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| Tomb Chapel of Nebamun, British Museum |
Kalila flashed her torch on the woman.
She
had a long waterfall of dark hair and was dressed in sheer pleated linen that
revealed the paleness of her breasts beneath.
It
was a banquet scene. The beautiful young partygoer held a water lily in front
of her nose.
“Not
all their art is timeless,” he said. “This one has a hidden clock in it. Do you
see it? You can tell from this clock that it’s a daytime party. Look at the
flower she’s holding. It’s a blue water lily and the flower is open.”
Egyptian
water lilies appeared in frescoes in tombs and on monuments all over Egypt, but
they were more than decorations to an archaeologist’s eye. They were floral
clocks. You could always tell the time of day when a scene took place.
He
pointed to the water lily in the lady’s fingers, the petals clearly open. The
flower appeared flattened in profile, as objects were always shown in carvings
and frescoes, a triangle with delicate blue points spraying out in a starburst,
like a living graphic of Egypt’s delta. The blue Egyptian water lily had the
peculiar habit of opening up in the morning and closing in early afternoon.
This scene of a lady at a banquet, inhaling the fragrance of a blue Egyptian
water lily, was not only locked in time, it was also locked into a specific
time - the daylight hours. “Since the petals are open, the banquet must have
taken place at noon or early afternoon,” he said. “By contrast, the Egyptian white lily opens at sunset and closed at
sunrise, so when you see open white lilies in a painted scene it tells you that
the event is taking place at night, lit by the glow of oil lamps.”
