Menna was Scribe of the Fields of the Lord of the Two Lands, the overseer of agricultural activities on the extensive royal landholdings, and director of cadastral surveys. His job was an important one, and he proudly devoted much of his tomb’s decoration to depicting the activities that occupied much of his professional life.
TT 69 is one of a group of tombs that date to the end of the reign of Thutmes IV and the beginning of the reign of Amenhetep III. The group includes the tombs of Nakht and Djehuty-mes, and each exhibits traits common to art of the time of Thutmes IV—thin-limbed female figures, for example—and traits common to the time of Amenhetep III—voluptuous females with narrow waists and long almond-shaped eyes. Each tomb is characterized by lively, imaginative, painted decoration, executed in rich colors with a sure hand—the same hand that may also have decorated WV 22, the royal tomb of Amenhetep III. TT 69 lies on the lower slope of the hill called Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qurna, a short walk uphill from the tomb of Nakht. On the way there, you will pass some of the oldest mudbrick houses in Qurna. One of them is decorated with an early example of Hajj paintings—scenes of folkloric subjects and of the owner’s pilgrimage to Mecca—on its front wall.
Menna’s is a well-cut cruciform tomb, with an entrance corridor, transverse hall, and inner chamber. This plan is typical of many nobles’ tombs at Thebes. Decoration in the transverse hall is devoted to scenes of agricultural activity and funeral banquets. Scenes in the inner chamber deal with funerary rituals and offerings for Menna and his wife Henuttawy.
TRANSVERSE HALL, FRONT WALL, RIGHT SIDE On the right (south) side of the front wall of the transverse hall, Menna sits beside the doorway at a table heaped with food offerings. To the right, in the upper register, a servant kisses the feet of his overseer. The artist has confusingly overlapped the two figures, as if he was unsure whether the overseer’s left leg should be on this side of the petitioner or on the other. Behind him, men with a knotted rope survey agricultural land. Scribes follow, writing down boundary descriptions, while others calculate the taxes to be levied on each field’s harvest. Look at the costumes of these men. The hems of their jalabiyyas appear scalloped, probably because they have been tucked into their belts so they will not drag along the ground. This is exactly how modern Upper Egyptian farmers dress for work in their fields.
Instead of simply drawing straight stalks of grain in the background of this scene as most artists would have done, the artist here drew some stalks waving gently in the breeze, others bent and broken by the bureaucrats who trampled through the fields. It is a realistic touch, typical of the imagination that characterizes Menna’s tomb.
To the right, a family approaches the tax collectors, either to offer bribes hoping to influence their decisions, or to make an early payment on taxes owing. There was no money in ancient Egypt so payment was made in kind. The man brings a “bride of the corn” or “corn dolly,” while the woman carries containers of food. Their son leads a donkey and carries a kid goat in his arms. The late Belgian art historian, Arpag Mekhitarian, described the boy almost in tears, because he is forced to give up his favorite pets to this army of strangers.
To the right, scribes record grain inventories. Menna stands in a kiosk watching the arrival of grain-laden boats at the port of Thebes. A group of men are being flogged in his presence, probably for failure to pay their taxes. At first glance, the agricultural scenes on this wall appear to be the standard scenes of harvesting, threshing, and winnowing. But they contain wonderful details that surely were taken from real life. Here, a young girl carries water to the men in the field; there, a woman nurses her swaddled infant whose hand tugs at her long hair. Two girls wrestle in the field, perhaps arguing over gleaning rights. A field hand naps beneath a tree in whose branches hangs a waterskin. Beside him, a worker amuses himself by playing a flute. A youth sits on a pile of grain, trying to reckon quantities of wheat by counting on his fingers. A young girl sits on the ground and extends her leg before her friend, who removes a thorn from her foot. A foreman leans on his staff and complains to two men forking grain. They turn and listen to his orders. One of them, a man with a bulbous nose, was described by Mekhitarian as having “an expression of such bovine stupidity that we can understand why his opposite number on the right is watching him with obvious anxiety.” Such cameos animate these scenes and give them a degree of liveliness rarely seen in tomb paintings. The artist has imbued the figures with such humanity we can be sure their actions are modeled on real people. They are individuals, not simply generic peasants or officials copied from an artist’s handbook of standard scenes.
LEFT (SOUTH) END WALL On the left (south) end wall, Menna, his wife, Henuttawy, and two of his sons stand before the enshrined god, Osiris. In the register below, food offerings are being set alight. Yellow flames leap from the tables, the smoke itself an offering to the god. A priest spoons incense into the flames. Such burnt offerings are associated with the important Beautiful Festival of the Valley and figure prominently in New Kingdom tomb scenes.
REAR WALL, LEFT (SOUTH) SIDE This wall has suffered badly and little remains of what originally was a banquet scene. The representations of woven basketry are good examples of the fine quality of painting here.
REAR WALL, RIGHT (NORTH) SIDE In the upper register, Menna and members of his family receive offerings. In the second register, guests sit before huge piles of food offerings. In the two lower registers, bearers bring even more offerings to the banquet, perhaps in celebration of the Beautiful Feast of the Valley.
RIGHT (NORTH) END WALL A stela has been erected within a large shrine. On each side, Menna and his wife raise their hands in adoration. On the stela itself, Anubis, Osiris, the Western Goddess, Hathor, and Ra-Harakhty stand or sit. In the register below, Menna and his wife are seated, and below them stands a row of priests. None of the texts on this wall were ever written, although the column lines were drawn.
FRONT WALL, LEFT (NORTH) HALF Menna and his wife make burnt offerings, while butchers and other kitchen workers prepare still more food for the ceremony. There is an especially charming figure here in the lower register of a servant who carries a young gazelle on his shoulders. It is a fine example of the technical competence of Menna’s artist.
INNER CHAMBER, LEFT (SOUTH) WALL On the left (south) wall, bearers bring furniture and offerings to Menna’s tomb. It is worth comparing this scene to one of identical subject matter in Ramose’s tomb. The differences show dramatically how the art style of early Amenhetep III (here) contrasts with that of late Amenhetep III (there). At the far right, Menna stands before a balance on which his heart is being weighed against a figure of Ma’at. Osiris watches as Thoth records the result. The accompanying hieroglyphs were quickly, almost cursively drawn, and painted solid black without internal detail, but they still show a high degree of artistic competence.
REAR (WEST) WALL
A niche that once housed a statue of Menna and his wife is flanked by offering bearers.
RIGHT (NORTH) WALL At the front end of the right (north) wall, boats sail to Abydos. The two boats on the right, their sails furled, float northward with the current. The two boats at the left, one a towboat with its sail unfurled, sail upstream with the north wind back to Thebes. A sailor at the bow uses a pole to test the river’s depth. Another stands in the rigging, shouting this information to the helmsman. The two boats in the center of the scene carry statues of the deceased Menna and Henuttawy, accompanied by a boat carrying a shrine whose contents are displayed atop it. In most tombs, the pilgrimage to Abydos is drawn in a serious and formal manner, as befits reference to such an important religious event. But even here, Menna’s artist could not resist the extra touch: in the boat at left, a sailor nearly falls overboard as he tries to dip water from the Nile.
In scenes below, priests prepare the mummies of Menna and Henuttawy for the Opening of the Mouth ritual and burial.
The combined scene of fishing and fowling to the left of the boating scene is rightly considered a masterpiece. These are not sporting scenes, but scenes of religious significance, providing food for the tomb owner and his family in the afterlife. Many such scenes are known in Egyptian art. Most of the time, they are rigidly prescribed and lack the dexterous touches that we see here. Menna’s artist has used vivid colors; the proportions and poses of the figures are perfectly laid out, while the details of plants and animals are elegant and accurate records of Egypt’s natural world.
Look, for example, at the papyrus thicket in the center of the scene. Bird nests are scattered through the thicket, and an ichneumon (an Egyptian mongoose) and a Common Genet focus intently on the eggs they contain. Menna stands on a papyrus skiff, a throwing stick in one hand, a pair of egrets in the other. The egrets perhaps served as decoys. Pintail ducks fly in panic around the thicket, four of them already sent reeling by Menna’s throwing sticks. (These are not boomerangs; they do not return.) Two butterflies flutter nearby, oblivious to the confusion. Menna wears a thin gown over his kilt and an elaborate broad collar and bracelets. Behind him stands his wife, far too elaborately dressed for hunting birds in a swamp, a cone of incense on her head, cut papyri draped over her arm. (It is the religious and sexual nature of these marsh scenes that dictated his elaborate costume.) Two equally overdressed daughters stand or kneel behind their mother. The young girl on the skiff, her arms full of lotus flowers and ducks, turns her head and looks back. In contrast to these finely dressed women, a third daughter wears nothing more than a belt and some jewelry.
She kneels to pluck lotus flowers from the water. She is merely a silhouette here, but her figure is sensuous and elegant, a dramatic contrast to Menna’s son farther to the right, whose simply drawn figure and face are flat and lacking in emotion.
In the right half of the scene, Menna, accompanied by family members, spears Tilapia nilotica. This fish is frequently shown in tomb paintings, in part because of its habit of holding its fertilized eggs in its mouth until they hatch. Even after birth, the young will swim back into their parent’s mouths for safety. The Egyptians saw in this behavior a suggestion of fertility and renewed life. (Of course, the fish are also good eating.) Below the scene flows the Nile, its rippled surface suggested by zigzag lines which form the hieroglyph for water. In the water, several species of fish swim about, and a crocodile holds a huge Tilapia in its jaws. Birds wade in the shallows along the shoreline and lotus blossoms grow in profusion.
Note in this scene, and throughout Menna’s tomb, that the women are shown with the same skin color as men. Usually—as in the funeral scene in the tomb of Ramose—men have reddish brown skin, women a light yellow, a difference reminiscent of the Victorian sense of beauty: tall, dark, and handsome men, women with creamy complexions never exposed to the sun or wrinkled by labor.
To the right, Menna and his wife receive offerings. Henuttawy’s face is painted with great skill. The lines are bold and sure, with the hair simply but elegantly drawn, making a highly effective composition.
The ceiling of the inner chamber is beautifully painted with an elaborate geometric pattern copied from woven mats that perhaps adorned private homes.
From" The Illustrated Guide to Luxor" by kent R.Weeks ,published by the American University in Cairo Press. Copyright © 2005 White Star S.p.a