Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
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compared to its volume and it most probably fits the purpose, although, in the lack of scaffolding we could not closely inspect it on the ceiling. However, all the local people who carried water from the central well on the back of donkeys agreed that the brown globules certainly came from this animal. It could clearly be seen, even without scaffolding, that the mud plaster has conserved the fingerprints of the workers for more than 3000 years (fig. 6). The roughly prepared surfaces were plastered with different materials in an average thickness of 3-5 cm reaching 10 cm at some places. The smoothed walls have an uneven surface, depressions and that even palm sized areas are not free from protrusions. A many-layered, light coloured plaster was applied in the transverse-hall. The luminescent photos made of the southern end wall in ultraviolet light (366 nm) revealed interesting pieces of information about the rock, the plasters, the priming and the paint layer. A plaster layer could clearly be separated from the rock, it was covered with a thinner, 0.3-1 cm thick light coloured grounding then a lighter coloured background layer on which the paint was applied (fig. 11). The surface of the ’’recess” that bridges the difference sin height between the transverse-hall and the axial corridor were levelled with the application of an eggshell-coloured mortar mixed with vegetal fibres, then, unlike in the transverse-hall, it was smoothed over with a mud plaster that contained vegetal fibres. Mud plaster, that was less expensive than other types of plaster, did not prove to be very durable in grave no. 65, it often separated from the rock and most of it fell off (fig. 7). Very often several different types of work was performed within the same area at the same time: rough stone carving, plastering and levelling of walls, sketches for wall painting, etc.. As soon as the smoothing layer was completed on a stretch of the wall, the draughtsmen and painters started their work.12 9. The western side of column d in the transverse-hall. A meticulously painted, coloured hieroglyph text runs on the side of the carved architectural element that imitates a stone beam laid horizontally on top of the columns. The inscriptions painted in blue above it on the ceiling all fell out. PAINTING TECHNIQUE OF THE WALL PAINTINGS AND THE RESULTING PROBLEMS In Egyptian wall painting, the painting process usually began with the drafting of the frame elements, the larger compositionally interconnecting elements, the texts and the scenes using red paint (fig. 15). At the same time, the boundaries of the colour surfaces were delineated. A thin layer of a light background colour was often applied over the draft. This afforded the refining of the draft, its 15
