These measures may indeed better protect Nakht’s decoration, but they have also made the tomb a claustrophobic and rather unpleasant place to visit. No more than two or three persons at a time can go inside. The corridor is extremely narrow (wheelchairs will not fit); the glass is reflective; and the light is so subdued you can barely see the walls. Having said that, the tomb is worth a visit. Like the tomb of Menna, which was perhaps decorated by the same artists, it contains some unique gems of Egyptian painting.
European explorers found TT 52 in 1889, only a few years after it had been discovered by local villagers, and it was recorded between 1907 and 1910 by Norman de Garis Davies for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Several objects were found in the debris, including a fine statue of Nakht. The piece was lost in a U-boat attack en route to New York in 1915.
This is a small, cruciform tomb, typical of those cut for middle-level New Kingdom bureaucrats. Nakht was such an official, a scribe and an astronomer in the Temple of Amen at Karnak, who probably was responsible for the scheduling of various cult ceremonies. The scenes in his tomb do not deal with his career, however, but with agriculture and funerary banquets, subjects of importance to his well-being in the afterlife.
There are no royal names in the tomb, but on stylistic grounds TT 52 is almost certainly contemporary with the tomb of Menna, and dates to late in the reign of Thutmes IV and early Amenhetep III.
TRANSVERSE HALL, FRONT WALL, RIGHT (WEST) SIDE On the right (west) side of the front wall, Nakht and his wife, Tawi (who was a chantress in the temple), stand before “offerings of every good and pure thing,” including slaughtered cattle and well-painted baskets of grapes. Traces of a sistrum, a musical rattle associated with Hathor, are just visible in his wife’s left hand, added almost as an afterthought (for reasons I will mention later). Behind and below them four registers of agricultural scenes are drawn with innovation and style.
The lower register is unusual. Instead of dividing the register in half by means of a straight, horizontal ground line, the artist has painted an undulating strip of land. Some believe this was done to provide more space for the figures; others think that it was the artist’s innovative way of injecting greater realism into the scene.
Note how the ground line divides in the left half of the scene to enclose a body of water. Each year in late summer, when the Nile flood receded, it left behind large basins of water in low-lying agricultural land. Those basins covered much of the Nile Valley floor, and in the basins’ muddy bottoms the Egyptian peasants sowed their crops. Here, the artist has shown the remains of such a basin, with farmers standing in the surrounding fields, up to their ankles in rich Nile silt. A field hand cuts down tamarisk and mimosa trees at the edge of the cultivation, extending the fields farther into the desert. Another has claimed wild grassland and has begun to cultivate it.
Below the meandering groundline, some men hoe fields while others break up large clods of mud with wooden mallets. Two men plow with cattle. The man on the left is having an easy time of it. But the man on the right is bent nearly double with effort as he forces the plow forward. He is shown partially bald, with unkempt hair, indications perhaps of his low status and the strain of hard work. Sacks of seed-grain sit in the field, and a farmhand has already begun sowing seeds across the muddy landscape.
Above, two girls harvest flax, while beside them farmers pack wheat into a large basket. One man jumps into the air trying to force more grain into the container. A young woman gleans in the fields, while nearby, three officials confer, trying to estimate the expected crop yield.
In the top register, Nakht sits in a kiosk, watching winnowers toss grain high into the air. The air is thick with falling grains and blowing chaff. One man carefully sweeps around the pile so not a grain is lost. The strange-looking object between figures at the top of this register is variously described as a symbol of the goddess Renenutet, “Mistress of the Threshing Floor,” or a scarecrow or a corn doll (in translation from the Arabic called the “Bride of the Corn”). Below, farmers and scribes use measuring containers to determine the size of the harvest.
The left (west) end wall was completed in elaborate detail. Offering bearers stand beside a false door painted in imitation of costly red granite. Below it, figures of a tree goddess flank huge piles of foodstuffs. On either side, servants bring even more food to the ceremonies.
REAR (NORTH) WALL, LEFT (SOUTH) SIDE Only a small part of this wall is preserved today, but the scenes that remain are justifiably considered not only the finest in Nakht’s tomb but some of the most innovative in Egyptian art. Six elegantly coiffed and dressed women sit on the ground. At right, one woman sniffs a lotus flower and two others pass around pieces of fruit. As they do so, their arms gracefully overlap, creating from the individual figures a unified composition.
Behind them, three bare-breasted women clutch unopened lotus flowers. A naked servant girl reaches out to straighten the curls of one of the ladies’ hair. These are finely drawn figures, executed by a sure hand and with a minimum of fuss. Some believe that the cones on the women’s heads are myrrh pomade; others think that they are cones of perfumed fat that would melt as the party wore on. The yellow color of the women’s garments is meant to indicate that they have anointed their body with aromatic oils. In front of them, a harpist plays a six-stringed instrument, his long fingers delicately plucking the strings as he sings. The folds of fat on his abdomen and the creased skin on his neck mark him as a sedentary, overweight man of middle age. His eyes are closed, but whether this means that he is blind or simply concentrating on his music, we do not know. An element of nearly all representations of harpists is the way the sole of one foot is shown in an anatomically impossible position. The outlines of this figure were altered slightly to change the proportions of the harpist’s head, neck, and torso.
In the lower register, three beautiful but oddly-proportioned women entertain the banquet guests. One plays a leopard-skin-covered harp, the other a double flute. Both are clothed and coiffed like the guests. But a third woman, who plays a six-stringed lute, is naked and wears only a beaded belt and necklace. This is unusual, but not unknown. In Egyptian art, nude figures are usually children, but this clearly is an adult woman. Few other nude women found in New Kingdom art are lute players.
The naked musician so bothered Norman de Garis Davies, the English artist and cleric who published this tomb ninety years ago, that he devoted several hundred words trying to explain her. Davies was unwilling to believe that Egyptians could have been guilty of the “gross moral laxity” the naked figure seemed to imply. Two possibilities therefore suggested themselves. The woman was not naked in real life, Davies said, she was only drawn that way here because of misguided artistic license. Or, he said, the woman did perform nude before the guests, but the guests without doubt were all married couples who knew the musician personally and would therefore have found nothing titillating about her nakedness.
The nude dancer’s head is turned to the left, and so too is her upper torso. Her breasts therefore are shown frontally.
Some art historians have described her pose as a “revolutionary” development in Egyptian art, since frontal drawings of any figure are rare. But interestingly, other figures of naked lute players in Egyptian art are also drawn in this frontal manner.
At right, under Tawi’s chair, the family’s pet cat hungrily devours a piece of fish. The Egyptians were fond of cats and the realism here is certainly the result of first-hand observation.
REAR (NORTH) WALL, RIGHT (EAST) SIDE Nakht and members of his family stand in reed skiffs, fishing and fowling. The scene is similar to that in Menna’s tomb, but here the work is hasty and less detailed, and the composition rather pedestrian. Compare, for example, the treatment of birds in the two tombs. Here, the birds lack even eyes. The artist posed Nakht’s arms as if the nobleman was spearing fish, but he then forgot to draw the spear. The butterflies are crudely drawn, and the water is empty of fish.
The figures of officials here are stiff, almost generic, but the servants and field hands show a much more relaxed treatment, Generally in private tombs, noblemen are more formally posed than, say, cattle herders. Indeed, the farther down the social scale one moves, the more relaxed and experimental the figures, poses, and costumes become, perhaps because the artist felt less constrained by social or religious requirements to idealize.
The scenes below are better executed. Beyond heaps of offerings and four offering bearers, two registers show various stages of winemaking and meat preservation. Both scenes are informative.
In the lower register, adjacent to a papyrus thicket at the Nile’s edge—a perfect spot to hunt birds—three men hold a rope tied to a net pegged horizontally about thirty centimeters (more than a foot) above the ground. Bread crumbs have been scattered beneath it. One man’s attention has been diverted, but the other two watch a compatriot concealed in the swamp nearby. As soon as enough birds have walked beneath the net, he will give a signal, the rope will be quickly yanked, the net will fall, and the birds will be trapped. The men will then wring the necks of the edible species and take them back to Nakht’s estate, where the kitchen staff will preserve them. That work is shown at left. First, a man plucks their feathers, as the fellow here does with unreal daintiness. Another man, seated at a slanted table, cuts the birds open, cleans them, packs them with salt, and hangs them from a rack above his head to dry. Finally, they are packed with more salt in large pots (shown above). Similar netting and preserving techniques are still used in parts of Egypt.
Above, two men pick bunches of grapes in an arbor and put them into small baskets. One of these men, and the fellow at left dipping grape juice from the vat, have light-colored, unkempt hair, and noticeable paunches. This may be meant to tell us something about the men’s social status or age.
The grapes are taken toa crushing floor in Nakht’s estate. There, in a large, shallow vat made of white-plastered mud, five men tread the grapes, holding onto ropes to maintain their balance. The grape juice flows out a drain on the right, and then is put into jars, sealed, and allowed to ferment. Four such jars stand above, each with a mud seal that would have been stamped to identify the kind of wine and its vintage.
RIGHT (EAST) END WALL On the right (east) end wall of the chamber, Nakht and Tawi receive more offerings. These scenes were never finished; in fact, many columns prepared for text were left blank. Some Egyptologists believe this is evidence that Nakht’s tomb was originally carved and decorated as a generic tomb, a speculative venture by a contractor who would sell it to the highest bidder, or one of several tombs done at the same time to be assigned by the vizier to favored officials. The columns were left blank so that the tomb owner could later decide what personal data he wanted to include on them. (That may be why on the front wall Tawi’s sistrum, a symbol of her role as chantress, was added after the scene was completed, when it was finally known who would be buried here.)
FRONT WALL, LEFT (EAST) SIDE The left side of the front (east) wall of the chamber shows Nakht and his wife standing before a great pile of offerings. Behind them, three registers of servants bring even more animals and produce to the scene. Note in the second register how the artist has erroneously painted a “transparent” gazelle through which you can see the servant’s legs. The grid system that allowed the artist to more easily and accurately copy scenes from a draughtsman’s handbook is visible across the surface of this scene.
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