Chapel of Maya

Maya was an outline draughtsman of Amun, one of the painters who laid down the first lines of a scene before the colour went on. He and his wife Tamyt were buried at Deir el-Medina, the village of the royal tomb builders at Thebes, late in the 18th Dynasty, in a small chapel that stood just downhill from the tomb of Kha.

Its walls were mud brick, coated with a plaster of fresh mud and straw and painted once that had dried. The colours came from minerals and plants, ochre for red and yellow, charcoal for black, white from limestone, green from malachite, mixed with water and gum arabic. Along the side walls the funeral procession moves towards the tomb, the couple receive offerings, and boats travel to and from Abydos, the holy city of Osiris.

The paintings left Egypt with Schiaparelli's mission, and the restorer Fabrizio Lucarini lifted them by a method called strappo. He glued canvas over the painted surface and pulled the paint layer away from the wall with it, then softened the canvas with a solvent to take it off again. Nothing had to be cut out of the plaster. On the back wall, around a central stela, sit seated couples, among them Maya's parents, Khaemwaset and Mutnefret.