Ancient Egyptian Art
The British Museum is displaying the results of its largest ever conservation project, which took 10 years to complete. Wall paintings from the lost tomb-chapel of Nebamun, are back on permanent display in a new setting. Another fragment from Nebamun's tomb-chapel is on loan from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. The paintings depict the merry life of an accountant who worked in the Temple of Amun at Karnak and who died in 1350 BC. New Scientist has posted an online art gallery of this work (CLICK) plus a fascinating article on the techniques used by the artist, including mud render (CLICK). The new display is in Room 61: Ancient Egyptian life and death (title link). Admission is free.
posted by Unknown @ 27.1.09
4 comments
4 Comments:
A most beautiful civilization, which I've had the good fortune of visiting twice (not ancient Egypt, of course...just the present day remains)
Hi, Lennard
Beautiful, but brutal. Amazingly, the humanitarian crisis that has been going on in and around Darfur has its roots in Ancient Egypt.
The ancient Egyptians used "Nubian" slaves: black Africans. After the demise of the ancient civilization, Arab slave traders continued the practise of capturing black Africans for their evil trade. The Arabs became Muslims. In recent decades they took over in and around the Darfur region and demanded that the African natives convert to Islam, which meant being circumsized, beating their wives and so on. The natives rejected these ideas, so the Muslim descendants of the Arab slave-traders attacked them.
At first it was modern weapons against spears! Villages were bombed, concentration camps set up to hold and rape the women. It's an appalling mess and the international community doesn't want to do anything about it, because it's scared of offending Islam!
Leni Riefenstahl took beautiful photos of the tribespeople in this region before the extermination began. I've posted some of them on my blog. Put Leni Riefenstahl into my search box to see them.
Well, slavery was before they invented the minimum wage.
I suppose the minimum wage for slaves is enough food to keep alive. In Britain, the minimum wage buys you enough food to keep fat. Not quite the same thing, but close.
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