum
collections have lost their ancient colour over time.

This painted high relief fragment shows an ancient Egyptian woman called
Kesmit sitting on a wide chair holding a vase of perfume to her nose. In front of
her was a servant - only their hand remains, holding a small cup which is filling
with liquid being poured in with their other hand. The paint has come off in
some places - for example, on the eyebrow and cosmetic eye line, which were
certainly painted black. Kemsit's skin, necklace and bracelets are pink. The
pink may have been an undercoat and traces of a darker brown colour on her
skin may have been the actual colour of her skin when the relief was originally
painted.
 PowerPoint presentation: notes for teachers

Painting tools

Writing and painting tools

This collection of equipment shows the tools used to write and paint.
Hieroglyphs were written using black and red ink and these two colours can
often be seen on writing equipment such as a scribe’s palette and reed pens. A
greater range of colours was used for painting and the brushes for a large wall
painting would be larger and chunkier then those used for a small, delicate
picture on a papyrus scroll.

Top: (left to right)

A small container holding blue pigment.
Pigment grinder and stone (further information below).
A thick paint-brush made from plant fibres held together by twists of thin rope.
The brush end is stained with red pigment.

Second row down:

Paint-brush formed from sticks bound together and frayed at one end; stained
with red paint.

Third row down:

A wooden scribal palette with 12 oval and two circular ink hollows. There are
traces of black and red around some of the wells and in the pen slot. Thutmose
IV's name appears in a cartouche at the top of palette. Along the sides, are the
names and titles of an ancient Egyptian called Meryra together with funerary
prayers addressed to the god Amun and to Thoth, the god of writing and patron
of scribes.

Bottom:
A rectangular wooden scribal palette with a row of 9 oval ink wells and two
longer and narrower ink wells cut in one corner. These wells contain traces of
red, yellow and black pigments. Beneath the pen-slot, a horizontal inscription
states 'the outline draughtsman, Min-nakht, true of voice'. Beneath this, in thick
black ink strokes, three signs are roughly drawn: a falcon head wearing a sun-
disc and uraeus, and two examples of a disc and crescent.

Pigment blocks
In Nebamun’s tomb the artists used a standard colour palette - soot for black,
calcium sulphate for creamy white, ochres for red and yellow, and ‘frit’ – a
synthetic glassy material ground into powder - for blue and green. These
pigment blocks include 2 lumps of deep Egyptian blue and 1 lump of Egyptian
blue pigment (bottom left), white limestone, red ochre and yellow ochre.
 PowerPoint presentation: notes for teachers

Pigment blocks on grinder

The pigment blocks were ground into a fine powder and mixed with water or a
liquid gum to create the liquid paint. This pigment grinder is made from a
rectangular slab of basalt rock and has an oval depression on the top for
grinding pigment. The pigment block would be ground using the small hand-
held grinding stone rather like a modern pestle and mortar.

Three brushes
Painting brushes could be made from a variety of materials. Sometimes they
were bound onto a wooden handle and at other times the fibre itself was bound
to create a self handle. Some brushes have been found by archaeologists, left
behind in the tombs they were being used to paint.

(top) Fibre brush held together with bitumen at one end and bound with cord.

(middle) Paint-brush made from fine palm fibres bound with string fibres. The
palm fibres have been cut at one end to create a brushing tip. Traces of red
pigment are preserved on the brush end.

(bottom) Paint-brush formed from sticks bound together and frayed at one end;
stained with red paint.

Painting preparations

Limestone ostracon
An ostracon is a small fragment of limestone (or pottery) which was used in
ancient Egypt for making quick notes or sketches. An artist might sketch out
part of a painting before drawing it on to the wall. This is a limestone ostracon
with an ink drawing on one side. The drawing shows a goose on her nest, with
four eggs shown beneath the bird. In the upper left corner are two very faint
drawings of goslings in red. Red was often used to draw the initial outline of an
object and the main goose was possibly painted black over a red draft. This
ostracon dates to the New Kingdom period.

Wall painting with grid marked

To help lay out the painting with the correct proportions the surface to be
painted would first be marked out with a grid of squares. The grid lines were
made with string covered in red pigment which were stretched across the wall
and then ‘pinged’ to leave a red line. On the finished painting this grid would not
show but on this unfinished fragment the red grid can still be seen. This
fragment shows a man seated with hieroglyphs above. It dates from the New
Kingdom period and comes from the tomb of an unknown ancient Egyptian.
 PowerPoint presentation: notes for teachers

Nebamun seated holding a staff

Using the red grid to keep the figures and objects in proportion and correctly
aligned, the artist would mark out the initial sketch for the painting using red
paint. This red outline would then be painted over and filled in to create the final
painting. Sometimes the artists would change their mind when they came to do
the final painting and on this fragment the original red sketch of the staff can be
seen to the left of where the artist decided to paint the staff in the final painting.

Painting techniques

Cattle scene
This scene shows Nebamun inspecting herds of cattle. The hieroglyphs
describe the scene and record what is being said. The herdsman is telling the
farmer in front of him in the queue: 'Come on! Get away! Don’t speak in the
presence of the praised one! He detests people talking …. Pass on in quiet and
in order … He knows all affairs, does the scribe and counter of grain of [Amun],
Neb[amun]’.The alternating colours and patterns of cattle create a sense of
animal movement. The artists have left out some of the cattle’s legs to preserve
the clarity of the design. The scene is divided into two registers (lines of
painting) which allows the artist to show a long procession of cattle and
herdsmen in a small space. In addition, lines have been used to organize the
hieroglyphs which are arranged (and red) in vertical columns in the top register
and horizontal rows in the bottom register.

Nebamun and family

This scene shows Neamun, his wife Hatshepsut and their small daughter. The
artist has used depth of colour to highlight the most important figure –
Nebamun – since the tone of his skin is brighter than for the other two figures.
This is because when the artist painted the skin of Hateshepsut and the
daughter, they mixed red and white together and painted a flat single layer, but
when they painted Nebamun, they applied a layer of white first and then added
the red separately on top.

Details from hunting in the marshes scene

(left) Detail of Hatshepsut showing how the artist has used lines painted onto a
background colour to create detail such as the beads on the collar necklace,
uses outline to create the shape of the lips and paints a lock of hair over the
earring to create a sense of depth.
(right) Detail of bird showing how the artist has applied dots and lines painted
on the under paint to built up details such as the bird’s plumage.
 PowerPoint presentation: notes for teachers

Background information

Web resources
Interactive learning site for Ancient Egypt at www.ancientegypt.co.uk
Further Egyptian objects at www.britishmuseum.org/explore/introduction.aspx

Books for adults

Parkinson, Richard. The painted tomb chapel of Nebamun, British Museum
Press, 2008

Books for children

Hooper, Meredith. The Tomb of Nebamun, British Museum Press, 2008
Thorne, Claire. Draw like an Egyptian. British Museum Press, 2007