Vintage Scene

• Main Author: Author: Davies, Nina M. (Nina Macpherson), 1881-1965 Alt Author: Gardiner, Alan H. (Alan Henderson), 1879-1963
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Ancient Egyptian Paintings; IPY
• Online Access: http://server15795.contentdm.oclc.org/u?/p15795coll44,97

Peasants are here busily gathering grapes and treading out the juice in what appears to be a large stone trough. A line of berries marks the top of the piled-up fruit, and the men keep their balance, as they move their feet up and down, by holding cords suspended from a wooden bar erected above the press. Beside the trough are seven jars already filled; these are sealed with the mud stoppers often found in excavations and bearing the year and the place of the vintage. The men who are gathering the fruit appear to be picking individual grapes rather than bunches, but this can hardly have been intended. The baskets used for the purpose are doubt­ less of wickerwork. The leaves of the vine are much more naturalistically rendered than in Eighteenth Dynasty examples of the subject (Plates XXVIll, XLVIII). The names of the individual workers were written beside them, but the black hieroglyphs have become nearly invisible. One name, 'the servant Men' , is alone legible.