Nebamun Receiving Wine

Art Historical Context

This striking facsimile captures a vibrant scene from an ancient Egyptian tomb painting dating to the New Kingdom’s Dynasty 18 (ca. 1390–1349 B.C.). Created by British artist Nina de Garis Davies in 1916, it depicts Nebamun, likely a high-ranking official or scribe, receiving offerings of wine amid lively figures of men and women. The original wall painting would have adorned a Theban tomb, illustrating the Egyptian belief in eternal feasting and joy in the afterlife, complete with hieroglyphic inscriptions that added prayers or titles to the composition. Davies specialized in precise tempera copies that faithfully reproduced the colors, scale (here 1:1), and delicate brushwork of deteriorating monuments before modern conservation methods existed. Her work on paper allows today’s visitors to appreciate the original’s lively details—flowing garments, raised wine cups, and celebratory gestures—that evoke the “drink-and-be-merry” spirit central to Egyptian tomb imagery. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum’s Egyptian Art department, this facsimile serves as both an artistic record and a cultural bridge, preserving the warmth and optimism of New Kingdom funerary art for modern audiences.

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...