Cooking Cakes with Fat, Tomb of Rekhmire

Art Historical Context

This vibrant facsimile captures a lively scene of ancient Egyptian bakers preparing cakes with fat, originally painted on the walls of the Tomb of Rekhmire during Egypt’s New Kingdom, Dynasty 18. Rekhmire served as vizier under pharaohs Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, and his tomb is renowned for its detailed depictions of daily life, crafts, and offerings intended to sustain the deceased in the afterlife. The scene shows men engaged in food preparation, highlighting the importance of baking and provisioning in both earthly and spiritual contexts. Created by Nina de Garis Davies around the early 20th century, this 1:1 scale copy uses tempera paint and ink on paper to faithfully reproduce the original wall painting’s colors and details. Davies was celebrated for her meticulous facsimiles, which preserve the vivid hues and artistic techniques of Egyptian tomb art that have often faded over millennia. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum’s Egyptian Art department, the work offers modern viewers an intimate glimpse into New Kingdom culture, where such domestic scenes underscored themes of abundance, labor, and ritual care for the dead.

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...