TT100

Step out of the hard Theban sunlight and the air changes at once. It is cooler here, and very still, with a faint smell of dust and old limestone. For a few seconds your eyes see almost nothing. Then colour appears. Ochre, rust red, pale blue and crisp black outlines slowly come into focus. Rows of tiny figures walk along the walls, carrying, building and bowing. You are standing inside Theban Tomb 100, the tomb of a man named Rekhmire.

First, a word about where you are. This tomb is cut into the hillside of Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. That slope lies a short walk from the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina, across the same desert hills. Both belong to the great cemetery on the West Bank of Luxor, the city the ancient Greeks called Thebes. The number one hundred comes from the modern catalogue of private tombs here. Scholars use it as a simple address in a crowded hillside.

So who was Rekhmire? He served as vizier, the chief minister of Egypt, during the Eighteenth Dynasty, in the fifteenth century before Christ. His master was Thutmose the Third, the warrior king who pushed Egyptian power deep into Syria and Nubia. Rekhmire stayed in office into the early reign of Amenhotep the Second. He came from a family that had held the same high office before him. Only the pharaoh stood above him.

Now look at the shape of the space around you. The tomb follows a T-shaped plan. A wide hall runs across the front. From its centre, a long, narrow passage pushes straight back into the rock. As you walk down that passage, watch the ceiling. It rises higher and higher toward the far end. The passage ends at a niche set high in the back wall, and the effect pulls your eye upward, almost like a stage.

In the front hall, the walls carry some of the most important texts we have about Egyptian government. Historians often call them the duties of the vizier. They describe how the vizier sat in his hall of judgement and heard petitions. They describe how officials reported to him each morning and how taxes were assessed and recorded. Nearby, a scene shows Rekhmire seated in state, while scribes and officials wait before him. For anyone curious how a pharaoh's state actually ran, these walls are a primary source.

Across the same hall, the mood shifts from paperwork to spectacle. Here, foreign delegations bring goods to Egypt, set out in long horizontal bands. Men from Punt, on the Red Sea coast, carry incense trees and exotic animals. Nubians bring ebony, ivory and gold. Syrians lead horses and a chariot. One group, the people the Egyptians called Keftiu, carries fine metal vessels. Most scholars link the Keftiu with Crete and the wider Aegean world, so these figures are rare painted evidence of Aegean dress and hairstyles.

Here is a detail many visitors walk straight past. Among the Nubian gifts there is a giraffe, painted with surprising care. A small monkey clings to its long neck. Close by, you may also find baboons, leopard skins and a young elephant. These animals were real diplomatic gifts, brought hundreds of kilometres down the Nile. The painters had probably seen some of them with their own eyes, and that shows in the lively poses.

Now walk into the long passage. One wall is crowded with workshops, and it is one of the best records of ancient craft that survives anywhere. Carpenters shape wood with adzes. Jewellers drill beads. Sculptors smooth large statues on scaffolding. Leatherworkers cut hides. Further along, men mix mud and straw and press it into moulds to make bricks. Each figure is only a hand's length tall, but every tool is clear.

Look closely at the metalworkers, because this is the second surprise. To keep their fires hot, men stand on pairs of leather bellows. They shift their weight from foot to foot, pumping air into the flames, and they hold cords to lift each bag again. It is a small, almost comic movement. Yet it tells us exactly how bronze was cast more than three thousand years ago. Over the hill, the craftsmen of Deir el-Medina used skills like these on the royal tombs.

The opposite wall of the passage turns toward the afterlife and toward pleasure. You will see offerings being brought for Rekhmire, and priests performing funeral rituals. There is also a garden with a rectangular pool, surrounded by trees and shown from above, while a boat floats on the water. Elsewhere, a banquet unfolds. Guests sit in rows, servants pour drinks, and women musicians play harps and lutes. It is a picture of the life Rekhmire hoped to continue forever.

As you walk, you may notice something unsettling. In several places, Rekhmire's own figure and his name have been damaged, and the damage looks deliberate. In ancient Egypt, attacking someone's image was a way to attack their memory. Nobody knows for certain who did this, or why. Some historians suggest he fell from favour under the new king. Others are more cautious. The walls give us the damage, but not the reason.

Take a moment with the technique itself. The rock was coated with plaster, and the artists painted on that smooth surface. They used mineral pigments, such as earth reds and yellows, carbon black and a manufactured colour known as Egyptian blue. The figures follow strict rules of proportion. Heads and legs appear in profile, while shoulders face you. Inside those rules, though, the painters found room for humour, motion and very human gestures.

Before you leave, stand still near the end of the passage and look back toward the entrance. A narrow rectangle of white daylight fills the doorway. Between you and that light, thousands of small painted people are still at work, still carrying tribute, still pouring wine. Listen to the soft echo of footsteps on the stone floor. When you step back outside into the heat, look across the hillside toward Deir el-Medina, and remember that these walls were made by hands like the ones you just saw painted.