Women at a Banquet

Art Historical Context

Behold *Women at a Banquet*, a vivid facsimile created in 1922 by Nina de Garis Davies, reproducing an ancient Egyptian tomb painting from around 1400–1390 B.C. during the New Kingdom's Dynasty 18. Thisa-on-paper copy, rendered at a precise 1:1 scale, captures a lively scene of elite women reveling at a feast—complete with music, dance, and merriment—evoking the "drink-and-be-merry" spirit central to Egyptian funerary art. Such depictions adorned tomb walls to ensure eternal joy in the afterlife, offering museum visitors a window into the opulent social life of ancient Egypt's nobility. Artistically, the original wall painting exemplifies New Kingdom techniques: flat figures with profile views, vibrant mineral pigments, and symbolic details like lotus flowers and offerings that signified abundance and renewal. Davies, a pioneering Egyptologist, used tempera to meticulously recreate these colors and compositions, preserving details that time and climate might have faded. Acquired through the Rogers Fund in 1930, this piece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Egyptian Art collection highlights women's prominent roles in leisure and ritual, blending historical insight with timeless celebration.

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...