The walls of the rock-cut tombs and mastaba chapels are covered with scenes: plowing, harvest, fishing, cattle, crafts, banquets and long tables of offerings. These pictures had a job to do.
Key idea
Tomb scenes of farming, feasting and offering were meant to provide for the dead forever, not only to record their lives. They show an ideal life for eternity.
Why it works
Egyptians believed that images and words could act. A picture of bread on an offering table could feed the ka; a picture of servants harvesting grain could keep the harvest coming. Carved or painted in the tomb, these images would go on working after the family stopped visiting. That is why the same themes repeat in tomb after tomb: they are the things a person needs, not a diary of one life.
Signs that images were believed to act
- The owner is shown again and again seated before a table piled with food, often with a long list of offerings.
- In some burial chambers, signs of dangerous animals like snakes and scorpions are drawn cut in two, so they could not harm the dead.
- Enemies sometimes hacked out the faces or names of figures, to stop the images from working for their owners.
- Scenes show everything in its best state: full granaries, fat cattle, a young and healthy owner.
The scenes still tell us much about daily life, because artists drew real tools, crops and crafts. But read them as an ideal, not a snapshot: a scene of a harvest does not prove that this harvest happened on a given day.
Worked example: Snapshot or ideal?
A tomb shows its owner, young and slim, watching a perfect harvest, though his mummy shows he died old. What does that mean?
- The scene shows the life he wished to have forever.
- It is an ideal, not a portrait of a day.
- Age and illness are left out on purpose.
Answer: It is an ideal image for eternity.
Worked example: Why cut the snake?
In a burial chamber, a hieroglyph of a snake is drawn in two pieces. Why?
- Egyptians believed images could come to life.
- A whole snake next to the body might harm it.
- Cutting it made it harmless.
Answer: To keep the image from harming the dead.
Common mistake
Reading tomb scenes as snapshots of real events. They show an ideal life for eternity. Quick check: ask what the scene provides for the dead.