Agricultural Scenes from Tomb of Nakht, East Wall, South Side of Nakht’s Offering Chapel, Original from Upper Egypt, 1410-1370 BC Thebes, Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, by Norman de Garis Davies 1908-1910 © Metropolitan Museum, New York
Gospel of 25th August 2021 – Matthew 23:27-32
Jesus said: ‘Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You who are like whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of corruption. In the same way you appear to people from the outside like good honest men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
‘Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You who build the sepulchres of the prophets and decorate the tombs of holy men, saying, “We would never have joined in shedding the blood of the prophets, had we lived in our fathers’ day.” So! Your own evidence tells against you! You are the sons of those who murdered the prophets! Very well then, finish off the work that your fathers began.’
Reflection on the Egyptian Tomb Mural
Between 1907 and 1938, under the leadership of British Egyptologist Norman de Garis Davies, the Graphic Section of New York’s Metropolitan Museum’s Egyptian Expedition undertook a documentation project with the goal of recording ancient monuments as accurately as possible. This is one of those paintings. It depicts the left hand wall as one enters the tomb chapel of Nakht, Thebes, Egypt. It shows Nakht and his wife pouring the contents of a libation vessel over a heap of offerings. The rest of the panels show the agricultural activities needed to produce such offerings. Much of what we know about ancient Egypt comes from what we have learnt by studying their tombs. The ancient Egyptians believed that life did not stop when we die, but that this earthly life is just a stop on our way to another place, the afterlife.
Whilst these Egyptian tombs contain so much beauty, the tombs in Jesus’ time were very different. The caves used for tombs were regularly painted or washed white with lime to look clean on the outside, but the inside was very plain, undecorated, just holding the deceased. Behind the attractive exteriors were rotting corpses, as unclean as anything a faithful Jew could imagine. So by comparing the Pharisees with tombs, Jesus was making the point they were decaying inside, whilst keeping up clean appearances on the outside. Harsh words, again condemning hypocrisy.
The practice of whitewashing tombs in Jesus’ time was not just done for the purpose of embellishing the tomb, but also to mark off that there was actually a tomb there. Tombs in Ancient Israel were just hollowed out of rock formations outside the villages. A grave could easily go unnoticed if it was not whitewashed. If a person wasn’t local to the area, he may simply not have realised there was a tomb there, and with too close proximity might have become unclean or ritually impure without knowing it. The whitewashing was there to avoid that by marking the tombs clearly. It was an ancient tradition in Spring, before the pilgrimages to Jerusalem for Passover, that the tombs would get white-washed.
LINKS
Today’s story – https://christian.art/en/daily-gospel-reading/909
Christian Art – https:/www.christian.art
Tags: Christian Art, Patrick van der Vorst, Egypt
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