Detail of a Ram, Tomb of Khnumhotep

Art Historical Context

Step into the ancient world with this exquisite *Detail of a Ram* from Tomb of Khnumhotep, a Kingdom masterpiece dating to around 1897–1878 B.C. during Egypt's Dynasty 12.numhotep, a nomarch (provincial governor), adorned his Beni Hasan tomb with vibrant wall paintings depicting offerings and sacred animals like this ram. In Egyptian culture, rams symbolized fertility, strength, and divine power, often linked to creator gods such as Khnum or Amun, ensuring prosperity in the afterlife. This facsimile, meticulously reproduced at 1:1 scale in tempera on paper (18 x 21 cm), captures the original's lively detail by pioneering Egyptologists Nina and Norman de Garis Davies. Their early 20th-century copies preserved fading tomb art using vibrant pigments on a stable medium, allowing modern viewers to appreciate the Egyptians' mastery of flat, profile figures, bold outlines, and symbolic colors—hallmarks of Middle Kingdom painting. Now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Rogers Fund, 1933), this piece bridges millennia, inviting you to ponder the ram's watchful gaze as a timeless emblem of eternal life and abundance.

About the Artist

Nina de Garis Davies|Norman 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...