NOTE FROM THE ARTIST:

When I first saw a picture of this fragment of tomb wall with the eight ladies being served by a young girl, my first impression was that they either were dancers waiting to perform, or perhaps young ladies waiting to be chosen as partners to dance. That is why I entitled it "Waiting for the Dance".

As with my other prints, I have attempted to reproduce the original painting exactly, while repairing the extensive damage caused by the ravages of over thirty centuries. In two cases, it was necessary to reconstruct the faces of the dancers almost completely.

At first sight, all of the eight ladies look the same. On careful examination, however, the observer will see that there are slight variations in their headbands, the flowers in their hair, their ear bangles, their necklaces and in some cases, the plaiting of their hair. Unlike other traditional Egyptian paintings where contiguous bodies are shaded alternating darker or lighter, here the skin shades are all the same.

I have been asked many times about the cone shaped devices on the heads of both males and females in many of their ancient paintings. There seems to be a variety of opinions, but the one that seems most likely is told in the book, "Life in Ancient Egypt" by Adolph Erman, where he describes how important the ceremony of anointing with oil was to Egyptians. He explains that a ball of an unknown absorbent substance was placed in a dish of imported Qemi, a fragrant oil, and when it all was absorbed, it was placed on the head of the person at a party or festival so that the fragrant oil could slowly drain out into the persons wig during the festival. The cone shapes must then be the ball of oil affixed to the head.

This picture is just one part of a fragment from an 18th Dynasty tomb that now is in the British Museum in London. Above the eight dancers in the fragment is another row of partygoers, but all of them are couples, not single women.

The festival may well be the ancient Egyptian equivalent of our New Year's Eve. Their new year began with the beginning of the annual inundation, the event that made ancient Egypt the unique land that it was for so many thousands of years.

JIM BROWN

These lithographs are reproduced on heavy (100 lb. weight) quintessence cover paper with a white background to match the original plastered tomb walls.