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Decoration: Religious and Secular
Tombs and Temples
In buildings with a religious purpose, the decoration of the walls and ceiling was largely dictated by principles of sympathetic magic. The main aim was to enable the owner (god, king, or tomb owner) to magically reactivate the content of the scenes so that they could continue to experience and enjoy these activities throughout eternity. A ceremony known as the “Opening of the Mouth,” performed by a special priest who, with an adze, touched the mouth, hands, and feet of the figures sculpted and painted on these walls, was believed to bring these scenes to life. Although there was some variation in the wall decoration of nobles’ tombs over the centuries, the pattern essentially included scenes of offerings being presented; activities on the owner’s estate such as harvesting, agriculture, herding cattle, tending wild and domestic animals, dairy farming, and netting birds; and the owner’s leisure activities such as hunting birds, fishing in a papyrus marsh, hunting animals in the desert, listening to music and singing, playing games, and banqueting. The preparations for the owner’s funeral were often depicted and frequently included scenes of craftsmen preparing tomb goods. During the Old Kingdom, from Dynasty 5, the Pyramid Texts were inscribed on the interior walls of pyramids to provide the king with magical protection and supply him with spells that would give him every means of access to heaven. In the New Kingdom, the kings’ tombs at Thebes were decorated with scenes of rites taken from the sacred books, thus providing an illustrated record of the journey of the sun god through the underworld where he fought evils and demons. These were present to help the king defeat the dangers encountered in his own passage from life to the hereafter. In the queens’ and princes’ tombs, the scenes again focused on the successful completion of their final journey and on their relationship with the gods. In the temples, the wall scenes depicted the rituals once performed in various areas of the building (thus ensuring their continuation) or historical events such as the king’s coronation or the foundation and consecration of the temple. .
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Dwellings
In the palaces and houses, there was greater freedom and opportunity to develop the architectural features found in the stone temples and tombs. In the palaces at Amarna and Thebes there is evidence of their richly painted interiors; rural scenes and details adorned the walls, floors, and ceilings. The Ramesside palaces also provide evidence that faience tiles and rosettes were used as inlays in friezes and borders. In the king’s bedroom, flowers were placed around his bed as additional decoration. There is also evidence that people painted scenes and designs on the interior walls of their houses. At Kahun the inside walls of the best rooms in the houses were often plastered with a layer of mud. Plasterers’ floats were discovered there; the larger float, made of wood, was used to apply the rough coat of plaster, and the smaller, lighter one was employed for the facing coat. Sometimes a series of colored borders was painted on top of the plaster with a dark color or black at the bottom. Three to five feet above this, black and red lines were painted on a white background above which the wall was given a yellow wash. In two of the workmen’s houses there were wall scenes; one showed a representation of an apparently unique building with columns, while the other illustrated a large house. The outside of the lower half of the house is shown, but for the upper level the wall is cut away to give a view of the interior where the master is waited upon by his servant. At the New Kingdom royal workmen’s town of Deir el-Medina, the more affluent occupants plastered and whitewashed the outside walls of their houses and painted their doors red. Interior walls were either whitewashed or decorated with murals, and the columns, door surrounds, and windows were painted (yellow and blue were particularly favored). Unlike at Kahun the furniture and household goods did not survive at Deir el-Medina, but scenes on the walls of the houses show the items that were once in use. These included stools, tables, headrests for sleeping, chests, boxes, baskets, and jars. The ornamentation found in the brick buildings drew on the forms found in stone monuments, inspiration from the natural world, and the buildings, domestic goods, and everyday scenes observed around them. Sometimes an element of house furnishing or decoration itself provided the basis for ornamentation: Some patterns found in decorative details in brick buildings and in the stone architecture were derived from the designs of the brightly colored woven reed mats that were hung on walls. .
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Decoration: Religious and Secular
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