Man Carrying Loaves, Tomb of Rekhmire
ca. 1504–1425 B.C.
Medium
Paper, tempera paint, ink
Dimensions
facsimile: h. 43 cm (16 15/16 in); w. 30.5 cm (12 in), scale 1:1, framed: h. 46 cm (18 1/8 in); w. 34 cm (13 3/8 in)
Classification
Facsimile, Rekhmire (TT 100), bakers, basket
Period
New Kingdom
Department
Egyptian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1931
Accession Number
31.6.31
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the grand tomb of Rekhmire, a powerful vizier serving pharaohs Thutmose and Amenhotep II Egypt's New Kingdom (ca 1504–1425 B.C.), vibrant wall paintings captured the rhythms of daily life and eternal rituals. This scene, *Man Carrying Loaves*, Dynasty 18, depicts a worker balancing stacks of freshly baked bread in woven baskets—a nod to bread's sacred role as a staple food and offering for the afterlife. Such detailed vignettes in elite tombs like Rekhmire's (TT100 in Thebes) offered the deceased a perpetual supply of sustenance, blending realism with symbolic abundance in the flat, profile...
About the Artist
Nina de Garis Davies · 1881–1965
Nina de Garis Davies, born Anna Macpherson Cummings on January 6, 1881, in Salonika, Greece, to English-Scottish parents Cecil J. Cummings and Sarah Macintosh Tannoch, showed early artistic talent as the eldest of three daughters. After her father's death in 1894, the family relocated to Scotland and then London, where she trained at the Slade School of Art. In 1906, at age 25, a holiday trip to E...