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THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
THE TOMB OF
PERNEB

NEW YORK MCMXVI

THE TOMB OF
PERNEB

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
THE TOMB OF
PERNEB

WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
MCMXVI

COPYRIGHT BY
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
FEBRUARY, I916

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
-WHICH ORIGINALLY STOOD
IN THE CEMETERY OF THE ANCIENT MEMPHIS
AND -WAS ACQUIRED
FROM THE EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT IN I913
-WAS PRESENTED TO
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
BY
EDWARD S. HARKNESS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Dedication  v
Table of Contents  vii
List of Illustrations  Ix

CHAPTER I
History of the tomb and principal features of
ITS construction, as ascertained in the work
of removing IT FROM SAKKARA FOR RE-ERECTION
IN THE MUSEUM. By AlBERT M. LyTHGOE
The cemetery of Memphis — The mastaba-
tomb — The tomb of Perneb — Its position — Its
plan — The history of the tomb — The discovery
of the tomb — The excavation and removal of
the tomb — Details of its construction — Pack
ing of the blocks — Transport of the boxes —
Arrival at the Museum and treatment for pres
ervation — Re-erection of the tomb in the Mu
seum.

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE
Chapter II . . . .47
A STUDY OF ITS DECORATIVE AND INSCRIPTIONAL
FEATURES. By CAROLINE L. RaNSOM . . .49
The figures on the facade — Date of Perneb's
activity — Titles on the lintel in the entrance
passage — Scene in the vestibule — Decoration
of the passage between the vestibule and the
main chamber — The main chamber — Technic
of the decoration — Conventions in the use of
color.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE
Fig. I . Map showing position of Memphis and
its cemetery ... . . 5
Fig. 2. Map of Sakkara cemetery showing
position of tomb of Perneb. Adapted
from de Morgan, Carte de la Necro-
pole Memphite, PI. 10 . .7
Fig. 3. Tomb of Perneb. Section east and
west through courtyard and burial-
chamber . . 8
Fig. 4. Plan of tomb of Perneb 9
Fig. 5. Model of tomb of Perneb showing abut
ment against tomb of Shepsesre and
a tomb to the north . 1 1
Fig. 6. View southwest from Pyramid of Tela
showing position of tomb of Perneb at
the right. In the middle distance an
unidentified stone pyramid, the Step
Pyramid, and the small pyramid of
Unas . . . . 12
Fig. 7. Excavation and removal of tomb of
Perneb. View from north 1 3
Fig. 8. Courtyard of Perneb looking south 14

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 9.
Fig. 10.
Fig. II.
Fig. 12.
Fig. 13.
Fig. 14-
Fig. 15.

Fig.

16.

Fig.

17-

Fig.

18.

Fig.

19.

Fig.

20.

Fig.

21.

Fig.

22.

Fig.

23.

Fig.

24.

Fig.

25.

Fig.

26.

Fig.

27.

Fig.

28.

Fig.

29.

Fig.

30.

Fig. 31.

Courtyard of Perneb looking north . 1 5
Clearing courtyard of Perneb . 16
Clearing courtyard of Perneb . 17
View south across tomb after removal
of upper courses 18
View south across tomb with only lower
courses remaining . 19
Progress of the excavations . . 22
Preparing to remove upper courses of
decorated chambers, which are filled
with sand to prevent the collapse of
their walls . . . . -23
Removing lintel of main doorway 25
Hauling lintel of main doorway . . 27
Packing lintel of main doorway . . 29
Clearing the statue-chamber ... 30
Removing blocks from fagade . 3 1
Fallen blocks found at the bottom of
the main chamber ... 32
Model vases and dishes of stone from
the burial-chamber ... 33
Method of carrying blocks ... 35
Wrapping and packing blocks 37
Camels bringing lumber and packing
materials ... . . 39
Loading heavier boxes on cars . . 40
Train ready to leave Sakkara . . 41
Hauling train in the desert ... 43
Our camp at Sakkara . . -45
Figure of Perneb on the facade to the
left of the doorway . . . . 52
Figure of Perneb on the fagade to the
right of the doorway . . . . 53

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE
Fig. 32. Quarry mark, "The Companion, Per
neb," in cursive writing . . 57
Fig. 33. Inscription, "The Sole Companion, the
Lord Chamberlain, Perneb, " in orna
mental hieroglyphs . 57
Fig. 34. Preliminary sketch, Perneb inspecting
gifts of estates of the North and
South ... . 59
Fig. 33. "P'alse Door" in main chamber in
scribed with prayers for the deceased
Lord Chamberlain ... 65
Fig. 36. Side wall in main chamber showing
door from vestibule and scene of
offerings brought to the tomb . . 67
Fig. 37. Detail from side wall in main chamber
showing offerings and priests per
forming ceremonies ... 69
Fig. 38. Detail from a Fifth Dynasty tomb
showing horizontal guiding lines.
After Davies, The Mastaba of Ptah-
hetep and Akhethetep at Saqqareh,
II, PI. 17 . • ... 73
Fig. 39. Offering-vessel ...... 75

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
CHAPTER I
THE HISTORY OF THE TOMB
AND THE PRINCIPAL FEATURES
OF ITS CONSTRUCTION

M'

CHAPTER I
THE CEMETERY OF MEMPHIS
ORE than four thousand five hundred years
ago — we may say approximately 2650 B. C.
— an Egyptian dignitary named Perneb, who
held high office under the king at Memphis, erected in
the great cemetery of the capital a tomb which should
afford enduring protection to his body and likewise
stand as a fitting memorial to his name. During the
long period when Memphis served as the seat of the
kingdom, its cemetery, which lay along the desert edge
west of the city, reached such widely separated points
as Abu Roashon the north and Dahshur on the south —
a stretch some twenty miles in length. In this particu
lar period when Perneb lived — the Fifth Dynasty — the
kings selected principally the region centering about the
modern Sakkara for the erection of their pyramids; and
near these royal mausolea, if possible, the dignitaries of
the court always elected to place their own. Thus,
Perneb and one named Shepsesre, who was in all
likelihood Perneb's son, constructed their tombs side
by side at Sakkara, in an area some two hundred
3

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
and fifty yards north of the "Step Pyramid" of King
Zoser and just outside the great enclosure-wall of that
pyramid and its precinct. This king had lived some
three hundred years before this time, and with the
ambition to erect a monument more imposing than
those of any of his predecessors, had constructed this
first royal tomb in the semblance of a pyramid, although
in the strictest sense it did not have this form. This
monument, therefore, was already one of some antiquity
in Perneb's time, but we may almost take it for granted
that his own sovereign was one of those who had erected
their pyramids in the district, and so Perneb had chosen
this position for his final resting-place as being as near
that of his lord and master as circumstances allowed.
THE MASTABA-TOMB
The cemetery of Sakkara at this period must have
formed an imposing sight. With here and there a pyra
mid towering above its surroundings, the space between
was filled with a vast number of these private tombs
such as that of Perneb. In many cases they were
undoubtedly arranged with a considerable degree of
regularity, row by row in streets, with occasionally a
broad avenue to afford easier access to the area; while
in other sections their positions, following the natural
contours of the surface, could not have had so regular
an aspect. The tombs were all similar in outward
appearance, of a type prevalent throughout Egypt dur
ing these earlier periods of its history. Their origin
dated back to the very first Egyptian dynasty, since
which time their construction had advanced through
several definitely marked stages, until at the period we
4

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THE TOMB OF PERNEB
are considering they had reached their highest point of
development. Rectangular in plan, with axis north and
south, they were oriented to the points of the compass,
as was the case, also, with the pyramid; and, like the
latter, their principal face was that towards the Nile, the
direction from which they were approached as people
came up from the towns and villages in the valley. Con
structed generally of limestone, their sides rose in an
abrupt slope, at an angle considerably steeper than that
of the pyramid, and their tops were flat. Although
varying somewhat in size, they averaged quite forty to
fifty feet in length, thirty to forty feet in width, and
fifteen to twenty feet in height. From their resem
blance to the long, flat benches or seats in use in the
Egyptian house, they have been given the name of
"mastaba" in modern times.
Deep down beneath this superstructure of the tomb
was the burial-chamber, reached by a shaft descending
perpendicularly through the tomb-structure and the
bed-rock of the plateau, forty, fifty, and even some
times ninety to a hundred feet in depth. In the cham
ber was the sarcophagus, massive in size and generally
of limestone or granite. After the interment the cham
ber was sealed by a great portcullis, or by blocking the
doorway with masonry, and then the shaft was com
pletely filled with rock and gravel and sealed over at
the level of the top of the tomb above.
The superstructure itself contained two other essen
tial features of the tomb. The first of these was the
chapel or offering-chamber, sometimes elaborated into a
series of rooms and columned halls, their walls covered
with sculptured and painted scenes depicting the offer-
6

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FIG. 2. MAP OF SAKKARA CEMETERY SHO-WING POSITION OF TOMB OF PERNEB
ADAPTED FROM DE MORGAN, CARTE DE LA NECROPOLE MEMPHITE, PL. IO
THE TOMB OF PERNEB
ing-ceremonies, and very often, too, the various activi
ties and pleasures which the owner had pursued in the
life he had left behind, and which he expected to
continue in the life hereafter. These chambers were
entered through a doorway, which was generally in the

FIG. 3.

TOMB OF PERNEB. SECTION EAST AND -WEST THROUGH
COURTYARD AND BURIAL-CHAMBER

eastern facade of the tomb, though oftentimes an en
trance on the north or south end led to them through
a corridor or hall. The Egyptian thought of the de
ceased as sojourning in the tomb, accompanied by his
ka or "double," and it was necessary therefore that
8

ADJOINING TOMB OF SHEPSESRE

FIG. 4. PLAN OF TOMB OF PERNEB

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
food and drink be provided for their sustenance. Thus,
a noble of Perneb's position often ensured this provision
by leaving an endowment, the income from which was
to be devoted to the maintenance of the tomb and its
ritual. Estates were sometimes included in this endow
ment, which was the fact in Perneb's case (see page
6i);and in one instance it is recorded that a court official
of this dynasty appointed as many as eight mortuary
priests for the service of his tomb.
The other and final feature of the tomb was the secret
statue-chamber, or "serdab," as it has been called,
where the portrait-statue of the owner and sometimes
those of members of his family stood. This chamber
was never accessible, but was constructed in the tomb
superstructure somewhere in proximity to one of the
offering-chambers. If connected at all with them, it was
merely by a narro-w slot, which was provided apparently
that the deceased, on his visits to the statue-chamber to
look again with plpasure on the likeness of his earthly
form, might be attracted by the smell of the incenseand
offerings in the outer chamber and come to partake
of the meats and fruits and other delicacies which had
been brought. THE TOMB OF PERNEB
The tomb which Perneb erected at Sakkara con
formed in general to this description, though in its
arrangement of chambers it was less pretentious and
elaborate than the adjoining tomb of Shepsesre. From
common features in their construction it is clear that
both these tombs were built at one and the same time.
The evidence for this, as we shall see later, lies in the

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
manner in which two projecting wings from the faf ade
of Perneb's tomb abutted on that of Shepsesre, and the
way in which the construction of the latter was finished
in order to meet this feature.

FIG. 5. MODEL OF TOMB OF PERNEB SHOWING ABUTMENT AGAINST
TOMB OF SHEPSESRE AND A TOMB TO THE NORTH
ITS POSITION
The tomb of Shepsesre stood to the eastward of
that of Perneb, with a space of some eight feet between
them, while their southern sides, which were practi
cally in alignment, were about fifteen or twenty teet
distant from the enclosure-wall of Zoser' s pyramid,
and abutted on a street which ran close alongside
the base of the wall on that side. Perhaps a hun
dred feet or more to the north a great avenue, following
a natural depression, crossed the cemetery east and

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FIG. 6. VIEW SOUTHWEST FROM PYRAMID OF TETA SHOWING POSITION OF TOMB OF PERNEB AT
THE RIGHT. IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE AN UNIDENTIFIED STONE PYRAMID, THE
STEP PYRAMID. AND THE SMALL PYRAMID OF UNAS

ijB*' .»... .rff ^

FIC. 7. EXCAVATION AND REMOVAL OF TOMB OF PERNEB. VIEW FROM NORTH

FIG. 8. COURTYARD OF PERNEB LOOKING SOUTH

FIG. 9. COURTYARD OF PERNEB LOOKING NORTH

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
west, and although it is now drifted in with the desert
sand its position stands out prominently at the present
time (see fig. 2). Shepsesre's tomb was planned to
cover in length the entire space between this avenue
and the street at the south which skirted the base of

FIG. 10. CLEARING COURTYARD OF PERNEB

the great enclosure-wall. But that of Perneb, whether
from lack of space or the fact that it was designed on
less pretentious lines, was made to fit in between the
street at the south just mentioned and a tomb of similar
size, which already stood on the avenue to the north of
it. In fact, the space available at this spot for the
erection of the tomb of Perneb was actually insufficient
to take its length as apparently already planned, and
this difficulty was met not by reducing its length at all,
but by allowing the sloping north side of the tomb to
16

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
rest against the end of the earlier tomb, as may be seen
in fig. 4. Between this earlier tomb and that of
Shepsesre a passage was left from the main avenue as
a means of access to the former, and advantage was
taken of this in the planning of Perneb's tomb, that

FIG. II. CLEARING COURTYARD OF PERNEB

it might serve as the means of entrance to his tomb
also. ITS PLAN
The tomb of Perneb followed the regulation rectangu
lar form (see plan, fig. 4), and measured about fifty-
four feet in length, forty feet in width, and eighteen feet
in height. This plan, however, was amplified by the
addition of the two projecting wings on the facade
already mentioned, thus forming a courtyard about
twenty-five and one-half feet long and eight feet wide
'7

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
between the facade of the tomb and the back of that
of Shepsesre. Entrance to the tomb was provided, from
the avenue and passage described above, through a
doorway and chamber in the northern wing, and so into
the courtyard beyond. On the southern side of the

jJWiTit

FIG.

VIEW SOUTH ACROSS TOMB AFTER REMOVAL OF UPPER
COURSES

court a doorway in the other wing led into an offering-
chamber and in the western wall of this a slot opened
through into the serdab constructed in the tomb proper.
Another, and the principal, offering-chamber was
reached through a great recessed doorway, thirteen and
one-half feet high and eight feet wide, in the center of
the faf ade. Passing through the doorway in this recess,
one entered first a small vestibule and then through a
doorway on the left into the chamber itself. This part
of the tomb alone was decorated. Outside, to the right

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
and left on the face of the main doorway, was a large
figure of Perneb in painted relief, standing in the con
ventional attitude, with one foot advanced and grasping
his staff in his hand. On the roll-shaped lintel of the
doorway a painted panel bore his name and title —

FIG. 13. VIEW SOUTH ACROSS TOMB WITH ONLY LOWER COURSES
REMAINING

"Perneb, Sole Companion (of the King) and Lord
Chamberlain." The decoration of this main offering-chamber and its
vestibule offers interesting evidence, which will be
described in detail in a succeeding chapter, that the
tomb was hurriedly finished, and, in so far at least as its
decoration was concerned, never completed. This
fact, moreover, is borne out by certain conditions in
another part of the tomb; for in the southern chamber
described above, the walls exhibit an inferior and hap-
19

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
hazard type of masonry entirely out of keeping with
that in any other part of the structure. If, as seems
likely, Perneb had left the erection of his tomb until the
later years of his life, perhaps some warning of his
approaching end or even death itself rendered the hur
ried finishing of these features necessary.
Referring again to the courtyard, on the facade of the
tomb high up on the left of the main doorway was a
window which opened through into the decorated
offering-chamber. Hardly of pretentious size as it
appears in the facade, this window narrows down
toward the inside until it becomes hardly more than a
mere slit in the chamber itself. It must be borne in
mind that in Egypt, with the blinding glare of the sun on
the desert outside, some such reduction in size of the
window would be necessary if the hghting of the
chamber were to be subdued and in keeping with its
purpose. Of the doorways in the tomb, three had been provided
with wooden doors, or at least had been fitted to receive
them. These were the two doorways in the northern
wing — the outermost, by which persons entered from
the street, and the second one, which led into the court
yard — and, on the opposite side of the courtyard, the
doorway leading into the southern chamber. In all
three cases the doors were single, of the regulation type,
with a pivot at top and bottom, swinging in holes in the
lintel and the floor. It could be seen that both door
ways of the northern wing, moreover, had had sockets,
presumably of bronze or wood and containing the pivot
holes, which had been set into pockets about six inches
square in the lintels; for in each case those who had
20

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
stripped the tomb had chiseled away the stone suffi
ciently to extract them. In the doorway in the south
ern chamber, however, the pivot hole was simply cut in
the Hntel itself and was about three inches in diameter.
Only the outermost doorway on the street had been
provided with a bolt, but the nature of this could not be
determined, for the block in the door-jamb, in which
presumably it had been set, had been torn out of the
wall by the plunderers and was missing.
In the northwest and southwest corners of the court
yard, where the two wings join the faf ade, was in each
case a small blunted obelisk, of limestone and unin-
scribed — symbols of the Sun-god. In a third corner of
the courtyard, the northeastern one, a low bench was
constructed of Nile mud covered with white stucco.
This measured about six feet in length, two and one-
half feet in width, and six inches in height, and may
have been intended as a seat on which visitors might
rest or as a place where offerings might be placed before
they were taken into the tomb during the ceremonies.
The burial-chamber, the position of which can be
seen in fig. 3, was reached by a shaft about five feet
square and fifty-five feet in depth. The chamber, which
opened out of the shaft on its eastern side at the bottom,
was roughly cut out of the solid rock and somewhat
irregular in shape, measuring approximately thirteen
feet in length, nine feet in width, and six and one-half
feet in height. It was provided with a limestone sar
cophagus, placed along its eastern side, having a
rounded lid and measuring in length eight feet ten
inches, in width three feet nine inches, and in height
four feet ten inches.

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
A few yards to the north of this burial-chamber and
its shaft, Perneb, as if to make provision for the burial
of his wife or some member of his family, had begun the
construction of another shaft which was carried down as

jm^^'T^

FIG. 14. PROGRESS OF THE EXCAVATIONS
far as the bed-rock and excavated in the latter to the
depth of about one yard, but never completed farther.

THE HISTORY OF THE TOMB
Following the death of Perneb, we can trace the
history of the tomb through the succeeding ages, both
from the evidence which it itself affords and also from
the general conditions which prevail throughout the
Memphite cemetery. For several generations, at least,
the mortuary priests and Perneb's descendants fulfilled
their pious duty of visiting the tomb and providing the
necessary offerings of food and drink for his sustenance.
22

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
Then gradually this care ceased, and as neglect fell upon
the tomb it was visited by thieves and plunderers who
searched it for whatever could be found of value. With
considerable labor they cleared the burial shaft of the
boulders and rubble, with which it had been filled for

FIG. 15. PREPARING TO REMOVE UPPER COURSES OF DECORATED
CHAMBERS, WHICH ARE FILLED WITH SAND TO PREVENT
THE COLLAPSE OF THEIR WALLS

the very purpose of thwarting such efforts, and gained
an entrance to the burial-chamber. Then breaking
open the sarcophagus, they stripped the mummy of its
ornaments and scattered about the floor the Canopic jars
of limestone, the pottery vessels containing food and
drink, and many tiny stone vases and dis]ies with which
the deceased had been provided. At the same time,
entering the offering-chamber in the south wing of the
fafade, they ripped out the masonry framing the slot
23

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
which opened into the serdab, and dragged out the life-
size cedar statue of Perneb, as well as other smaller
wooden statues which stood there. These they broke
up on the spot and carried away as fire-wood, leaving on
the floor of the offering-chamber a fragment of the head
of the cedar statue and an arm and a foot from the
smaller ones, as evidence of their work of destruction.
Small pottery dishes, evidently representing an offering,
had originally been placed by Perneb's descendants on a
limestone slab or shelf on the wall of this southern
chamber just beneath the serdab-slot, and these the
plunderers likewise scattered upon the floor.
And so the tomb remained until, as time passed and
political disruption fefl upon the kingdom at the end of
the Sixth Dynasty, in common with all the others in the
cemetery it was drifted over by the shifting desert
sands until practically lost to view. Later kings and
nobles, fromtheMiddle Kingdom on, found these tombs
at Sakkara a convenient quarry from which to obtain
well-worked blocks for the construction of their own edi
fices on other sites, and thus many of them were de
pleted to hardly more than half of their original height.
Moreover, it is only within recent years, since the
establishment by the Egyptian Government of its
present system of guarding such ancient sites and the
still more recent enactment of rigorous laws, that this
wholesale destruction of monuments has been stopped.
As late as 1843, Lepsius, the leader of the great Prussian
archaeological expedition to Egypt, in a letter written
from the Pyramids of Gizeh in January of that year,
says: "It is really revolting to see how long lines of
camels from the neighboring villages come here daily,
24

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
and march off again, loaded with building stone. . . .
Yesterday a beautiful standing pillar, covered with
inscriptions, which was just going to be sketched, was
overturned by the robbers behind our backs. They do
not seem to have succeeded in breaking it to pieces.

FIG. 16. REMOVING LINTEL OF MAIN DOORWAY
The people here are so degenerate that their strength is
quite insufficient, with all their assiduity, to destroy
what their great predecessors have erected." ^ That the
Sakkara cemetery itself was suffering in the same man
ner at this time is to be seen in the modern villages of
Abusir and Sakkara, just below the plateau, where the
walls of many of the houses contain blocks from these
tombs bearing inscriptions or relief.
By a fortunate circumstance, however, Perneb's tomb
' R. Lepsius, Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia and the Peninsula of Sinai
London, 1853, p. 63. 25

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
escaped this fate. Aside from a few blocks which had
been taken from its uppermost courses at some ancient
period, presumably not long after the end of the Old
Kingdom, the walls of the tomb remained intact, for
apparently at that very time the top of this tomb had
been chosen as a convenient spot for dumping the
broken stone, rubble, and other debris resulting from the
stripping down of neighboring tombs, and thus a great
mound was formed above it which blanketed and pro
tected it till its discovery in recent years.
In the spring of 1843, Lepsius, following his work at
the Gizeh Pyramids just referred to, moved on to Sak
kara, where for two or three months he carried on
excavations. In the course of these he discovered the
tomb of Shepsesre and cleared its chambers, the plan of
which he afterwards published in his Denkmaler, as well
as the interesting scenes on their walls. ^ He did not
clear the exterior of the tomb, however, and so the
adjoining tomb of Perneb continued to remain unknown.
Between 1850 and i860, Mariette, in the progress of
the excavations at Sakkara which he conducted for a
series of years on behalf of the Cairo Museum, cleared a
number of tombs in the immediate neighborhood of that
of Perneb, including one of a certain Prince Raemkai not
far to the west of it. Then in 1 907 the Expedition of the
Metropolitan Museum made application to the Egyp
tian Government for permission to obtain by purchase
the sculptured walls from one of these Sakkara tombs.
For this purpose Mr. J. E. Quibell, then Director of
' Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Plates, Vol. I, PI. 39; Vol.
11, Pis. 60-64 bis; Text (edited by Naville, Borchardt and Sethe), Vol. I,
pp. 165-170. 26

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
Government Excavations at Sakkara, carried out the
clearing of a number of tombs in the particular part of
the cemetery which we are considering. In these exca
vations he re-opened the tomb of Raemkai mentioned
above, and the offering-chamber of this tomb, together

C^-

FIG. 17. HAULING LINTEL OF MAIN DOORWAY

with a wall from the tomb of Nyherkau and his wife,
Sekhemhathor, about a hundred yards eastward, was
afterwards transported to New York, where they are
now exhibited in our Third and Fourth Egyptian
Rooms. THE DISCOVERY OF THE TOMB
In the course of the work mentioned, Mr. Quibell
attacked the great mound of debris already described
as heaped up on the tomb of Perneb. After cutting
27

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
away one side of it he exposed the upper part of the
tomb on its northern end, including the roofing blocks
of its main offering-chamber. One of these had been
broken by the mass of debris which it had been bearing
and a part of it had fallen through into the chamber
below. Through this opening we were able to drop
down into the chamber, and although it was filled to
almost half its height with sand which, completely
blocking the outer doorway, had drifted in many cen
turies ago through the vestibule in a gradual descending
slope, we were able to examine its condition. The effect
of the great weight of the debtis which had been thrown
upon the tomb was at once discernible, for this mass
bearing upon the loose gravel filling composing the core
of the tomb had buckled ,the long southern wall of the
chamber inward to such an extent that a great section
of it had collapsed into the sand in the bottom. The
other walls were warped, to a considerable degree and
the blocks of several courses shifted from their original
positions; consequently it was clear that the tomb could
never be opened at any time for public inspection, as
has been done by the Egyptian Government in the
case of a number of the important tombs at Sakkara,
unless the walls of these chambers were taken down
and completely re-erected from their foundations.
THE EXCAVATION AND REMOVAL OF THE TOMB
It was for this reason that several years later, in the
spring of 191 3, Sir Gaston Maspero, then Director
General of Antiquities at Cairo, with a constant and
friendly interest in the work of the Metropolitan
Museum, gave his consent to the proposal for the pur-
28

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
chase of the tomb by the Museum and its shipment to
New York. Mr. Edward S. Harkness, a trustee of the
Museum, generously offered to meet all the expenses
incurred in its purchase, as well as in the work of exca
vating and taking down the tomb and transporting it to

FIG. le.

PACKINC LINTEL OF MAIN DOORWAY

the Museum. Preparations were made to begin the
work at once, and by the first week in April the
writer, accom.panied by Mr. Ambrose Lansing, a mem
ber of the Museum's Egyptian Expedition, was en
camped near the Pyramid of Teta, on the edge of
the Sakkara plateau. We had brought with us from
the Expedition headquarters at Thebes a group of
our most experienced native overseers, who were to
undertake the direction of various sides of the work,
and these were supplemented by other workmen, to a
total of about seventy-five, kindly placed at our dis-
29

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
posal from the government excavations at Sakkara
by Mr. Quibell, to whom we were constantly indebted
for advice and help on many sides throughout the
undertaking. In order to dispose of the sand and debris from the

FIG. iq. CLEARING THE STATUE-CHAMBER

clearing of the tomb, a double line of railway was first
laid out from the tomb northwards to the edge of the
depression marking the broad natural avenue already
described. Then, after cutting back the mound over
the tomb southward to a point where the enclosure-wall
of the Step Pyramid began to appear, the excavation of
the courtyard of Perneb was undertaken and afterwards
the clearing of the exterior of the tomb on its northern,
western, and southern sides, in the order mentioned.
With the structure thus exposed, the work of removing
30

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
its walls, block by block, was begun. It was our
intention to remove the whole facade of the tomb with
the two wings forming the courtyard, as well as all the
chambers of the superstructure, in order that when
it was re-erected in the Museum its original appearance

FIG. 20. REMOVING BLOCKS FROM FACADE
would be reproduced to visitors as it had presented itself
to those who had visited it in antiquity. In the case
of the south chamber and the serdab, it proved later,
however, that owing to the extensive use of plaster-
filling in their hastily constructed walls (see p. 19),
these could better be shown in the Museum in repro
ductions, and hence they were not removed.
DETAILS OF ITS CONSTRUCTION
As the work of removal went on, the details of the
construction of the tomb began to appear clearly and
31

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
proved to coincide with those found in other similar
structures of the period. A core had first been con
structed with a facing of roughly dressed blocks of
ordinary limestone, which had been quarried locally, laid
in mortar and arranged in stepped courses, the face of

FALLEN BLOCKS FOUND AT THE BOTTOM OF THE MAIN
CHAMBER

each course set back one and one-half to two inches from
that of the course upon which it rested. This core-
facing was backed by a rough supporting wall of rubble,
averaging about two feet and a half in thickness, and
laid in Nile mud. Then the space comprised within
these walls was filled simply with loose limestone chips
and gravel to the level of the top. This core of the
superstructure finished, the whole was then enveloped
in a casing of smoothly dressed and fine-grained lime
stone blocks, laid in a thin bed of mortar, a space of
about a foot being left between this outer casing and the
32

FIG. 22. MODEL VASES AND DISHES OF STONE FROM THE BURIAL-CHAMBER

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
face of the stepped core, which was then filled with
rubble. Mention was made earlier in this article of the fact
that the adjoining tomb of Shepsesre was built at the
same time as that of Perneb. The proof of this lies in
the fact that the two wings of Perneb's tomb which
abutted on the back of the tomb of Shepsesre, were
fitted against the stepped core of the latter at the par
ticular moment when that tomb had reached that point
in its construction. Then Shepsesre carried forward the
final stage in the erection of his tomb by adding its
smooth outer casing, but he was obliged to end it
abruptly here on the rear side at the points where the
wings of Perneb's tomb abutted. Thus that particular
portion of the rear of Shepsesre's tomb which lay inside
these wings of Perneb's courtyard remained with the
stepped face of the core exposed; but these steps
were afterwards filled out with white plaster to a
smooth sloping face and so presented a finished appear
ance. The limestone from which the outer casing-blocks of
these Memphite tombs were made, as well as those used
in the lining of the offering-chambers, was generally ob
tained from a quarry renowned throughout Egypt for
the fine quality of its stone. This was situated on the
eastern bank of the Nile at the modern Turra, almost
opposite Sakkara (see the map in fig. i). In the con
struction of Perneb's main offering-chamber and its ves
tibule, the lining of Turra blocks was supported at the
back by a construction wall of rubble, in the same manner
as in the case of the stepped facing of the tomb. To a
certain extent the care used in the erection of these partic-
34

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
ular chambers was disappointing, though entirely char
acteristic of the methods employed in many of the tombs
of the period. In so costly and representative a struc
ture one would have expected, in these chambers espe
cially, where the walls were to be covered with beauti-

FIG. 23. METHOD OF CARRYING BLOCKS

fully sculptured scenes, that the courses would have
been laid with fine, closely fitting joints. But this
apparently seemed an unnecessary labor to the builders
and they used, instead, a liberal amount of plaster in
the face of the joints to fill in and conceal the defects.
Thus, in the sculpture on these walls wherever a figure
happens to cross a joint, its lines have often been
modeled across as much as an inch or two of plaster
with which the ragged edges of the blocks had been
filled out. This difference in material, of course, was
rendered practically invisible when the painter after-
35

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
wards finished the work by covering it completely with
his colors.
In the work of taking down such a structure one has
an opportunity which rarely occurs in archaeological
work of seeing, though in reverse order, all the various
details of its erection. Thus very many of the blocks
bore on their backs "mason's marks" scrawlingly writ
ten in red ochre, while a great patch of the paint itself
was found in the sand just north of the tomb where it
had been thrown. At the backs of the walls, too, the
mortar bore the hardened imprints of the fingers of the
workmen as distinctly as on the day when the blocks
had been placed in position, while in some cases little
wooden wedges still in sound condition remained where
they had been driven into the back of a joint to bring
some imperfectly fitting block to a proper bearing.
Such realistic traces of the work of the ancient builders
go far in the imagination to bridge the ages that have
passed, as was the case particularly when we found
under the remains of the plaster and mud flooring of
the offering-chamber the scattered shells of a number
of nuts which some workman had had for his luncheon
on the day he was laying the floor.
PACKING OF THE BLOCKS
The method which we followed in the removal and
packing of the blocks was in outline as follows: Plans
to a scale of i : 20 were made of the face of each wall,
showing the blocks of which it was composed, and to
each block was assigned a number, which was painted
upon its back as fast as this was exposed in the clearing.
In this way their position was recorded for the exact
36

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
reconstruction of the walls in the Museum. More
over, a careful photographic record was made through
out the various stages of the work, and a series of
more than four hundred negatives was obtained of the
constructive features of the tomb. With certain excep-

FIG. 24. WRAPPING AND PACKING BLOCKS

tions, none of the blocks gave particular difficulty by
their weight in the work of removing them, for even the
larger ones could generally be lifted out of position by
five or six workmen. But it was a different problem in
the case of the roofing-blocks of the chambers, and
especially the great lintel-block, weighing at least a ton
and a half, which spanned the main doorway. These
were slowly raised by means of heavy wooden levers
and finally dragged away by a line of twenty to thirty
men, pulling together in unison and encouraged by the
refrain of some stirring native song. It was in this self-
37

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
same manner that these blocks were brought to the site
and handled in ancient times, but this is only one of
many similar instances in Egypt today in which the
natives still go on working with the same primitive
methods and with no thought of using modern ap
pliances of any kind.
As the workmen dug out the core-filling of chip and
gravel and each course in turn was exposed, the blocks
were removed and laid upon a flat-car which carried
them to a point outside the excavations westward.
Here native carpenters and their assistants, engaged
from neighboring villages in the valley, were occupied in
making the boxes, while camels were bringing the sup
plies of lumber and packing materials which were being
sent out from Cairo day by day whenever our stock
showed signs of depletion. A special group of men was
assigned to the work of packing. Those blocks which
had sculptured or painted faces were specially prepared
beforehand by carefully covering those surfaces with
tissue paper and cotton held firmly in position by band
aging. The larger blocks were packed separately, one
in a box, but in most cases a box could hold two of the
blocks without too great weight for transport by camel.
TRANSPORT OF THE BOXES
Each night about midnight the results of the day's
packing were loaded on to some fifteen to twenty camels
and started on their way to Cairo, where the boxes were
deposited in the yard of the Cairo Museum in good time
in the morning. Finally, after two months, when the
work ended on one of the last days of May, there
remained about seventy boxes containing the larger
38

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
blocks of too great weight to be carried by camels.
These were loaded on a train of ten flat-cars, specially
adapted to the purpose, which were sent out from the
Cairo Museum through the kindness of the Director
General of Antiquities. In the charge of a native reis

FIG. 25. CAMELS BRINGING LUMBER AND PACKING MATERIALS

and twenty men, these cars had been shipped from
Cairo by rail to Bedrachein, a station on the railway in
the valley, about four miles from Sakkara. After being
unloaded at Bedrachein this little train had been hauled
along the top of irrigation dikes across to the edge of
the desert and then up the slope of the Sakkara plateau
to the cemetery. Progress was necessarily slow, for the
cars ran on rails fastened together in sections which had
to be constantly brought forward in turn from behind
the train and laid before it again as it advanced.
When loaded with our heavy boxes it took the train
39

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
a week to make the return journey to Bedrachein, but
once there they were shipped by railway into the yard
of the Cairo Museum. The total number of boxes
which we finally assembled there, containing the blocks
of Perneb's tomb, was six hundred and one. These

FIG. 26. LOADING HEAVIER BOXES ON CARS
were afterwards sent down by railway to Suez, where
they were finally shipped in two separate lots on steam
ers sailing through the Canal direct to New York.

ARRIVAL AT THE MUSEUM AND TREATMENT FOR
PRESERVATION
The shipments reached the Museum in August (191 3),
and then for the period of a year the blocks were carried
through a process of treatment for the preservation both
of the stone and of the color on the painted reliefs. All
40

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
Egyptian limestone contains, in varying quantity, cer
tain salts which, in the dry climate of Egypt, remain
practically inactive, but with the humidity which char
acterizes our own, are likely, if they exist in the stone to
any considerable degree, to cause its disintegration

FIG. 27. TRAIN READY TO LEAVE SAKKARA
within a comparatively few years, and in some cases
within a corresponding number of months. The prob
lem as to the best method to be followed in any particu
lar case is by no means an easy one and for many years
the authorities of some of the older museums abroad
have been engaged in a very careful study of the matter.
When the Egyptian department of this Museum was
created in 1906 and its expedition was sent to Egypt to
begin the work of excavation there, the problem almost
immediately became a serious one to us because of the
41

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
unusually large amount of limestone relief-sculpture
yielded by the work in the pyramid-field at Lisht.
Treatment of the stone by some of the older methods
did not prove entirely satisfactory and, accordingly, for
some five years a chemist was employed in the depart
ment in carrying out experiments in the use of other
mediums than those previously employed. Experience
has proved that, if the fibre of the stone is strong enough,
the method to be preferred is that of immersing the
blocks in water until the salts have been removed in
solution, and thus the stone is freed of these destructive
agents for good and all. But this cannot be done with
out first subjecting the sculptured or painted surfaces to
treatment which will enable them to withstand the
action of the water during the long period that the block
may be immersed. Our experiments on this side have
produced very satisfactory results and under ordinary
conditions this process would have been employed in
the case of Perneb's tomb. It was seen to be impossi
ble, however, owing to the liberal use which had been
made of plaster on the faces of the painted blocks, in
order to fill out and conceal imperfections in the stone,
over which the color had afterwards been applied.
These blocks would have been injured by immersion,
and so the exactly opposite process was adopted of
treating the entire surfaces of the blocks in such a way
as to "bottle up" the salts and prevent the air from
getting access to them.
RE-ERECTION OF THE TOMB IN THE MUSEUM
While this work was being carried through during the
winter of 191 3-14, preparations were begun for the
42

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
re-erection of the tomb. The position which had been
chosen was in the large gallery known as D4 at the
northern end of the Fifth Avenue Hall, one of the few
galleries in the Egyptian department which afforded
possibilities for the purpose. Here, back of the north-

FIG. 28. HAULING TRAIN IN THE DESERT

em wall of the room, advantage could be taken of an
interior courtyard in the Museum, where, by breaking
through the wall, a special building could be constructed
to house the main offering-chamber and the serdab.
The expense of this construction in the courtyard, as
well as of structural changes which were necessary in
the gallery itself, was again generously borne by Mr.
Harkness. In August, 1914, the re-erection of the facade and
chambers was begun, and was successfully brought to
43

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
completion at the beginning of February, 1916. In
rebuilding the tomb a few changes have been made at
certain points in the structure, which were rendered
necessary in order to adapt it to its present surroundings
or more readily to permit the entrance of visitors to its
chambers. Thus, the main dooi-way in the facade has
been widened about ten inches over its original width
of one foot ten and one-half inches, and, on account of
the thickness at this point of a wall of the Museum
which this doorway pierces, the entrance passage into
the vestibule has been lengthened four feet three inches.
The doorway between the vestibule and main chamber
has also been widened six and one-half inches. A num
ber of blocks, taken for the purpose from other parts of
the tomb which were not to be re-erected, have been
introduced into the uppermost courses of the facade, to
take the place of the missing ones stripped from these
courses in ancient times. The reproduction of the
south chamber and the serdab has been carried out in
plaster blocks, following as closely as possible the origi
nal arrangement of the courses in their walls, and, in
order to illustrate the manner in which the portrait-
statues of the deceased occur in these tombs, a cast of
another statue found in a Sakkara tomb, and now in the
Cairo Museum, has been placed in the serdab in the
position occupied by the missing wooden statue of
Perneb destroyed by the ancient plunderers. Also in
the entrance-doorway in the north wing a wooden door
has been hung, which has been reproduced from the
representation of a door on the walls of a contemporary
tomb at Gizeh and from known facts regarding their
details. 44

HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
Thus, this tomb of Perneb, the most imposing monu
ment that has come to any museum from Egypt, may
be said both to illustrate in an unusually complete
degree the massiveness and dignity of thefunerary archi
tecture of the ancient Egyptians, and at the same time,
in the fortunate preservation of its brilliantly painted
walls, to express something of that gaiety of color with
which the sombreness of the tomb was tempered in
their minds.
Albert M. Lythgoe.

Jffe*^l

K ¦

FIG. 29. OUR CAMP AT SAKKARA

45

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
CHAPTER II
A STUDY OF- THE DECORATIVE
AND INSCRIPTIONAL FEATURES
OF THE TOMB

CHAPTER II
THE FIGURES ON THE FACADE
THE ancient visitor to Perneb's tomb was greeted
at the very doorway by figures of the great man
carved in low relief and representing him in the
full dress of an Egyptian of high rank (figs. 30 and 31).
To the immediate survivors these sculptured figures
must have been a startling reminder of the appearance
of the departed nobleman as they had often seen him in
life, issuing, staff in hand, from the door of his house.
Even the features, with the slightly arched nose and
firmly modeled mouth, while not a detailed portrait,
were strongly reminiscent of the proud and noble coun
tenance of the deceased grandee. The impression of his
presence there before them must have been the more
vivid in that among the complex and often contradic
tory views about the life after death was the belief that
the departed could walk forth from the tomb to revisit
familiar haunts as freely as in the past he had gone in
and out of his earthly house.
While the conception underlying these figures is of
the deceased just leaving or entering his dwelling, the
49

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
theme was treated with regard for decorative effect and
with that feeling for balance which is particularly char
acteristic of Egyptian composition. We have Perneb
represented not once, but twice, in figures which are
nearly symmetrical rather than repetitions of each
other. Both figures are directed toward the door. The
staff in one instance is in Perneb's left hand, in the other
in his right; it is the left foot which is advanced in one
figure, the right foot in the other, thus keeping in ad
vance the limbs which are the more distant from the
eye. The symmetrical arrangement was doubtless ex
tended, following the usual scheme, to the vertical lines
of hieroglyphs, now almost obliterated, in which, above
the figures, the long list of titles of the dead man was
recorded. The hieroglyphs were so placed that all the
birds, animals, and human figures faced the doorway,
with the result that, on one side, the columns and the
individual signs must be read in the order from left to
right, on the other side, in the order from right to left.
Indeed, few forms of writing lend themselves to use in
decoration so readily as did the Egyptian on account
of the pictorial character of its signs and the fact that
it could be written vertically, horizontally, from the
right, or from the left. The figures of Perneb face the
doorway, not, we may be sure, to particularize that the
deceased is in the act of entering the tomb, but because
the front of the figure with its more open composition
looked better turned toward the opening and the sturdy,
almost closed outline of the back better toward the
unbroken stretches of the fafade.
The figures exhibit many faults of drawing — the eye
placed in front view when it should be in profile; the
50

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
outer side of the foot drawn as the inner side, with only
the great toe showing; the unnatural grasp of the hand
on the staff and the confusion in the position of the
thumbs in the figure looking to the left; and especially
the twisting of the figures due to rendering the shoulders
in front view, the trunk of the body in three-quarters'
view, and the legs and head in profile. All these obvi
ous departures from familiar canons are too apt to blind
the untrained modern observer to the simple dignity of
conception, beauty of line, and fitness as architectural
decoration of much of this early work. It is surprising,
however, how soon the eye becomes accustomed to the
Egyptian conventions and ceases to be disturbed by
them. What wonder, then, that the average Egyptian,
who knew no other way, found in them an entirely lucid
and satisfying representation of the human form! We
cannot in this brief consideration go into the difficult
and fascinating inquiry as to how the minds of the men
who set the standards for drawing operated, but it is
well to recall the fact that the early Egyptians had no
precedents to influence them, no wealth of inheritance
from past civilizations to affect their own way of analyz
ing and of recording what they saw about them. Their
conventions, once established, were cherished and
handed down in the schools with characteristic con
servatism. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that
Egyptian wall-decorations are all monotonously uni
form. The figures before us are typical of the formal
and correct way of representing important personages,
which was only slightly modified as time went on; here
and there, however, among minor figures, where the
accepted standards held less rigidly, one finds interesting
51

« ilrfli

FIG. 30. FIGURE OF PERNEB ON THE FACADE TO THE LEFT OF
THE DOORWAY

FIG. 31.

FIGURE OF PERNEB ON THE FACADE TO THE RIGHT OF
THE DOORWAY

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
experiments in drawing, such as a shoulder sketched
from the side, showing that bolder spirits among the
draughtsmen were groping for other methods; and in
the subtler qualities of style there are changes from
generation to generation which render the reliefs of the
different periods, and of the various schools of decora
tors, full of individual interest and charm.
The costume of the figures does not impress one today
as especially elaborate, yet it presents certain refine
ments as compared with the dress of the humbler folk
of the time. The one garment is a kilt of white linen
reaching barely to the knees and extending in front in a
triangular projection which it would seem must have
been held in shape by some kind of starch or support.
A more awkward style can hardly be imagined, as the
fullness in front was much in the way especially when
the person was seated. The costume includes, besides
the kilt, sandals on the feet, a broad collar made up of
rows of cylindrical beads and finished along the lower
edge with beetle-like pendants, a wig covering the ears
and extending down on the shoulders, a short false
beard on the chin, and an amulet or decoration sus
pended about the neck by a cord on which cylindrical
beads are strung at wide intervals, leaving the cord
visible between the beads. The amulet — or decoration,
as the case may be — imitates in form a knot of cloth,
and was probably cut in some hard stone. The same
knot occurs among Egyptian hieroglyphs, but its sig
nificance when thus worn is lost to us. The beads com
posing the collar and those strung on the cord were of
semi-precious stones and gold, or of the less expensive
materials, glazed and gilded compositions having the
54

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
appearance of the stones and gold. The object in the
lowered hand is a long, narrow piece of white linen
folded over. It is carried only by men in the higher
stations of life, but is hardly an insigne of rank; we may
with greater probability imagine Perneb wiping his brow
with it or using it to flirt the ever-annoying flies away!
DATE OF perneb's ACTIVITY
It would be interesting to know which of the mon
archs of Egypt Perneb served, but we can only say that
it was one of the later kings of the Fifth Dynasty, and
that his activity probably fell mostly or entirely within
the twenty-seventh century before Christ. This opin
ion is based on a number of bits of evidence, among
them a quarry mark on one of the largest of the lintel
blocks, giving the name "Ankhisesy." Building mate
rial was m'arked in the quarries, usually with the name
of the person for whose tomb it was intended, that there
might be no mistake in deHvery (see Perneb's own
quarry mark, fig. 32). In this instance, either by error
or gift, the block got diverted to Perneb's use. Ankh
isesy — "Isesy lives" — must have been born in the
reign of King Isesy, next to the last of the Fifth Dynasty
kings, or he would not have been so named, and he is
probably to be identified with the "king's son, Ankh
isesy," whose tomb was not far distant from that of
Perneb. TITLES ON THE LINTEL IN THE ENTRANCE PASSAGE
For the visitor to the tomb who did not pause to
read the long inscriptions on the fafade, the name and
two principal titles of Perneb were made evident on the
55

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
lintel (fig. 33) at the inner end of the entrance passage,
just above the opening into the first chamber. They
are inscribed in large ornamental hieroglyphs, the colors
of which were originally much stronger before the drift
ing sand wore away part of the paint. The inscription
exemplifies well the monumental decorative style of
writing as contrasted with the cursive of ordinary use,
represented in the quarry mark of figure 32. This short
inscription is written from right to left in what was the
normal direction when no considerations of composition
imposed another. The first four signs compose the
title "Sole Companion," which denoted a rank at court.
When work on the tomb began, Perneb was only a
"Companion," as the quarry marks present on the
majority of the blocks of the facade and chambers attest
(fig. 32), but by the time the decoration was in progress
he had risen to the higher rank. The title "Sole Com
panion" of the monarch, whatever its origin may have
been, was not at this time understood in any literal
sense, but was borne by a large proportion of the higher
officials and men of distinction of the day. It seems
especially appropriate to Perneb, however, for he occu
pied a somewhat intimate position in the king's house
hold. The next two signs, intervening between "Sole
Companion" and the last four, which spell the name,
give a hint of his real occupation in lite; we may render
them freely "Lord Chamberlain"; literally they mean
"Palace-Leader" and the word used for "palace" is
that which denotes the inner private living-rooms of the
king and his family, as distinct from the public rooms
where he held audience and conducted the business of
the realm. 56

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
SCENE IN THE VESTIBULE
The scene on the farther wall of the first small cham
ber, or vestibule, was one to recall to the visitor Perneb's
private activities when on earth (fig. 34). He is repre-

FIG. 32. QUARRY MARK, THE COMPANION, PERNEB, IN
CURSIVE WRITING
sented inspecting the cattle and produce which are
being brought to his tomb, as the legend in the first of
the vertical columns of hieroglyphs (counting from the
right) makes clear: "Looking at the gifts brought from

FIG. 33. INSCRIPTION, "the SOLE COMPANION, THE LORD
CHAMBERLAIN, PERNEB," IN ORNAMENTAL HIEROGL-lPHS
the villages of the North and the South." Even so he
must have appeared in life when his servants bore him
out in his litter to review the work on his estate and
receive the reports of his accountants. The litter has
57

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
been set down on the ground and a scribe holds an open
papyrus roll before the master; two other accountants
follow with their reports under their arms, while the
writing utensils are deposited on the ground. In two
of the registers cattle are being led forward for inspec
tion; the powerful animals are controlled by ropes
passed under the lower jaw, through the mouth, and
several times about the neck. But the oryx which
appears at the top of the wall was gentle enough to be
guided by the attendant's grasp on his horns and muz
zle. The third register counting from above contains a
representation of Perneb's wife and sons. The wife was
of nobler birth than her lord, being a "King's Descen
dant," but her name is not recorded. Behind her are
"his eldest son, the priest Userneter," and "his son
Shepsesre." There are reasons for believing that the
sons may be identical with the Shepsesre and Userneter
whose tombs were in the immediate vicinity of Perneb's
(see map, fig. 2). Mother and sons are crouched on the
ground in characteristic Oriental postures and their
subservience to the head of the family is emphasized by
the disparity in the size of their figures. Perneb himself
is comfortably ensconced on a low seat which scarcely
raises him above the floor of the litter; a cushion, the
end of which is thrown over the back of the seat, con
tributes to his ease, one hand rests on the high arm of
the seat, his knees are drawn up to his breast, and he is
protected from the hot sun by a canopy roof and side
curtain of matting. He appears here in morning dress,
for he wears a plain, tight-fitting kilt and has left off his
wig and false beard, exposing his closely cropped hair.
The five short, vertical lines of writing above the lit-
58

FIG. 34. PRELIMINARY SKETCH, PERNEB INSPECTING GIFTS OF
ESTATES OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
ter give our dignitary's titles and epithets in full: "Sole
Companion, Chief Nekhebite, Keeper of the Crowns,
Privy Counsellor of the Duat-Bureau, He who Decks
the King, Favorite of His Lord, Privy Counsellor of All
Messages, In Honor before the Great God." Keeping
the crowns and decking the king were among his pre
rogatives as "Lord Chamberlain"; the nature of the
Duat-bureau has yet to be investigated, but it may well
have had to do with the administration of the king's
private estate rather than with public affairs, while
"Chief Nekhebite" was an old and honorable priestly
title which had its origin in Nekheb, the capital of the
South, before the union of all Egypt under one king.
It has been pointed out that Perneb's tomb was never
finished (p. 19), and this fact is obvious in the outer
chamber. The scene we have been considering is in
complete; we have merely the head of the trains of men
leading animals and bearing produce, and the main part
of the procession would have been continued on the
adjacent wall to the right; very likely the other wall
spaces within the vestibule and the sides of the entrance
passage, too, would not have remained bare had the
decoration of the tomb been carried out as first planned.
Then in technic the wall before us exhibits the combina
tion of a preliminary sketch in red line, intended as a
guide for sculpture in low relief, and some washes of
solid color, evidently put on rather hastily to give a
semblance of finish when it appeared that the original
scheme of decoration must be abandoned.
We may congratulate ourselves, however, on the
mischance that prevented the completion of the tomb,
for it has been the means of saving to our day this
60

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
masterly sketch by an early Egyptian artist. The
work has a fascination comparable to that exercised by
the drawings of the old Italian masters, delighting one's
aesthetic sense by its confident and firm strokes and its
freedom from puttering or merely painstaking lines. It
brings one nearer to the genius of the leaders of art in
the remote age when Perneb lived than anything to be
seen in the finished inner room. The sketch is interest
ing, too, in what it teaches of the artist's methods, for
we can still trace the perpendicular lines which he used
as a help in drawing the majority of the figures. He
was not slavishly dependent on them, however, for
other figures are drawn with only the position of the
toes checked on the ground line (see two top registers),
and the animals are sketched in boldly without a pre
liminary mark of any kind.
DECORATION OF THE PASSAGE BETWEEN THE VESTIBULE
AND THE MAIN CHAMBER
The figures on the walls of the passage between the
two rooms personify estates, which were to furnish in
perpetuity the Lord Chamberlain's mortuary income
(see p. lo). We have here only another treatment of
the theme which we found represented in the outer
chamber and shall encounter again in the main cham
ber, namely, that of the all-important provision for the
material wants of the dead man. These figures are
walking in the direction of the inner room and bear in
baskets, or in the hand, jars of beer, joints of meat, live
birds, and other good things. In front of them are
written the names of the estates which they represent,
such as "Figs of the Companion, Perneb," "Onions of
6i

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
the Companion, Perneb" (right-hand wall, upper regis
ter), names made up apparently of the word expressing
the product for which the estate was chiefly noted and
" Perneb" to distinguish the estate as belonging to him.
The sex of the figures was determined by the grammati
cal gender of the names, and the decorator usually pro
vided some slight correspondence between the objects
borne and the names; thus, the two estate-figures just
mentioned have among their produce respectively a
trayful of figs and a bunch of onions, but " Bat-grain of
Perneb" is bringing the grain made up in loaves of
bread, if she carries it at all.
As in the outer chamber, so here, the work v.'as pre
maturely interrupted, with the result that we have
before us preliminary sketches daubed over with a cer
tain amount of paint. Again we are able to see the
draughtsman's construction lines; here it was desirable
to bring the figures of the upper and lower rows in
alignment and therefore perpendiculars were dropped
from the horizontal line at the top of the wall to the
bottom line. The draughtsman then checked on the
perpendiculars the proportions of the figures. A check
may be seen, for instance, on the second figure above on
the right of the passage to indicate the level at which
the wig and forehead should meet, and still others are
visible; but many must be lost in the breaks or hidden
by the paint. Crudely as the color is put on, the
scheme of it is not a haphazard one, but the whole com
position is deliberately, arranged to afford a pleasing
alternation. Whether regarded in a horizontal or a
vertical direction, the red of the male figures alternates
with the yellow flesh tints of the women, while white on
62

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
the kilts and dresses unites all the figures and the
greater importance of the horizontal direction is empha
sized by the line of yellow carried through one register
and of white through the other on the baskets and
trays. THE MAIN CHAMBER
Once within the main chamber, the ancient visitor
would have turned first of all toward the farther end
wall, the "false door," through which he believed that
the deceased could enter the room at will. There, if
reverently inclined, he would have felt himself indeed
in the very presence of the departed one and would have
uttered some of the prayers for the dead inscribed on
the panels of the door. It was in this room, too, that
formal rites for the benefit of the deceased were per
formed by the mortuary priests — not once, but at least
on every important feast day. The rites consisted in
large part of placing actual beverages and articles of
food on the low offering-table before the "false door,"
accompanying each by a prescribed incantation. The
entire decoration of the room was appropriate to its use
as a cult-chamber, whether, as some authorities think,
the pictures had mystical efficacy and could take the
place of the offerings if the latter should fail at any
time, or whether, as others say, they were only the
expression of the artistic impulse and were selected
much as a symbolic figure of justice might be considered
a fitting decoration for a court room.
But let us examine the walls, beginning with the
"false door" (fig. 35). Four smaU figures of Perneb,
similar in dress and pose to those on the facade of the
63

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
building, flank the door at the bottom of the wall, and
the vertically written inscriptions here, as on the faf ade,
are alike in content and wording on the two sides and
have the signs symmetrically placed, all turned toward
the door. The door itself — the innermost recess — is
very narrow, as its proportions have been accommodated
to the desire to leave ample space for vertical lines of
hieroglyphs. On the inner, shorter panels occurs the
following selection of Perneb's titles, "Sole Companion,
Keeper of the Crov/ns, Chief Nekhebite, Daily Favorite
of His Lord, Privy Counsellor of the Duat-Bureau, He
who Wins the Favor of the King Daily." The signs on
the small rounded Hntel block above the narrow door
read "Sole Companion, Perneb," while on the wider
lintel with flat face covering the inner jambs, or panels,
is the petition that Osiris grant mortuary offerings "at
the New Year's feast (of the solar year), at the Feast of
Thoth, at the New Year's feast (of the civil year), at the
Wag-feast, and at every feast!" On the outer, taller
panels, besides the repetition of titles before Perneb's
name, is a prayer to Anubis to grant that he may "tread
the goodly paths which the honorable ones (the beatified
dead) tread"; on the topmost lintel the prayer is again
addressed to Anubis and relates to a good burial. The
space between the lintels surmounting the two pairs of
jambs is nearly filled by a square panel, with a repre
sentation of the deceased seated before an offering-table,
and the narrow recesses each side of it probably corre
spond to windows in the house fafade.
Turning to the two long sides of the room, we find
compositions which are closely similar to each other
(fig. 36). Nearest the "false door," but with his back
64

FIG. 35. FALSE DOOR IN MAIN CHAMBER INSCRIBED WITH
PRAYERS FOR THE DECEASED LORD CHAMBERLAIN

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
to it, is a large figure of Perneb, just as he might have
come forth from the hidden part of the tomb and seated
himself expectantly to receive the ministrations of the
living. Above his head the four vertical lines of larger
hieroglyphs give his titles, which vary here only in order
and in small points of orthography from the lists which
have been quoted. In front of him is a table covered
with a highly conventionalized representation of half-
loaves of bread and under it, on the farther side, lies a
confused heap of offerings which, like those crowding the
upper registers of the wall, have been deposited by men
approaching from the direction of the outer door of the
tomb, while other men are still bringing in the supplies.
Between his knees and the table is written, "A thousand
loaves of bread, a thousand jars of beer, a thousand
portions of beef, a thousand portions of wild fowl, a
thousand changes of clothing" — no mean petition, but
one corresponding well with the opulence of the offerings
as pictured (see fig. 37).
The rectangles filled with hieroglyphs occupying the
entire area above the offering-table comprise what we
may term facetiously the dead man's menu card. Each
compartment contains the name of an offering and with
a few exceptions, like "incense," the offerings are arti
cles of food; beneath each item the vertical strokes, one,
two, or four in number, indicate how many portions he
is to receive of each thing. But the menu card is a very
special one, which does not correspond entirely with the
menu of the living, for it excludes some kinds of food as
ceremonially impure, such, for instance, as fish, which
we know to have been eaten by the Egyptians. It does
present, however, a long array of joints of meat, birds,
66

r-IG. 36. SIDE WALL IN MAIN CHAMBER SHOWING DOOR FROM VESTIBULE AND SCENE OF
OFFERINGS BROUGHT TO THE TOMB

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
drinks, fruits, and loaves of bread and cake, while the
pictured offerings tally with the written list, although,
out of consideration for artistic effects, not in any rigid
way. The offering-list acquires special interest from
the fact that it is found also on the walls of the royal
tombs of the late Fifth and Sixth Dynasties where the
various items are enumerated in the same order and
quantity as here, but are accompanied by the words of
the ritual to be recited over each offering. It was the
natural desire of well-to-do Egyptians to imitate, so far
as their means allowed and the etiquette of the day
permitted, the splendid funerary equipment of the
monarch. Very shortly after this time the royal ritual,
too, was inscribed in the tombs of private Egyptians,
and it is possible that even now it was employed in the
services held in Perneb's chapel.
In the second and third registers from the bottom the
small figures nearest to that of Perneb represent priests
performing the introductory acts of the service (see
fig. 37). The foremost figure in the second register lifts
the cover from the incense-burner to let the fragrance
escape and behind him another priest is represented
holding up two strips of linen which we may recognize
as probably the same thing as the napkin or handker
chief held in the hand by Perneb both in this scene and
in the majority of the other occurrences of his figure.
The scene above depicts the washing of the offering-
table and behind the two priests engaged in this cere
mony stands the lector, on the one wall making the
correct ceremonial gesture and.carrying his papyrus roll
of texts still in his lowered hand, on the other wall
already reading from the roll held open before him.
68

FIG. 37. DETAIL FROM SIDE WALL IN MAIN CHAMBER SHOW
ING OFFERINGS AND PRJESTS PERFORMING CEREMONfE^

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
The lector is distinguished by a band of linen passed
diagonally across the breast over one shoulder and under
the other arm and he wears a wig like Perneb's, but the
other participants in the ceremonies are dressed like the
offering-bearers in plain, close-fitting kilts and less pre
tentious wigs and are without the broad collar of beads.
At this time the Egyptian priesthood had not yet
assumed great importance as a special class but was
composed of lay members who had other interests
besides their duties as priests. We have seen that
Perneb bears a priestly title and here on the long walls
of the main chamber he appears in his priest's costume,
the distinguishing garment of which is a leopard skin
held in place by bands tied on one shoulder.
The upper part of the wall in which the window opens
is filled with the representation of offerings contained
in a variety of receptacles and set, some on stands,
others on the ground, while lower down on the wall
oxen are being led to the tomb or are being slaugh
tered; we see the butchers sharpening their knives,
severing the joints, and catching the blood in bowls.
A pleasing motive included .here, as well as on the
long walls, is that of an attendant carrying a calf or a
young gazelle. THE TECHNIC OF THE DECORATION
The unusual amount of color remaining today on the
walls of the main chamber affords a rare opportunity to
study the technic of the ancient Egyptian decorator.
The walls are in just the condition to be most instruc
tive, for enough is left of their top surface to enable one
tore-create in imagination their original appearance, and
70

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
in the places where the upper pigments have dropped off
it is possible to trace the processes of the work. As the
walls were set up for photography, in the course of the
preparation for the final installation (see p. 40), every
square inch of their surface was gone over with a magni
fying glass in the endeavor to distinguish the different
levels of the paint and determine as far as possible what
the decorators did first, what next, and so on through
their entire procedure. Only a summary of the results
of this study will be of interest here.
In the first stage of the work a preliminary sketch,
similar in character to those seen in the vestibule and
passage, doubtless covered the walls of the main cham
ber. As the Egyptian draughtsman at this time was
without crayons or chalks with which to execute his
sketch, he was obliged to use liquid paint and learned
to draw without making erasures and with little correct
ing; he employed red paint for sketches rather more
commonly than black, presumably because it was
cheaper and more easily prepared. The quarry marks,
too, to which reference has been made above, are all in
the same brown-red pigment, which indeed is still used
in Egypt for common purposes. When long trains of
figures, such as the offering-bearers, were to occupy a
wall, it was customary to dra-vv not only perpendiculars
for each figure but a series of horizontal guiding lines
passing through the entire register and cutting the per
pendiculars at points which were prescribed in the sys
tem of proportions learned by every young apprentice.
One such sketch from a Fifth Dynasty tomb is shown
in the accompanying illustration, fig. 38, in which, how
ever, the perpendiculars present on the original have
71

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
been omitted. Sometimes, as on the walls of the passage
in Perneb's tomb, the prescribed points were simply
checked on the perpendiculars and the draughtsman
spared himself the trouble of drawing horizontal con
struction lines. In general, it may be said that the
artist at this time was less dependent on aids in placing
his sketch than were his successors in later generations.
By the next dynasty we find an additional horizontal
line through the calves of the legs, not as yet represented
among the known sketches of the Fifth Dynasty, and a
few hundred years later an elaborate system of small
squares, spread hke a network over the entire register,
was developed from the earlier guiding lines.
Both the guiding lines and the sketched figures natu
rally disappeared during the next stage of the work, the
cutting of the design in low relief. In a few exceptional
places on the walls of Perneb's tomb, however, the
background was left at the original level and fragments
of the horizontal guiding lines have come to light where
the covering paint, which originally rendered the casual
workmanship unnoticeable, has dropped off. Thus, two
such lines may be seen plainly on the wall to the right
between the priest who is pouring water from a cere
monial vessel and the kneeling figure (fig. 37).
The plaster filling along the joints (see p. 35) pre
sented no special difficulties to the knife or chisel, but
could be carved as readily as the soft limestone. In
deed, entire cult chambers decorated in plaster reliefs
have been found at Meir in Upper Egypt. In carving
the waffs a furrow was first cut outlining the design,
then the background was lowered and the figures mod
eled. The quality of the sculpture in Perneb's tomb is
72

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
uneven, being poorest at the ends of the long walls away
from the large seated figures, where the design here and

'->?"

-xv:'- Sv.7;.":;.v.:::7;rf;;:±.7/:^V-

FIG. 38. DETAIL FROM A FIFTH DYNASTY TOMB SHOWING
HORIZONTAL GUIDING LINES
AFTER DAVIES, THE MASTABA OF PTAHHETEP AND AKHETHETEP AT
SAQQAREH, II, PL. I7
there is merely scratched in. Some details seem to have
interested the sculptor more than others; certain of the
73

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
hieroglyphs and, for instance, the calves' heads among
the offerings are extraordinarily subtle and vivid.
The work of decoration now entered upon the third
and last stage, that of coloring the reliefs. It was not
painting in the ordinary sense of the term as denoting a
major art, for the colors were used only in flat tones and
the decorator relied for his play of light and shade on
the relief. Shading with pigments is not, however, as
some of the commonly-used handbooks state, unknown
in Egyptian art, because in ceiling paintings of later
date, found by the Museum's Expedition, the rotundity
of the bodies of flying ducks and pigeons clearly is indi
cated by this means.
But before the final colors could be added to the walls
of Perneb's tomb a number of preliminary processes
were considered essential. After the sculptor had fin
ished his part, a thin layer of fine plaster was added
over the coarse plaster to render the surface of the latter
uniform in texture with the limestone, and then the
entire wall was washed over with a still thinner coating
of white gypsum, which may be detected here and there
as a film capable of being peeled off, or, where the bind
ing medium — possibly white of egg — has deteriorated,
as a white powder.
The next step is a surprising one. Instead of pro
ceeding to lay the final colors, using the sculptured out
lines as a guide, the decorators went over the design
again, in whole or in large part, in red line. These lines
of the second sketch may be found repeatedly spilling
over on the background or sinking into the depressions
of the carving, that is, occurring on surfaces which were
not by any possibility exposed before the carving was
74

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS

done; they are not to be confused with the final outlines
which lie at a higher level and are usually narrower.
Occasionally in the second sketch the spelling of a word
is corrected or a cucumber not to be found in the
sculpture is added to a heap of offerings! In fig. 39,
showing one of the vessels, the broken lines indicate
the second sketch, the continuous lines
the sculpture; the lip of the vase is
drawn in the sketch, although it had
been left out in the sculpture and was
to be completely hidden in the final sur
face by black paint representing a mud
seal. The walls were now ready for the col
ors which were to form their visible sur
face. Mineral pigments were used and
included blue, green, black, gray, white,
brown, yellow, ochre, orange-red, and
brown-red. The bright blue pigment
forms a thick granular coating which
has been grayed very slightly on the surface but
reveals the original color where broken. The green,
too, lies in granules and except here and there has
decomposed to a very pale hue. The brown-red is very
slightly darkened and the black has lost something of
its intensity, but the other colors where extant are
much as they appeared when first laid on the wall. The
pale blue and pale ochre to be seen at a lower level are
probably mere stains due to the sinking in, and to some
extent decomposition, of the overlying colors.
The order of procedure in laying down the colors may
have varied somewhat according to convenience in
75

FIG. 39. OF
FERING-VESSEL

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
manipulating the brushes and pigments, but generally,
as recognizable by the overlapping of the different pig
ments, the gray of the background was laid down first,
the black and brown-red of the final outlines were
added next, and the body colors were put on last of all.
A notable exception to this order is found in the brown-
red outlines of the half-loaves of bread on the offering-
tables; here the outlines were ruled and were left to the
last. After the main body colors were in place various
details were rendered by superimposed bits of paint.
Thus we find black dots on blue to suggest the indi
vidual grapes of a bunch of grapes, black on white and
on ochre to indicate the spots of the leopard's skin.
There is no evidence to support the view that the
Egyptians sometimes used brushes of hair in painting;
rather it is almost certain that all this decoration in
Perneb's tomb was produced with brushes of various
widths formed of reeds with their fibres frayed out at
one end. The brush strokes are readily followed in
many places.
When the chamber was finished and still in perfect
condition, no part of the walls was untouched by color.
Brown-red appeared on the skin of the male figures,
black on their wigs, white on their kilts, blue on many
vases, yellow on others, ochre and brown on loaves of
bread, green on vegetables — to mention only a few of
the prominent masses of color. Bright rectangles of the
various colors bordered the window and framed the side
walls; each little hieroglyph was a sprightly colored pic
ture in itself; and everywhere the gray of the back
ground knit together and toned the whole color scheme.
Though perhaps less pleasing to modern taste than the
76

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
uniform creamy tint of the natural limestone — in which
the majority of mastaba reliefs, having lost their
painted surface, are seen today — nevertheless the gay
colors made the place a cheerful living-room for the
spirit of the deceased "Lord Chamberlain," whenever
it should linger on earth, and a more attractive resort
for the relatives and friends who survived him. While
we may be confident that the instinct to make the tomb-
chambers less gloomy was back of the custom of paint
ing the mastaba reliefs, there was the influence as well
of inherited methods of decoration, as they had been
developed on the plastered walls of mud-brick buildings
— not only tombs but houses. In judging the aesthetic
effect of the bright colors, as they were originally, one
must recall that Egyptian reliefs were commonly seen
either under glaring conditions of light, as on the
fafade, or where the daylight was subdued or wholly
lacking, as in tomb interiors; artificial means of lighting
at this time were of course wholly inadequate to
illuminate the reliefs and under too little light as under
too much light intense colors were needed.
CONVENTIONS IN THE USE OF COLOR
Today, if we can steer our course advisedly amid the
conventions of the drawing and painting and the limita
tions in the selection of themes, such painted reliefs as
these on Perneb's walls prove a fruitful source of infor
mation about life as it went on in the Nile Valley in
Pharaonic times. Too often, however, because the
color has disappeared, the objects represented in the
reliefs have necessarily been interpreted on the basis of
their apparent form only; here the large amount of
77

THE TOMB OF PERNEB
color surviving adds to the usefulness of the reliefs when
we endeavor to visualize Egyptian dress, furniture, ves
sels, food-products, ceremonies, and the like. We may
give only a single illustration of the value of the color
from this point of view: the offerings include many
trays of small fig-shaped fruits, commonly thought
to be sycamore figs; these are now found on the
evidence of the color to be only in part the yellow
sycamore fig, while the others are a still unidentified
red fruit.
In many instances the color is employed in a way
which is at once intelligible to the modern sense. Con
sider the bowls of "blue lotus" flowers (Nymphaea
caerulea) which grace Perneb's mortuary feast; the
green on the leaves and sepals, the blue on the petals,
the red on the stems, and the touches of yellow at the
base of blossoms and buds inspire confidence in the
truth to nature of the Egyptian use of colors. Another
obvious attempt at realism is the light red dotted oVer
with black to give the effect of red granite which was
to be seen on the limestone blocks of the ceiling
and on the undecorated walls of the vestibule. But
often the color on the walls does not so nearly approxi
mate the natural colors of the objects represented. The
convention of brown-red for the male and yellow for the
female figures, although corresponding to a difference in
the complexion of men and women, was, of course, not
intended to be taken literally; indeed, the red of the
male figures varies considerably on Egyptian monu
ments, being sometimes a light terracotta-red, some
times almost a chocolate color; in Perneb's chamber
while the usual brown-red is employed on the large
78

DECORATION AND INSCRIPTIONS
figures, the hieroglyphs which represent parts of the
body are painted orange-red.
But the most unexpected conventions occur in the
apphcation of blue, the latest of the colors to make an
appearance in Egyptian wall-decorations, Paintings in
early tombs and the earliest examples of painted relief
do not include blue in their repertory of colors, and
still others, somewhat later but antedating the decora
tion in Perneb's tomb, show only a sparing use of blue.
The color seems to have been introduced as a substitute
here and there for black: thus, the copper points of har
poons and other implements, at first painted black,
after the introduction of blue were more commonly
colored blue ; the hair of animals and the wigs, or closely
shorn hair, of men were occasionally painted blue
instead of black; and hieroglyphs which represent the
plans of mud-brick structures appear now black, now
blue. Even so in Perneb's tomb, side by side with the
more comprehensible use of blue for the bluish tips of
the lotus petals or for bunches of grapes, we find blue
on certain vases, presumably to indicate copper, and on
some hieroglyphs which elsewhere in the decoration,
following an older tradition, are painted black.
Far from being crude and all too simple, as a super
ficial acquaintance might suggest, these painted reliefs
reveal vividly conceived scenes, a facile technic, and a
sophisticated color scheme, all the result of a long
development and suited admirably to the physical con
ditions and purposes of the building in which they
occur and to the temper and beliefs of the age which
produced them.
Caroline L. Ransom.
79

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