Plate XXVIII

The tomb from which this Plate is taken is ascribed to the 'Priest of Amenophis I, Kharemwese' only on the strength of a pottery cone found on the floor. The paintings, which show the fine pre­cise style of the period, were never completed, and one of the two decorated walls was destroyed by a native robber. The present picture gives about half of what now remains, and from it we obtain a vivid impression of the labours of vintagers. In the upper register a superintendent, leaning on his staff, watches two Egyptians and a Nubian slave gathering the grapes. No knives are in their hands, though it is hard to see how they could have been dispensed with. In Plate XCVIII the men seem to be plucking off individual berries, but here it is not so. An old man carrying two pots slung from a yoke over his shoulders pours water into the circular mud trenches out of which the vines grow. This irrigation seems superfluous now that the grapes are ripe for picking. One of the two men engaged in the latter task is shown by his beard and his Semitic features to have been a foreigner. In the second register six men, one again a Nubian, are treading out the juice. In front of the wine-press, on an altar perhaps of whitewashed brick, is Emutet, the cobra-goddess always worshipped in this connexion. Her image is partly true picture, and partly hieroglyphic writing, since below her are the signs meaning 'lady of good fortune ' or 'of prosperity '. The man who stands before the piled-up offerings (these appropriately including a basket of grapes) seems to pour wine into a cup with one hand, while with the other he holds aloft a flaming brazier. At his back a servant empties some ingredient from a small vessel into one of a number of large amphorae stacked against each other. Two of these are placed upright on stands of rushes, and are being sealed with mud seals doubtless giving the date and particulars of the vintage. The grey mud used for this purpose lies handy in a shallow bowl, while below in another bowl is the wooden (?)stamp ready to be impressed on the clay. Below is a ship laden with the wine-jars. It has arrived at its destination, and a sailor is carrying the jars ashore down a stepped plank. The gaudy decorations proclaim the ship a royal vessel. At the stem is a raised structure showing the falcon-headed god Montju in warlike pose, while on the hull we see the Pharaoh as a lion slaying his enemies (compare Plate LXXXII). The bundles of reeds on the top of the cabin are perhaps connected with the adjoining scene of rope­ making. Three men are engaged in this occupation between clumps of papyrus such as provided them with their material. The old man in the centre sits on a rush stool and holds upright a wooden stick of which one end is fixed in the ground beside a hooked peg like a modem tent-peg. To the right a youth twists single strands with the help of the weighted tool again depicted above. A second old man, on the left, is perhaps twisting together the single strands with a similar instrument. Above is a long bundle of reeds, four coils of rope, the hooked peg, a mallet for beating the reeds until they become, flexible, two twisting tools, another peg, and a knife. Lengths of apparently untwisted reeds are stretched along the ground behind the men's feet