Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
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7. Very few surfaces survived from the paintings applied on mud plaster. At the same time, this revealed how the rock was carved. The characteristic cell structure nests of the mud daubers appear here as well. the rock is solid, sometimes it separates in to paper-thin lamellae. At many places a network of fissures developed, which can reach a width of 20-30 cm (fig. 5). Therefore Nebamun, the former owner of the tomb, had the relief carved in the plaster on the front wall and not into the rock. This plaster is visibly different from the one applied 300 years later. As a result of the fissures and the frequent qualitative alternation of the rock, sometimes large blocks of even a cubic metre fell out from areas that were not intended to be removed during the carving out of the shrine. These gaps and fissures were filled in with mortar or mud sometimes mixed with rubble or vegetal fibres or both. Small stone pieces were inserted into this binding substance, then carved slabs of stone were put on top aligned with the surface of the wall. Some of them have been preserved in their original position. The mortar layer fissured along the fitting during the millennia outlining the edges of the blocks. Many of them fell out from their places in consequence of geological movements.11 Some of them were still in various parts of the 8. Macrophoto of the southern rear wall. It shows tomb, but most of them, how- the bound stalks of a bunch of lotus flowers ever,’ together with the painted at the foot of the richly laden altar that stands in surfaces, became the victims front of Osins. 0f the orderliness of later occupants (fig. 5). The gaps and uneven surfaces of the ceilings and the holes left by the break-offs were smoothed over, already in Imiseba’s time, with much lighter material used than the ones used on the walls, although they did not always prove successful. The builders probably plastered the roughly carved rock with mud, which seems to have been mixed with donkey excrement to decrease its weight and to increase its volume. Sun-dried donkey excrement, which mostly consists of hay and yegetal fibres, is really light 14
