New kingdom elite housing detail.

Painted architectural detail from a New Kingdom House - Aakheperure 2016 British Museum


In this picture I took at the British Museum you can see two interesting things. At the bottom is part of an interior house wall showing its brightly coloured design of floral motifs, and what appears to be a palace facade. Above is a grill that would have provided ventilation and light for the home. These were located high on the wall. These examples are from Akhetaton (Amarna) and give you an idea of how some ancient Egyptian homes were constructed and decorated.

Habitation sites like houses frequently do not survive like the more famous stone temples, because ancient Egyptian homes were made from mud brick which either crumbled, dissolved in the flooding of the Nile or recycled (as fertiliser because they are made of rich Nile silt/clay).

It is often difficult to reconstruct exactly how homes looked because the roof and upper storeys collapse, but we can gain an idea from models and tomb paintings representing homes and combining this with archaeological remains such as column bases, wall foundations and the presence of organic materials like reed matting used for roofs.

Comments

  1. لا توجد مثل حضارتنا لا من قبل ولا من بعد.... تحيا مصر

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  2. It looks like the plaster itself is coloured in spots. Not just painted.

    ReplyDelete

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