When an incumbent British consul-general helped himself to a vital piece of ancient Egyptian art, few could have guessed it would take almost 200 years for its worth to be fully appreciated. Jenny Jobbins visits the recreated tomb of Nebamun Thousands of miles and thousands of years apart, a son pays homage to his dead father. In a bright new limestone tomb-chapel on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes, the son of the Scribe and Grain Accountant Nebamun offers his father a bouquet of flowers. In the British Museum in the heart of London, a wealthy Egyptian-born financier builds a memorial to his late father, Michel Cohen. The two events are linked by a series of wall paintings that have been likened to the genius of the Sistine Chapel, but the story of how the paintings came to be in the museum is worthy of an adventure of Indiana Jones. We begin with Nebamun -- whose name means "My Lord is Amun" -- described as "a Scribe and Grain Accountant of Amun in the Gallery of Divine Offerings". We do not know exactly who he was, but he probably died at some point in the later 18th Dynasty during the reign of Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV (1400 to 1390 BC) or Pharaoh Amenhotep III (1390 to 1353 BC). Nebamun and his wife, Hatshepsut, had two sons and a daughter; the elder son, Netjermes, a priest, seems to have taken over his father's office on the latter's death. Nebamun prepared for himself a tomb-chapel of shining white local limestone on the opposite side of the river from Karnak Temple. He had the walls painted with vivid images of life, death and the afterlife as seen and understood in the world he knew. The scenes of domesticated animals and wildlife, of dancing girls, of Nebamun counting tributes, and even of his pet cat catching birds in the reeds, are among the finest and most realistic ever found in Egypt. After Nebamun's burial the tomb below the chapel was sealed, although it may have been opened to permit other family burials. The chapel was left open so that Nebamun's friends and relatives could pay visits and admire the splendid art, just as worshippers in Rome enjoyed the wonderful visions created by Michaelangelo. Amenhotep III's reign was followed by a period of instability caused when his heir, who called himself Akhenaten, overthrew the priests of Amun and created a new religion and a new seat of rule -- albeit temporary -- at Amarna. This chaos continued until the end of the 18th Dynasty, and Nebamun's tomb was among those attacked by iconoclasts. Inevitably, as time went by anything of value was removed, and Nebamun and his tomb-chapel were forgotten. As the centuries passed the tomb and its fabulous paintings appear to have escaped further disturbance. In the early 19th century, however, in places a long way from Egypt, interest in the ancient world and its antiquities was growing. This interest was fed by early European treasure seekers and adventurers. Some, like the French agent Bernadino Drovetti (1776-1852), were bent on claiming prizes for personal profit; others, like the British consul-general Henry Salt (1780-1827), retrieved their spoils under the guise of preserving "world" heritage for public collections -- in Salt's case, the British Museum -- although he expected to be paid for his toil on top of expenses. Sadly such treasure hunters paid scant attention to provenance or even location, dragging away anything moveable (as Salt's agent, Giovanni Belzoni dragged the head of Ramses, now in the British Museum) or hacking the prettier sections of paintings and reliefs off tomb and temple walls. By 1820 Salt was working with a Greek agent, Giovanni "Yanni" d'Athanasi (1798-1854). These two were vying with Drovetti to procure antiquities, and both sides employed subterfuge and trickery against one another. Exactly where d'Athanasi found the tomb of Nebamun is not known, and he himself died (in poverty, in London) without revealing the facts -- probably not through malice, but because such a detail was thought of at the time as insignificant. It was not then understood that an artefact had no real value for scholars unless its context could be established. The tomb in question, however, was most probably at Dra Abul-Naga. The paintings had been applied on mud-brick plaster mixed with chopped straw smoothed over the hewn rock of the tomb chambers. The plaster was fragile, and the sections d'Athanasi's men removed varied in thickness so that some easily crumbled and cracked. D'Athanasi took the sections he wanted, probably concentrating on those that he thought would appeal to European taste. After removing his chosen fragments he left the tomb and the rest of the paintings, which were probably intact until he found them, to be looted, destroyed, and mostly lost. Salt shipped 10 fragments to London in 1821. Despite the lack of precise information as to their original location, their transportation and shipment from Alexandria were carefully recorded. "Some care must be taken in carrying them, as jolting would probably destroy them," Salt wrote. That same year two young clergymen on a visit to Egypt, George Waddington and Barnard Hanbury, obtained an 11th fragment which was presented to the British Museum in 1833. Salt's methods of excavating and acquiring antiquities did not escape censure even in his day. Several contemporary commentators were critical, including the explorer James Burton (1788-1862) who was probably witnessing the destruction of Nebamun's tomb itself when he decried the way the paintings had been destroyed just so that a few pieces could be taken. Other fragments were picked over once d'Athanasi had removed the choicest bits, and some of these ended up in the Musée Calvet in Avignon, the Musée des Beau-Arts in Lyons, and in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. The Berlin pieces were purchased at the sale of a private collection in 1906. Another three fragments were acquired by the businessman Moise Levy de Benzion (1873-1943), founder of Cairo's Benzion department store. While in Europe during World War II Benzion, a Sephardic Jew, was captured and put to death by the Nazis, and after the war his collection was dispersed. It is believed that these fragments are now stored in the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. When Salt's 10 fragments arrived at the British Museum in 1821, the museum was still at Montagu House. It was more than a decade before the pieces were consolidated with plaster of Paris and backed with wood so as to form part of the collection of the "Egyptian Saloon" in the grand new British Museum building, where they were hung in 1835. Not only were the panels displayed as individual paintings, but there was no indication that they came from the same tomb-chapel. The catalogue listed them as "...fresco paintings chiefly illustrative of the domestic habits of the Egyptians". They were certainly not rated as fine art. Unfortunately the wooden backs forced the evaporating moisture from the plaster of Paris to the face of the paintings, and some of the colours and details faded and even disappeared. This is clear from comparisons with tracings made of the paintings at some point after their arrival. During World War I the paintings were placed in secure rooms, but in 1918 they were moved with other antiquities to the safety of the London Underground. They spent most of World War II in a quarry in Wiltshire in the southwest of England, but sadly the vibration of the train journey they endured caused some crumbling... and more plastering, and even glue and nylon repairs, and further discolouration. The paintings were displayed separately in the museum, some in the Third Upper Egyptian Room and some in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. In 1997 they and other antiquities in the Egyptian galleries were removed from display to make way for major alterations that included the construction of the Great Court. This hiatus was timely, and museum curators used the opportunity to carry out a complete and painstaking restoration of the paintings. While the paintings are being meticulously restored in the British Museum laboratories, let us turn our attention to the other father in our epic. Michel Mourad Cohen was a member of a Sephardic Jewish family from Aleppo in Syria who lived with his British wife, Sonia Douek, in Egypt, where their son Ronald was born. The family fled to England amidst the anti-Jewish sentiment in the aftermath of the Suez War, and there Ronald excelled at school and eventually became president of the Oxford Union and co-founder of the adventure capital firm Apax Partners. Among other interests Apax has supported the Middle East Peace initiative by funding Palestinian entrepreneurial activities. Sir Ronald Cohen became a trustee of the British Museum in 2005. The Michael Cohen Gallery, which he and his third wife Sharon Harel-Cohen financed through the R and S Cohen Foundation, is dedicated to the memory of his father Michel. "This whole gallery is about a son paying homage to his late father," the gallery's curator Richard Parkinson told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Nebamun's son can be seen making offerings to his dead father." This sense of respect, even reverence, pervades the Michael Cohen Gallery in Room 61. A lowered false ceiling suggests the proportions of the original tomb, with a faint blue light from above indicating the brilliant desert sky. The walls are of French limestone, chosen because it was the closest match in colour and texture to the limestone of the Luxor hills. The paintings are arranged to evoke a visit to the tomb- chapel as would have been made 3,500 years ago. However, while past visitors would have come to admire the paintings, the objects depicted would have held little mystery for them. To help modern visitors visualise the scenes, similar items have been placed nearby. These concrete images help one understand objects people in the past would have known in reality. All the exhibits are contemporaneous with the paintings, and most come from Thebes, while others are from Amarna. They include wine jars, furniture, utensils, cosmetic spoons, jewellery, and even baskets and shoes. One prized piece is an opaque glass fish, probably tilapia, from the Amarna excavations . "We are very happy with the balance of information," Parkinson says. "The objects draw on the same information as the paintings and give a visual reality." Like most artefacts preserved from ancient burials, the objects were owned by wealthier members of society. "We shall never know exactly what [life] was like," Parkinson says. "We especially don't know about the everyday lives of ordinary people. The lives of the wealthy are remembered." Indeed, the scenes of Nebamun overseeing the temple's property, as dictated by his position, show how he spent his working day and how he wished to be remembered. The most alluring aspects of the paintings, however, are the scenes showing how Nebamun spent his leisure time hunting in the marshes and of birds, animals, plants and butterflies. One can only wonder at what went through d'Athanasi's mind when he first saw them, but he seems to have decided for himself which sections to take and what to leave behind. "We think they went for things that would appeal to the English taste -- feasts of food, fluffy animals, and gardens," says Parkinson in his illustrated book, The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun, which is available in Cairo. The paintings would surely have drawn an audience in their day, even if the scenes might have been interpreted slightly differently by ancient admirers. "It was about the joy of life," Parkinson says. "But is the texture of the animals that sets them apart from similar paintings. These are the best- preserved butterflies from ancient Egypt." The prancing horse is one of the best known images of its kind, but the scene- stealer is Nebamun's ginger cat, seen busily catching his own birds. Visitors to Room 61 can see the art as if hung in a gallery, much as Nebamun's contemporaries did. The idea, Parkinson says, is "to put them back into context and display them as works of art... comparable to Renaissance masters. We encourage people to look at them as paintings." They are accordingly displayed as though built into the tomb walls. The gallery contains 10 to 20 per cent of the original tomb paintings. One small fragment is on permanent loan from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, while the pieces in France were considered too fragile to travel. "We have tried to reconstruct the original tomb visit of ancient times," Parkinson says. "We have had constant dialogue with Egyptian and other archaeologists but we have no idea of the tomb's original place." So the setting is a result of intelligent approximation. Despite their painful history the colours are incredibly vivid, although some blue and green pieces had fallen off because the pigments were more coarsely ground than others. The paintings are mounted in epoxy foam set in wooden boxes in steel frames on springs to protect them from vibration, and all the mounts are concealed inside the climate-controlled cases. "It was an engineering nightmare," Parkinson says. And worth every effort. "We wanted to get something of what it was like to be an Egyptian looking at these paintings, and to give back to the paintings what was taken from them when they were taken away." Perhaps at last, and in a way they could never have imagined, Nebamun and his gifted artist have reached immortality.
