Wall paintings in a Nubian colonial burial ground

Wall paintings in a Nubian colonial burial ground

The appointment of ancient Egyptian pharaohs to the people of the Nubian region covering the area and coming to work and perform important duties in Egypt, establishing a family is a point that tells the story on the wall in the tomb of Djehutihotep, also known as Paitsy. Many monuments, the most important of which is the rock-cut tomb in Eastern Debera, one of the few rock-cut tombs of the New Kingdom. There are only a few in Lower Nubia that are decorated with paintings. Djehutihotep appears in a short stone inscription near Aswan and on objects found in West Debera. A city that flourished in the 8th to 11th centuries, next to his brother Amenemhat in the tomb of Senmose at Kubbet el-Hawa, known during the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the High Priest of Amun, and the construction of the tomb at Kubbet el-Hawa in Aswan.

Symbols in the Djehutihotep burial mound 1853

Deir el-Bersha

The specificity of Djehutihotep's tomb is consistent with the specificity of Toshka. Several Bronze Age Nubian tombs in the western area, three rock-cut and Pennut tombs in the landscape, establish the different cultural relationships in colonial Nubia between different groups. The rock-cut and decorated tomb of Djehutihotep of the 18th Dynasty on the tomb is a unique feature of the early Debera landscape in Sudanese Nubia. Most of the small tombs, uncut and decorated, have a clay-brick superstructure. The Djehutihotep part, which has no wall paintings or elaborate inscriptions, is similarly striking. A clay-brick pyramid at Aniba, dating back to the Ramsesside period, has its interior clay-brick walls smoothed and free of roughness with plaster before the paintings were added. Smaller wall paintings, other clay-brick tomb temples, among the tombs like Hekkanefer, are described as Egyptian. Rock-cut tombs found in Toshka. Symbolic ceiling patterns with ritual scenes preserved on the walls.

Djehutihotep-colossus painting 1853

Deir el-Bersha, tomb , by Wilkinson, 1853

Or, as the “Unknown Tomb”, the wall painting is among the tomb of Nebvenef, Theban tomb TT157 at Abu el-Naga on the west bank of the Nile, part of the Theban necropolis opposite Luxor. Nebvenef, high priest during the reign of Seti I of Hathor and possibly earlier, and traces of plaster in the pyramidal chapel of the tomb, linked to the preserved structure, are the only exception to this one of the three temple burial contexts. The content, inspired by the judgment of the dead before Osiris and the goddess Hathor emerging from the mountain, can be explained by the wealth of the community buried at Aniba, a village in Nubia. The wall decoration, which was quite common in New Kingdom colonized Nubia, is why Pennut had to decorate the walls of his tomb with bas-relief, rather than painting, in the sense of Nubian art.

The characteristics of the tombs reflect the different quality and extent of one aspect of the social hierarchy. The colonial struggle within the elite groups was not real in Nubia under the New Kingdom, and the striking differences in the decoration of tombs with the same inner courtyard were also observed. The difficulty of accessing objects or prizes of honor delivered by the leaders in the New Kingdom was also encountered. The rare occurrence in Nubia between the tombs of Djehutyhotep and Hekanefer of the 18th Dynasty and the tomb of Pennut of the 20th Dynasty not only aims to show that the tomb structures and wall paintings and reliefs were rare in the Nubian kingdoms, but also the important role of art in the colony.