Nakht TT 52 ; Egyptian Tomb

The funerary chapel and tomb bears the number TT 52.

THE OWNER


Stelophore statue of Nakht Re-colouring: Jon Hirst

Setting aside the inscriptions of his chapel/tomb and the beautiful (40 cm. tall) stelephorous statuette which was found there (and which disappeared in 1915 at the time of its journey to America, the boat which transported it having been torpedoed), there is no other known document of this character named Nakht, carried only the titles "scribe" and "priest of the hours at the temple of Amon". The title of scribe is the basic one for all persons who, having frequented school, knew how to read and to write. As for the one of "priest of the hours", it indicates that he had to watch with punctuality the steady progress of the various rituals of the temple, in close relation with the passing of the hours and the progress of the passage of the sun, but we are unaware in what capacity this function implied real astronomical knowledge. Strangely besides, no figurative reference is made, in his chapel, to this official function. His sole secular activity, as can be seen, consists of "inspecting its fields".
This rather modest title and the narrowness of the chapel evokes, on the whole, a middle situation within the Theban society. It remains, however, that this man knew to acquire the concourse of a workshop of high-quality artists, who applied to the decoration of his home of eternity a tried technique, of pictorial talent, of iconographic creativity and even humour...

THE TOMB (Chapel and Burial Chamber)

• The structure of the complex corresponds to the most current type of Theban chapel of the 18th Dynasty: firstly a courtyard, open to the valley, then, in the excavated part, a transverse room of approximately 5 x 1.5 m., followed by a longitudinal room of approximately 2.5 x 2.2m. (only just longer than wide), thus forming the shape of an inverted "T".

• As with many Theban tombs, the one of Nakht is unfinished. Not only did the longitudinal room not receive even the beginning of decoration (although it it was plastered in readiness), but many incomplete traces can even be seen in the transverse room, particularly on the north wall and the north section of the east wall.

• A shaft descends from the floor of the longitudinal room to the undecorated subterranean burial chamber, investigated by Davis. The stelephorous statue was found in this shaft.

view LSB01

• The monument is in an exceptional state of conservation, notably because its size, which didn't allow it to be occupied... Nevertheless, it has suffered since its discovery because of a very important flux of visitors and an early attempt at restoration/preservation. Nothing much remains in place of the original courtyard walls and facade.

• Regarding the dating, the hammering-out of the name and the geese of Amon at the prow of the boats, in the scene of hunting and fishing, provides a initial certainty: the work must be previous to the birth of the Amarnian fanaticism, when Amenophis IV changed to Akhenaton, towards year 4 or 5 of his reign. For the rest, by the lack of objective indication, its situation within the painting of the XVIIIth Theban dynasty can be established only on the basis of stylistic criteria, whereas, due to a lack of sufficiently deep comparative studies, these criteria remain fragile to use.

• One thing is clear however, the beginning and middle of the Dynasty, towards the end of the reign of Amenophis II, are to exclude because things were too severe: these were glorious times, stimulated by the tension of conquest. With the reign of Thutmosis IV one sees the appearance of a new social model, of lively art aggravated by peace and prosperity.
With this change, the painting offers to us the reflection, especially through the imagery of the female. This is no longer the noble and austere woman of previous times, but a young sensual, highly sophisticated woman, to the large eyes of a gazelle, who doesn't hesitate to move the plaits of her hair and to reveal the shape of her body, through translucent dresses, impregnated with perfume.
This innovative spirit continued throughout the administration of Amenophis III. It is without doubt in this chronological fork between Thutmosis IV and Amenophis III that it is agreed to situate the chapel of Nakht, but to propose more precision would today be imprudent, because if the style of Nakht can appear to work, at least for some panels, a little towards that of "the older" style, for example, that of Menna (TT 69) or of Horemheb (TT 78), nothing makes it possible to deduce a decisive chronological argument from it.

• To describe the walls of the transverse room, we will use the symbolic orientation system used by the Egyptians (entry to the east, bottom of the longitudinal room to the west, etc.), because it is that which gives more sense to the iconographic scheme and which functioned clearly in the mind of the composers of images. Because it was that structure on which the ordered universe was founded, on two axes, that of south-north, for the life-giving water and that of east-west, for the progress of the sun.

East wall of the transverse room : on both sides of the door, the offering on the day


view 4		view TB10	JJH-01

From the point of view of direction, one can consider the two paintings situated on both sides of the door, of the east wall of the transverse room, as consisting of only one semantic unit.
Organised in near mirror symmetry on both sides of the axis of the chapel (view 4 left and view TB10 right, when looking out), which is to say the solar axis of the world, they first show, closest to the doorway, a magnificent pile of provisions in three different superimposed groups separated by mats. At the top, the most subtle element, most aerial one, perfume, contained in four great vases. Beneath, the foods of festival, fruits, vegetables, ducks, meats, uncooked. At the bottom, on the table to the left of the entrance, a slaughtered ox and cut pieces, on the one to the right, there are butchers in action (view 6).

On both sides of this double offering, Nakht, standing, imbues it with a fragrant product, grease or resin; the substance is not liquid but soft, as its undulating outline indicates.
Behind him, Tawy, his wife, qualified as "Chantress of Amon", pressing against her beast she holds a menat necklace (with counterweight) and held in the other hand is a sistrum, two emblems of Hathor, the Beautiful Goddess, signs of joy, life and rebirth (view 8).

This solemn offering scene is an almost constant in the iconography of the Theban tombs of the 18th Dynasty. It is sometimes replaced by a structurally similar imagery, even placed on the uprights of the passage of the door.
Jan Assmann (Sonnenhymnen) showed that this essential ritual act (by its dimensions as by its situation), but whose recipient is apparently absent, applies to the gods of solar light, who penetrate to streams when the door is open. Thus one of the three metaphysical, complementary and non contradictory axes is expressed, according to which is organised the survival of the deceased, the sun, Hathor and Osiris. The contact of the deceased with the light of the sun also corresponds to the deep sense of the main teaching of the funeral books of the time, the one referred to as the "Book of the Dead", but whose Egyptian title was "Book of Going Forth by Day".

Centred on the passage towards the light, the scene is, as seen, fundamentally symmetrical. But the Egyptian composers never plied their art with mechanical repetition, item for item, of the same elements. Their symmetry was always, and voluntarily, imperfect, at variously perceptible levels.
Thus, the variation is very visible with the register of the butcher shop: on the right, butchers in action occupied with cutting the sacrificed black cow, on the left, a red cow already partially cut up, without the represented action.
With a little attention, one sees quickly that, under the fundamental thematic unit, the drift of numerous variations in the pile of victuals from side to side of the door. But more attention is required to see subtle nuances in the wife's adornment: breast and naked arm on the right, veiled breast and translucent shawl on the left, and different necklaces (view 5bis and view 8bis).

From an artistic view point of the "ancient ones", the contours are always surrounded with precision and the range of colour appears united and contrasted well, in flagrant contrast to the manner more "impressionist" of other contemporary works, as that of Horemheb TT 78 for example.

The east wall of the transverse room, northern half : complementary to the offering on the day

Of the north side, three lines of porters, in superimposed registers, participate in the solar offering, laden with heavy bunches of grapes, with freshly captured birds, leading a calf, a gazelle (view 6). Here the composer varies the rhythms, the gestures, the attitudes, again dealing thus with any danger of monotony.
The abundance of grapes can be surprising, borne in clusters or in baskets: could this be an allusion to Osiris, the dismembered god who reappears sublimated as the crushed grape and reappearing out of wine? But one should also remember that Hathor, of whom the wife of Nakht carries the emblems, is also she "Lady of drunkenness". But then again, Nakht might just have liked grapes ...
This wall doesn't include a lower register, which should have been situated under the scene of offerings and the three registers of porters.

The east wall of the transverse room, southern half : the inspection of the works of the fields

view TB8

Behind and under the offering couple (because here, for some unknown reason, the wall is decorated with a supplementary bottom register) is a tableau distributed in 4 registers. As part of the upper two registers, Nakht is show without his wife (view TB8), provided with his staff of office, "sitting in a kiosk (in fact a shelter of papyrus), looking at his fields, ...", as the inscription explains, without enthusiasm.
This image of Nakht is repeated below, in the bottom register, but without the text.
The scenes on which he gazes (twice) is to be read from bottom to top.

The bottom register

click to see whole south section of wall

JJH-02

This spreads the whole width of the wall showing an alternating landscape of the hills, a pond, with trees and bushes, sowers and ploughmen (view 10).
It represents the end of the season of flooding (akhet), when the rise in water level of the flood retire, leaving vast pools, and it is necessary to return the land into a state to be cultivated. Reclamation and clearing of the undergrowth is required (view 13 and view 14). Turned in to a chaotic swamp during the rise in water level, the land of Egypt recovers its order and its geometry; is this the idea of the difference between the undulating line of the soil above and horizontal line of the soil beneath?
Two antithetic ox pairs drag each a plough (view 15 and view 16). A bit of fun, again, on the dissymmetry of light: on the left a red ox superimposes itself to a white ox speckled with black, on the right the colours reverse themselves; on the left a ploughman is constructed as the hieroglyph of the standing man, on the right a colleague with a half bald head bends under the effort (and under the downward part of the line of the upper sub-register).
Two other groups signifying seed time also differentiate themselves: on top, two peasants loosen the land with the hoe, followed by a sower (view 17), below, after the sower's passage, two other (or the same) drive the grain in soil by means of a mallet with a long handle (view 18).
Finally, a small piece of humour again, the master sitting at the right extremity of the register (view TB9 ) is balanced by, on the other side of the register, the image of a fellah drinking from a goatskin suspended in a tree (view 19) with the same (but fewer) supplies below him.

The upper registers

JJH-03

These three registers represent the summer season (shemu), at the time of harvest (view 20).

• On the left, two charming girls, in long white dresses, slightly ruffled braids but impeccable makeup, pull flax, at least the second one does, because the first, who is not bent, holds in her hand a strip of material, undoubtedly making allusion to the textile use of the plant, as linen (view 21).
• On the right, three men reap wheat using sickles (view 22). Their silhouettes against shades of ochre, detach them from the golden wheat base. Again, the asymmetry with the pulling of the flax: three men for two women, but also opposition of the colours, solar yellow of the wheat and Nile green of the flax.
• In the middle, an abrupt animation breaks the balance of this false antithetism: bent behind the harvesters, a poor with the naked torso gleans the forgotten ears which she presses in to a small basket. Mainly, the focal point of the composition of the register, two men try to close an abundantly filled hod of ears, an obvious sign of prosperity (view 23). Here the artist composer has fun again, playing with the representations of the tools of which he arranges: the man of left being half bald, therefore more anecdotal, is presented in static position while the one of right rises with the leap of a dancer, associating paradoxically paunch and classic hairstyle.
• The two upper registers are successively (bottom to top) the measurement of the grain (view 24) then the winnowing (view TB7). This is therefore an inversion of the logic of the work stages. But perhaps the interpretation is that the scene of winnowing projects on the whole sequence a ritual dimension : for, above the winnowers, in the centre, floats a goblet with a stand and above this a sort of ectoplasm in a crescent shape, which from other similar scenes of more precise drawing show as being the image of a sheaf (TT38 Djeserkaraseneb, TT57 Khaemhat, TT143 anonymous). The combination of goblet and sheaf doubtless evokes an offering to the goddess of the harvests, Renenutet.
• To the right, taking up the full height of these two uppermost registers, Nakht is seated under a light shelter supervising the different operations (view TB8).

South wall of the transverse room : the false-door stela

JJH-04

The small south side of the transverse room presents, as often on this wall, the image of an architectural object, a false-door stela with a coving above the entrance, painted in pink, spotted with white and red, to imitate, rather cleverly, the granite of Aswan (view 26).
The false-door, a narrow passage between this world and the beyond, is a strong symbol which goes back as far as the Old Kingdom, and which, in the mastabas and hypogeums of that time, represented the door to the west, situated therefore invariably at the west end of the chapel.
During the 18th Dynasty, prevailed the idea to represent the deceased, with possibly members of his family, emerging in the form of a statue of the domain of the dead. The false-door stela moved then toward one the extremities (generally the southern) of the transverse room.
Nakht became a blessed being, an Osiris who took his place in the barque of Re. Thus, he is associated with to the great cosmic cycles which assure the perpetuity of the world, its eternal recommencement.

On both sides of the stela, three registers indicate, in a very sober abridgement, the essential nature of the offering to the deceased: at top left the food of strength, bread, onions and grapes; at top right, beer, which was the principal component of daily food for the Egyptian; at the centre, water (on the left, either in direction of the Nile) and wine (on the right, either toward the Osirian domain); to the centre, water (on the left, which is to say, in direction of the Nile) and wine (on the right, which is to say, toward the domain of Osiris); finally below, one finds ointments and make-up on the left, and clothing on the right, symbolised by the hieroglyph of the strips of linen. Note that these different elements are precisely those which the king is supposed to offer the gods of every temple, in the whole of Egypt, at the time of the great morning ritual which celebrates the daily rebirth of the sun

On the upper band of the stela, the inscription mentions symmetrically Ra-Horakhty (evidently toward the East) and Osiris (toward the west). Under the actual stela, spreads, according to an equally antithetic structure, one of the most beautiful pieces of painting of the whole chapel (view 27 and view 28).
Much severely paradigmatic enumeration here, but a profusion, a superabundant accumulation of victuals, a cramming whose goal is less to mean the stages of the ritual, than to express the abundant thanks through which the deceased will not lack for anything, with moreover, in design, the manifestation of his social success.
The generous nature of these gifts for the man are besides embodied in an allegory, the one of a tree goddess bearing on her head her attribute, a sycamore with its trunk and branches strangely white, loaded with large red-brown figs (view 32). Standing on both sides of this "still life", she contributes to this superabundance by bringing a tray of breads and beer, from where hangs a twining stem of a grapevine loaded of heavy clusters. In her other hand, a bouquet of papyri, in full bloom, could be a reference to the goddess Hathor, but no inscription specifies her identity. Being a goddess, she wears the narrow and opaque dress, supported by straps, which the beauties of the time had given up wearing for a generation. At both extremities of the register, a porter follows the goddess, charged with a pedestal table from where hang - new items - including plaits of pomegranates.

North wall of the transverse room : offering to the deceased, incomplete

JJH-05

The north wall, which is to say the small north side of the transverse room, is extensively incomplete and this panel was surely painted lastly, shortly before the abandonment of the decor of the chapel (view 30).
Two images of deceased couples, Nakht and his wife at the top (view TB3), an unnamed couple below, with their backs to the west. They each receive homage from two rows of porters (view 48). Although unnamed, the lower couple are without much doubt Nakht and his wife, just as is the case with the two named pairs on the registers of the rear (west) wall, next to the door to the inner chamber.
A character, priest or son acting as funeral priest, dedicated the offerings of the lower register; he has been abusively hammered for a mysterious reason, but certainly in antiquity.

Turning toward the west, the two great surfaces of the west wall present themselves, on both sides of the door which lead to the back of the tomb, to the funeral well and to the niche for a statue.

West wall of the transverse room, north side : hunting and fishing, tending and harvesting grapes

This northern section of the west wall (view 30) is divided into two broad registers, each commanded by an image of the deceased couple, seated with their backs to the doorway to the inner chamber, as if emerging from the domain of the beyond (view 31). Identical to those of the entry, these two different images, different only in some minor details, are unlikely to carry a symbolic value. Thus, the couple of the bottom register pair sit under a shelter of papyrus, the one at the top do not; the ebony seat at the top possesses a high and thin back support, while the one below is low and rounded. At the top, Tawy embraces her spouse with her left arm and holds in the other hand a lotus flower; below, the gesture is even more loving because her right hand also encloses her spouse's arm while the flower of lotus falls softly over her wrist.

The inscription which surmounts them is multicoloured in the upper register, but dull monochrome under the shelter. In spite of small variants, the four texts distributed on the wall say the same thing globally: which is, for Nakht the priest of the hours and Tawy the chantress of Amon "to be delighted while contemplating the activity within the countries of the North", a vague expression with topographic sense but which refers in any case to a water rich, marsh or irrigated land environment.
The wall thus presents a unit of direction and place: we are in the open air, in a paradisiac area where it is good to breathe the fresh and humid breeze of the north.
Recalling that on the south-east wall, diagonally opposite to this one, Nakht also contemplated the life of the fields. The function of the two scenes is however by no means comparable. On the south-eastern wall (view TB8), Nakht only sat, without his wife, without a lotus flower, a staff of office in his hand. The inscription evoked the monitoring of his fields. No splendid table of offerings in front of him, but, at his feet, some simple provisions.

On the contrary, on this diagonally opposed wall, the impression is quite different. A festive environment is raised by discrete erotic touches (at the very least of love), imbued by the intoxicating perfume of the lotus; the eye is pleased by the detail of the promise of a sumptuous banquet, ideally suggested - but not represented - by the accumulation of the products of the countryside and the marsh, where this time ducks and fish abound.
The inscriptions do not say, this time, "observe...", but "be delighted to observe...".

A change has occurred; we have passed on to another plain of reality. These are in fact three distinct activities which the deceased thus took pleasure in gazing upon. While starting with the most imposing register, the one of the top, one first discovers the so-called scene of "hunting and fishing in the swamps", then, in the middle register, a wine sequence, therefore non aquatic (but the grapevine in Egypt requires a great deal of water), while at the bottom, a scene of the tending of a hexagonal net, on a pond in the middle of an undergrowth of papyrus, returning us thus to the swamp. By differing from the first, the scenes of the middle and lower do not imply deceased.

1)- The large register at the top

view TB4

Nakht and Tawy contemplate their own active image, and even their image of symmetrically divided as if by a mirror, a strangeness already very distant from the reality of a representative image.
The most visible elements, two identical Nakhts (except the shape of the wig) face themselves, each standing on a frail rowing-boat of papyrus, one throwing a stick within a great flight of birds, the other spearing with a long harpoon (forgotten by the artist!) two large fish of the Nile, a tilapia ("Oreochromis Niloticus", of the perch family, a.k.a. "St. Peter’s fish" ) and a lates ("Latis Niloticus" or "Nile perch"; this can reach approximately 195 cm in length and live for up to 16 years).
Squatting in the centre of the craft, Tawy holds her spouse's leg. Behind the master, a standing girl, probably the deceased's daughter, grasps him round his waist. The one of left holds in her right hand a fledgling (view 39).

From this degree of observation, the variants of detail increase.
To the left, a young naked boy turns around to stretch out a new weapon to his father (view 41). On the right, it is a little naked girl who appears to indicate to him the fish to be pierced. She attracts her attention by touching him on the thigh. In the undergrowth and above, the birds panic (view 42); two pintail ducks, with broken necks, do not fall once more to the ground : an impression of suspended time... Butterflies and dragonflies flutter.
In contrast to this panic and agitation, three birds guard their nests, they don't flinch : a way of saying that the promise of life is stronger than death ?
It is difficult in any case to imagine, as some Egyptologists of the past, that the scene represents a domestic distraction, the representation of the small family of Nakht playing in the freshness of the marsh. The instability of the papyrus craft, already, makes the presence of such world highly unlikely; the sumptuousness of the festive clothing and jewelry is somewhat incompatible with a muddy part of the country. More revealing still are the two geese standing on the prows of the craft (destroyed by the sectators of Aton as manifestations, hypostases, of Amon). The goose certainly had nothing to do with the scene of hunting of wild birds - on the contrary - the vandals of Akhenaton knew the true value of it. At the prow of the deceased's barque, it is Amon-Ra who guides Nakht and his family through the hostile world of the swamp and it is logically in his form of this bird that the lord of this world shows to the deceased the road of triumph, which is also the one of his rebirth as Blessed.

It could even be that this idea of re-creation of the deceased falls within two plays on words.
The first lies in the hieroglyphic value of the sign for throwing sign (Gardiner T14), used as a determinative for the verb kerna, which means at a the same time "to throw" and "to create".
The second comes from the verb seti, "to shoot", present in the inscription above the harpooner, and which can also signify "to ejaculate". In short, the act of death (the massacre of the enemies of order and Osiris) appears as the condition making possible the act of life, a sexual connotation by the above-stated ambivalent verbs, by the gesture of harpooning and the casting of the stick, by the nests charged with eggs, by the presence of the goose of Amon. Finally by the dress and the wife's adornment; because the erotic value of these is well known and notably of the symbolic value of the wig in Egyptian love. Is it necessary to add that the undergrowth of papyrus is par excellence the symbolic biotope of Hathor, significant feminine principle of the enjoyment, of the pleasure of the festival, the sexual blossoming and all (re)creation of life ?...

Situated at the junction between the transverse room still turned toward the profane world, and the longitudinal room which leads to the borders of the beyond, the so-called scene "of hunting and fishing in the marshes" is certainly not a simple image of entertainment; but neither does it have only an apotropaic value: it fundamentally expresses the victory over death, which is disorder, and the conquest of eternal life, the one of an absolute status of the Blessed.

The lower sub-register

view 44 bis

It is similar by biotope an area which is uniform in environmental conditions and in its distribution of animal and plant life

and by action to the scene which has just been described, but the sequence appears semantically less elaborate, and closer to daily life.
No mirror images here, but a sense of reading from right to left.

Composition of the scene with the birds :
An undergrowth of papyrus, all over again, on the green rectangle within which the author painted a sort of dark blue hexagon, on to which he superimposed the image of an also hexagonal net, with a large mesh and teeming with birds captured in the trap (view 44 and view 44bis). At a half hidden lookout's signal, three standing men, leaning backwards in the effort, pull on the rope. The scene is attested in all periods since the Old Kingdom, with number of variants, but resting structurally on a very clear tripartite diagram: a hexagonal net placed on a pond seen in rotation, a lookout turned toward the rear, a team of men pulling on the rope.

From a factual view point, there are there the elements of a narrative sequence :
l) the net is open in an hexagonal form and hidden under the water of the pond; waiting for the birds, the ones controlling the net and the lookout are concealed
2) a flight of ducks land on the pond (and therefore on the net)
3) the lookout makes a sign
4) a quick pull, the men slam the two halves of the net shut; in a closed position, full of birds, this must have the shape of a half hexagon.

As was the habit in Egyptian imagery, the artist worried little about respect to this narrative logic, it was too much, and which included too many useless elements to the understanding.
Rather than to represent, it signified the idea of the offering and collecting it in its three aspects; the important thing is not the anecdotal credibility of the image but its essential legibility, and the chronological impossibilities didn't matter (the birds already prisoners within a net still in its hexagonal shape, whereas the lookout only just making his signal, and the men pulling on the rope): the action and its result are signified simultaneously.
One of the captors, who turns toward the scene situated on the left, even functions as a pure linguistic tool, equivalent to a "then" or to an "afterward".

Then, indeed, the birds are plucked, gutted and suspended from a sort of drier (view 45).

The two men appointed to this operation present the same opposition of pace as the ploughmen, of the south-easterly wall: one, rather paunchy, has long hair, the other, with the normally arranged hair, is slender like the hieroglyphic image of a man and sits upright. Logically, we would expect afterwards, these trussed ducks are offered to the deceased and represented on his table of offering. Too simple, our Cartesian logic is foiled yet again: it is fish which a yoke porters carry towards Nakht and Tawy, while another holds up the un-plucked birds and carries an enormous bunch of grape clusters, an obvious allusion to the previous wine-making scene.
Pleasure therefore, as always, to break the monotony of the sequential system and to oblige the spectator's gaze to search the wall in all directions, to perceive all the keys...

As for the significance of the sequence, it is, in all probability, again multiple, or in any case double.
Firstly, it appears acceptable to speak here of "a scene of daily life" intended to nourish the Ka of the deceased via his offering tables, which was not the case, as seen with the large scene examined in first. The symmetrical position, in the space of the wall, in relation to the latter, evidently evokes a second sense, because the biotope and the creatures of the marsh are the same, for an Egyptian reader, it could have had the same sense as that at the top, the elimination of evil which it is necessary trap in order to destroy it.

The composition of the wine-making sequence.

view TB5

This adopts the same structural element as that of the sequence of tending the grape, therefore tripartite: on the right, the grape is picked from a grapevine raised on supports in three ranks ("three", a sign of plural, therefore probably meaning abundance) (view 51). At the centre, the grape is pressed (view 53). The Osirian significance of the theme is well manifested in other contexts: the crushed grape, squeezed apart, evokes the death of Osiris, his dismemberment, but the noble transformation of juice, into wine, is one of the metaphors of the god's rebirth, and therefore of all the dead. Nothing indicates that this sense is explicitly present here, but, for all Egyptian readers, it could be only latent.
Finally the collected juice is placed in jars (view 54).
On the left, two porters are turned toward the offering table of the deceased (view 46).
Here however, less chronological complexity than for the grape scenes: it is normal that one picks before treading.
On the other hand, the commonplace anecdotal/hieroglyphic contrast between the presentations of the servants, with no caricatural spite : it is only a question of showing the diversity of the popular types, precisely as the diversity of the ochres used for the complexions, allows to distinguish between some of the figures visually, while corresponding to the diversity of the skin colours of an Egyptian crowd.

A bit of fun again in the left part of the register : if one of the porters presents a goblet of grapes, the offering only partially corresponds to the wine-making scene, because he also carries a plait of pomegranates and his companion that of the un-plucked ducks (view 46).

West wall of the transverse room, south side: the "funerary banquet"

view TB6

This wall has lost, accidentally probably, about half of its decoration.
An upper register appears to be missing completely and nothing remains to reconstruct its content. What is preserved is, in any case, of a great homogeneity of sense.
The wall is divided into two large registers, each of these being divided, on the left, into two sub-registers.

The deceased couple.
Certainly represented twice, they have their backs to the doorway to the longitudinal room, facing the very known theme called "the funerary banquet", a festive theme which it is tempting to put in relation with the "Beautiful Festival of the Valley".
In this day of the year, in the second month of the summer season, the nearest relatives met in the chapel or in the courtyard to celebrate the deceased's memory and to reactivate his vital strength, his Ka, certainly thanks to food offerings, but also by the virtue of the flowers, of perfumes, the songs, the dances and the sensual beauty of young musicians, little or not clothed.
The major ritual of the Beautiful festival appears to have been the presenting to the deceased of an assembled bouquet called the "bouquet of Amon". This is visible in the bottom right part of the wall where a son (probably the eldest or only one) of Nakht and Tawy, with the name Amenemope, carries out the ritual in front of his seated parents.

The whole left part of the wall evokes the festive and convivial context of these solemn scenes.
These are evidently the feminine groups which catch the eye! As often in the paintings of the 18th Dynasty, the men appear more stereotyped, more frozen in a hieroglyphic form, while the sensitivity of the artists enjoys celebrating the beauty of young women.

The top register - lower sub-register
This offers an intact group of beautiful guests and one of the most successful pieces of the paintings of the 18th Dynasty (view 56).

The already mentioned practice of the workshop of Nakht, which consists of alternating the anecdotal and the typical, appears all over again :
• on the left, three ladies in partial superposition (or "distorted depth") discretely differentiate themselves by the gesture of their arms. In front of them, a servant (or a very young daughter of the family), entirely naked, except for a belt on her hips, bends to arrange an earring (view 57)
• on the right (view 59), for the three beautiful ladies who match them, the composer surpassed himself in imagination with a variety of partial superposition and isolation, or differing glances. The one on the right, with a horizontal glance, as if lost in a daydream, probably attentive to the song. The two on the left look either lowered or raised slightly at her neighbour. They each hold a mandrake fruit (the apple of love) and breathe its odour : a play on glances, a play on gestures, in a roguish impish ambience.
All wear large enveloping wigs, encircled by headbands of lotus petals and surmounted with fragrant grease cones. Is this this perfume which impregnates their bust and makes their shawls and the top of their dresses translucent? In any case, their nipples and their areolae are highly prominent under their garments.
To their right, turned toward the deceased, an old blind harpist (view 61), characterised by the folds of his stomach and the simple feature which indicates his enclosed eye. This probably celebrates the beauty of life in the Necropolis, thereby adding a nuance more or less accentuated of metaphysical anguish, because, according to the versions preserved of the "Song of the Harpist", here absent, optimism and scepticism is always mix with it, to various degrees.

The lower register : the group of musicians.
In this lower register, in answer to the old sage above chanting his melancholic song, three young and beautiful musicians (view 62) are a direct contrast. This group is only part of the lower register, the rest being guests at the banquet and Amenemope (mentioned above).

It is certainly the best known and most often reproduced piece from the tomb of Nakht, an absolute leading work of Egyptian painting.
On the right, a player of a large standing harp, turned toward the deceased, indicating by this that the spectacle given by all three is intended for them.
• The musician on the left side, with the double flute, lowers her head slightly or nodding it as often done by flutists.
• The one in the middle of the group has a duplicate role; she plays a long-necked lute, and dances at the same time; one imagines that she spins around; it is probably to keep the rhythm that she glances at the flutist, who holds, the melody line.
• The two girls of right and left, the flutist and the harpist, stand, feet together; they wear a long white dress, impregnated with perfume down to the beginning of the thighs; the dancer of the middle is naked, except a thin woven belt worn low on her hips. It is understood, from many examples, that nudity didn't pose any moral problem to the Egyptians at this time and was even - especially feminine nudity - object of admiration, as it would be again for the Greeks one millennium later.
The naked dancer in the middle, moreover, separated feet and turned toward the rear, offer us the rare view of a forward facing bosom; these somewhat rather discreet features of animation, irresistibly impose, because they are a break with the norm for Egyptian representation, the idea of a frantic turn-around.
• All three carry an ample, enveloping hairstyle, secured by a diadem of lotus petals and smeared with fragrant grease. But, subtle nuances, the one of the wise harpist, who doesn't have to move, is perfectly in order; the one of the double-flutist, who keeps rhythm by use of her arms and head, separate on her shoulders; finally, the braids of the dancer slip according to the movements of her bust, and some strands escape the top of her head.
• Finally notice that this small orchestra constitutes a nice group in the plan of the composition, thanks to the exchange of glances, to the contours and to the partial superposition of the bodies. An artist (the author? or a later admirer?) was not mislead by the exceptional success which this main work constitutes, since he tempted to enhance it further by applying to it of a layer of gloss varnish, maybe an acacia resin. The varnish yellowed with time, and flaked, but not enough to stop us from being moved by its perfection.
• Not to be missed on this badly damaged wall, is the pet cat making a meal of a fish, under the double seat on which Nakht and his wife sit, located at the far right (view TB6).

Finally, returning to the global sense of the wall, What does it really mean ?
Generally called the "funerary banquet". But is it really about about a banquet?
In non of the versions of this theme, abundantly represented in the chapels of the 18th Dynasty, are guests seen eating, or even more-so, the deceased. Sometimes, a maid offers a dish which is filled from a flask, so small that it could be about perfume. It is true that drunkenness is sometimes indicated by a guest's indisposition, but no one is ever shown drinking.
As in the symmetrical image of hunting and fishing, from the north side, the plans of reality are scrambled, or in any case blurred: the deceased appears as alive as the living, and these appear to act and to behave as if in another world.

Finally, is not the whole philosophy of this infinitely subtle system of representation : to tell us, by means of images, that the here-and-now and the beyond are in short consubstantial universes and that the whole device of the chapel aims to assure this essential role of metaphysical mediation?

Wall borders and ceiling of the transverse room

The wall borders, top, bottom and sides, were not fully completed. A prime example of what was intended can be seen on the north side of the west wall (view 30).
At the very top of the walls is the usual kheker frieze, bound bundles of reeds daubed with mud and paint. Although space was left for the frieze on the east end wall, this was started.
Running between the kheker frieze and the actual scenes, also down the sides of each wall (including the edges nearest the two doorways) are narrow decorative bands. These are composed of coloured rectangles, alternately blue, ochre, green and red, separated by narrow white blocks, the whole being outlined by green lines.
At the junction of the east and west walls with the south (end) wall, the vertical bands are separated by a narrow woven pattern in black and white (view 26).
The main scenes are separated from the dado, at the bottom of walls, by a broad red and yellow stripe (view 30); however, this was only completed on the west wall. The dado itself, normally painted black, remained as unpainted plaster and wash.

JJH-06

The ceiling was painted to imitation wooden beams, in yellow ochre, dividing and bordering the area into smaller sections, into which colourful matting designs are inserted. This feature, of matting suspended between beams was common in domestic architecture. The zig-zag designs used were typical for this period, two designs (one with a variant) being used (art-work JJH-06). In the area delineated between the entrance doorway and that to the inner chamber was a plain zig-zag pattern of red, blue and green separated by white and edged with its own beams. This panel runs at right angles to the other areas, which are situated above the two sides of the transverse room, these themselves being divided into two panels with a separating central beam. The basic design is that of rows of diamond shapes containing four-petalled rosettes, infilled with dots. These shapes are separated by zig-zag lines of blue, red and green. In three of the four sections, the in-fill around the rosettes and dots is ochre, with the zig-zag lines separated by white; in the other, remaining, section the in-fill is white and the zig-zag lines are separated with ochre (see art-work JJH-06). This single variant is located above the north end of the east wall.
The ceiling is in very good condition on the northern side and the area joining the two doorways. However, a major portion has fallen from the southern side, which also contains the most damaged section of wall.

The Rear Chamber

Missing from this tomb, as well as from a good many others, even vast ones and belonging to important characters (for example: TT95 Mery, the great-priest of Amon under Amenophis II), are the essential rituals leading to the deceased's transformation into the blessed, the transportation of his funerary material, the various rituals on his mummy - and, especially, the opening of the mouth ceremony -, the welcome by the goddess of the west and by Osiris...
What is there to say?
One cannot accept that in the mind of the Egyptians, these incomplete chapels didn't function magically, which is not very likely, it is necessary for us to recognise that in the Egyptian mind, if it constantly functioned on metaphors, it also functioned on the synecdoche. The part represents the whole, and there is probably there a philosophical dimension: the whole being elusive in its totality, each part implies the whole...
Is there one only "Book of the Dead", or another funerary book, which includes the same chapters? Only one temple or only one funerary chapel which proposes the sum of the theological knowledge? It is necessary to admit that the act of creating a tomb and decorating it, was not just a part, was it sufficient to give the body an eternity ?

Bibliography

DAVIES Norman de Garis, The Tomb of Nakht at Thebes, New York, 1917 (PUBLICATIONS 0F THE METROPOLITÀN MUSEUM 0F ARTS l)
HODEL-HOENES, Sigrid, Life and Death in Ancient Egypt, (David WARBURTON translation of German pubn.), 2000, p.27-41.
KAMPP, Friedrike, Die Thebanische Nekropole - Zum Wandel des Grabgedankens von der 18.- bis zur 20. Dynastie, 2 tomes, Mainz, 1996 ("Theben", ed. Jan ASSMANN,n° 13)
LABOURY, Dimitri, «Une relecture de la tombe de Nakht», dans Roland TEFNIN (éd.). La peinture égyptienne ancienne. Un monde de signes à préserver. Actes du Colloque international de Bruxelles 1994 , (Bruxelles, 1997, MONUMENTA AEGYPTIACA 7, Imago l), p.49-81.
MEKHITARIAN Arpag, La peinture égyptienne (Genève, 1978), p. 69-72.
SHEDID Abdel Ghaffar - SEIDEL Matthias, The Tomb of Nakht. The Art and history of an Eighteenth Dynastie Official's Tomb at Western Thebes, Mainz, 1996.
WILDUNG Dietrich, Agyptische Malerei. Das Grab des Nacht, Munich-Zurich, 1978.