The Quest for the Picture
The Start of
it All
5th grade was, when I
started learning about world history. Looking back, I consider that year my
favorite year of grade school ever. It was the year of projects. Fun projects.
Among other things, we mummified a chicken bought from the store that forever
enshrined that year in the smell of pumpkin spice and cinnamon. “…
a
certain smell will take me back to when I was young...” *(1). Thanksgiving bringing up
memories of chicken mummies is a unique oddity of my brain. Ancient Egyptians would
use spices in the mummification process such as cinnamon and cassia, but we
didn’t have cassia so we substituted pumpkin spice, which combined with the
cinnamon made the mummifying chicken smell delicious (2). Because of that year,
I fell in love with ancient Egypt. As I mentioned in my decorating post, I’ve
been planning what my future house will look like since 5th grade.
The first room theme I figured out was that the family room was going to be
styled after ancient Egypt. I already got a cute pair of blue mosaic cranes.
The next feature to go into that room that I acquired was a picture on the
cover of my 5th grade portfolio of three Egyptian women clad in
blue, the post’s main picture.
Doubt
Imagine my surprise when I found the
picture for sale (3) as a hanging canvas wall art for decorating through
Pinterest. I was unbelievably thrilled. Buying it soon after arriving back at
college, it took about a month for it to arrive from where it was made in China,
but after waiting over 5 years to find it online, I was happy to wait. Looking
at it closer, I noticed that it had fake Egyptian hieroglyphs on it, probably
to make it seem even more ‘Egyptian’ to people. I didn’t really mind, as I knew
the main figures in the painting were from an original artwork in a tomb
somewhere. However, as I sat thinking about it…were they? That’s where the
quest started. I was going to find what tomb this picture was from. I didn’t
mind if things had been added to it stylistically, but I was a bit concerned if
it wasn’t a reproduction of something from ancient Egypt.
The Quest Begins
My
first google search turned up a spiritualist website with cult-esque
information about the blue lotus and it’s history in ancient Egypt rituals. Not
very promising as far as authenticity goes, but it did give me a clue that the
flowers the women are holding in the picture are lotuses. I double checked on
Wikipedia and found that yes, blue lotuses are found in ancient Egypt (4). Next
I googled blue lotuses in ancient Egypt and eventually found that the god of
the blue lotus is Nefertem (or Nefertum) and then later found out she is
actually a dude and a he (5). Guessing that the picture was from a temple
dedicated to him, I searched, “Nefertem temple paintings,” but no luck. Taking
a brief detour, I tried just searching temple paintings, and tomb paintings,
but quickly realized that there were way too many to go through them all one by
one. When I examined the picture, I realized that the background looked like
the texture of a scroll. Maybe it was an illustration on a scroll of papyrus?
Or was it just another added feature to make it look more ‘ancient Egyptian’?
No luck searching ‘scroll paintings’ either. Again there were too many to go
through.
A Dead End
Since the lotus lead had dead-ended,
I decided to switch to a different detail of the painting. On top of each of
the women’s’ heads is a white mound with a blue zig zag line across it. From 5th
grade, I knew that those mounds were scented animal fat lumps that ancient
Egyptians used as perfume. As the sun beat and still beats down on Egypt
particularly harshly, people in ancient Egypt would place these scented mounds
on their heads, which the heat would then melt leaving them smelling fresh,
despite the fact that they were probably sweating profusely (6). I searched
‘perfume in ancient Egypt’. Turns out, Nefertum was also the god of perfume (7).
The threads were linking up. When I
searched for the picture again using the perfume information, I found a stock
photo user, who sold different variants of the picture. Was my picture made by
a stock photo user and not from a tomb at all? I kept searching around. Briefly
I contemplated trying to contact the user, but I didn’t find how. Another
variant of the picture claimed it was a scene from a banquet. Becoming
discouraged, I still kept at it and searched using banquet. I found two
different postings of my picture. One claimed that it was from Nefertari’s
tomb, the other that it was from the tomb of Nakht.
Now I was getting somewhere.
Reinvigorated,
since I saw three different search results turning up that it was from the tomb
of Nakht, I decided to investigate that first. Googling ‘tomb of Nakht’, I
found that it was a real tomb and Wikimedia Commons had a myriad of images from
it. Scrolling down and down and down, I finally came across this picture (10).
I found it!
Sure
there were different details, like the fact the women on the left in the
original was holding the wrist of the women in the middle, while my version the
left women was holding a blue lotus. It is still apparent that my picture is a
replica of this picture. The reason they are so different color-wise is
probably that the colors in the tomb faded; the other option is that the
replicator, whoever that is, the stock photo user or not, took some artistic
license replicating the image. Regardless, I didn’t care. I found it. The
picture hanging on the wall in front of me as I write this is a replica of an
image in a mural on the tomb of Nakht, an astronomer of Amun, during Thutmose
IV’s reign, placing it about only 100 years after the creation of the pyramids
(11) (12). Theoretically, I could go visit the original as it is located here in tomb TT52 (13) in modern Egypt. But for now I’m completely content having it
hang on my wall, know it is a replica of an authentic picture in a tomb in
Egypt.
Sources (all accessed 2-4-18):
(11) "Nakht" on Wikipedia
(13) "TT52" on Wikipedia
As of today, I am switching my post schedule to Mondays, which will hopefully keep me consistent as the semester ramps up for me.
ReplyDelete