British Museum's New Ancient Egyptian Gallery

See some of the finest examples of Ancient Egyptian paintings in the British Museum's new Ancient Egyptian gallery.

Entry to the new Ancient Egyptian gallery is free. You can find it next to the British Museum's most popular galleries: those of Ancient Egyptian funerary archaeology, better known as the "mummy rooms".

Dazzling Paintings from Ancient Egypt

The new gallery is centred round the spectacular painted tomb-chapel of Nebamun.

Amazingly given the quality of the paintings on show, Nebamun wasn't a Pharaoh or ruler, but merely an accountant in the Temple of Amun at Karnak.

He died around 1350BC, a generation before Tutankhamun.

The paintings show Nebamun at work and at leisure – surveying his estates and hunting in the marshes.

Egyptian Galleries Mark Major Preservation Project

These are some of the most famous images of Ancient Egyptian art, and are all the more evocative because the location of the original tomb-chapel of Nebamun has been lost.

This is the first time in nearly 10 years that the Nebamun paintings have gone on public display.

The tomb-paintings were acquired by the British Museum in the 1820s and were on display until the late 1990s.

Since then, the fragile wall-paintings have undergone the most extensive conservation project in the British Museum's history, securing them for at least the next 50 years.

An Egyptian Michelangelo on Show at The British Museum

The restoration project revealed new insights into the superb technique of the tomb painters – dubbed by one art historian as antiquity's equivalent to Michelangelo.

Exuberant compositions, astonishing depictions of animals and unparalleled handling of textures all feature in scenes that show life in Ancient Egypt in glorious colour.

New Egyptian Galleries Evoke Original Tomb

The Nebamun paintings are displayed together in a room designed to evoke their original setting and position in a small, intimate chapel.

You can enjoy a digital walk-through of the reconstructed tomb-chapel, based on the latest research and fieldwork at Luxor in Egypt.

Next to the paintings, 150 artefacts show how the tomb-chapel was built, how it remained open for visitors, and the nature of Egyptian society at the time.

Once you've visited the new Ancient Egyptian gallery, be sure to see the rest of the British Museum's Ancient Egyptian treasures, including large pharaonic statues, mummies, sarcophagi and the Rosetta Stone.

Read about the British Museum's new Medieval Gallery