Gathering Honey, Tomb of Rekhmire

Art Historical Context

Step into ancient Egypt with *Gathering Honey* from the Tomb of Rekhmire, a vivid facsimile capturing a slice of New Kingdom life around 1479–1425 B.C. This scene, originally a wall painting in the Theban tomb of Rekhmire—a powerful vizier under pharaohs Thutmose III and Amenhot II—depicts men at work harvesting honey from hives. Such detailed vignettes of daily labor, from beekeeping to crafts, adorned elite tombs to magically ensure prosperity in the afterlife, reflecting the Egyptians' deep reverence for order (maat) and abundance. Rendered in tempera on paper at a precise 1:1 scale by early 20th-century artist Nina de Garis Davies, this copy preserves the original's flat, symbolic style of Dynasty 18 art. Davies, renowned for her meticulous watercolor facsimiles of Egyptian tombs, used layered pigments to mimic the vibrant mineral-based colors and hierarchical figures typical of tomb painting—larger for important people, smaller for workers. Honey gathering highlights Egypt's ingenuity in apiculture, vital for sweetening food, medicine, and rituals. Acquired via the Rogers Fund in 1930, this piece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art bridges millennia, inviting us to marvel at how ancient workers scaled ladders and smoked hives, much like today. A testament to enduring human industry!

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...