Preparing and Cooking Cakes, Tomb of Rekhmire
ca. 1504–1425 B.C.
Medium
Paper, tempera paint, ink
Dimensions
facsimile: h. 43.5 cm (17 1/8 in); w. 32.5 cm (12 13/16 in), scale 1:1, framed: h. 47 cm (18 1/2 in); w. 35.6 cm (14 in)
Classification
Facsimile, Rekhmire (TT 100), bakers
Period
New Kingdom
Department
Egyptian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1931
Accession Number
31.6.30
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the bustling kitchens of ancient Egypt with *Preparing and Cooking Cakes* from the Tomb of Rekhmire, a vivid facsimile capturing a scene from around 1504–1425 B.C. during the New Kingdom's 18th Dynasty. detailed depiction, part of the grand tomb of Rekhmire—a powerful vizier and mayor of Thebes—shows men energetically kneading dough, shaping cakes, and baking them over open fires. Such everyday activities were essential to Egyptian funerary art, magically ensuring the deceased's eternal sustenance in the afterlife. Created as a precise 1:1 scale copy by renowned Egyptologist Nina de...
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...