Wall Painting Fragment with a Priest from a Burial Scene

This man was painted taking part in a burial. He stands in a pleated kilt with a panther skin thrown over it, the dress of the sem priest, who led the last rites at the tomb. Among them was the Opening of the Mouth, a ceremony meant to give the dead back their breath and senses for the life to come, and the part was often played by the dead man's eldest son. He wears a curled wig and a short beard, and hieroglyphs survive beside him from the inscription that once labelled the scene. The fragment comes from a tomb at Deir el-Medina, the village of the royal tomb builders at Thebes, and its style places it in the 19th Dynasty, the age of Seti I and Ramesses II. It came up at auction in September 1997, and the Louvre bought it with support from EDF, the French electricity company. The following year it was shown at the company's own exhibition space in Paris, in a show about the history of Egyptology.