D’Athanasi removed what he wanted from the Nebamun tomb simply by hacking and gouging fragments from the walls of the tomb.
Uring this era, archaeological techniques were extremely primitive. After his funeral, this chamber would have been sealed off, but his family may have continued to visit the tomb chapel itself, performing rituals and prayers, providing an important link between the dead and the living. Below that, accessible through a vertical shaft, would have been the actual burial chamber where Nebamun’s coffined mummy lay. This would lead into the tomb chapel, where most of the painted decorations would have appeared. Typically, it would have been entered through a doorway in a terraced courtyard. The tomb would have been cut into the rock, and would have faced eastwards, towards the “land of the living”. However, we can say with some confidence that it was at Thebes (present day Luxor), on the west bank of the Nile, in the area of the Tombs of the Nobles, between the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens (Fig 2). For various reasons, d’Athanasi would always remain very secretive about its exact location, and its precise whereabouts still remain a mystery. The Nebamun tomb was built about 1350-1400 BC. In the potential treasure troves of the Thebes Valley, some 500 km south of Cairo, the chief rivalry was played out between the English, who predominantly favoured the west bank of the Nile, and the French on the East Bank. This applied particularly in Egypt, which was enjoying a sudden surge in interest, following Napoleon’s occupation of that country in 1798 and the general opening up of the country by the Egyptian authorities.
In view of the potential rewards, there was naturally great rivalry – even violence - between private collectors, and between nationalities. Such noble internationalist sentiments were, of course, not applied to European artworks, but rather to those classed as primitive, backward, exotic or native, and therefore open to appropriation by the more “civilised” countries. There was little appreciation of cultural patrimony or the rights of the country of origin – rather, the seizing and export of cultural artifacts was likened to having “a lost child restored to the great family of science and art, which is of no country, whose home is the world”. At this time, museums generally built their collections by purchasing items from private individuals, rather than conducting their own institutional digs. The early nineteenth century was an age of nationalist adventurers and the rapid growth of museums.
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