File TAA i.3.6 - Caskets [boxes] (21) and (540)+(551): Tutankhamun documentation

Identity area

Reference code

TAA i.3.6

Title

Caskets [boxes] (21) and (540)+(551): Tutankhamun documentation

Date(s)

  • 1951 (Creation)

Level of description

File

Extent and medium

1 folder

Context area

Name of creator

Biographical history

British artist and copyist; born Salonika, 6 Jan. 1881, daughter of Cecil J. Cummings and Sarah Tannoch; she was trained at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art under Walter Crane; her interest in Egypt was aroused when she visited Alexandria in 1906, and she married Norman de G. Davies the following year, with whom she was to record a great many Theban tombs; an excellent artist she went to great pains to reproduce colours as exactly as possible, and achieved remarkable results in the days before colour photography; she used egg tempera when making copies of scenes instead of merely water colours; in all she worked at Thebes for over thirty years, 1908-39; three of the five vols. of The Theban Tombs Series were entirely her work, the others had drawings by her husband as well, while Gardiner edited the series; Nina Davies also copied at Amarna, 1925-6, and at Beni Hasan, 1931-2; in 1923 Gardiner exhibited a collection of her copies at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and this was followed by the publication of two folio vols. of Ancient Egyptian Paintings, 1936; in 1954 a miniature Penguin edition of some of these was illustrated with small reproductions and had a text by the artist; in 1958 she published a series of paintings from originals in the British Museum and the Bankes Collection; she, with her husband, also helped Gardiner in selecting and making drawings of good representative hieroglyphs of the XVIIIth Dynasty to use in his hieroglyphic fount, and published Picture Writing in Ancient Egypt, 1958; she contributed a number of articles to the JEA and left two of her copies to the Egyptian Department of the British Museum and other copies together with a shabti figure to the Ashmolean Museum; her Egyptological books were bequeathed to the Griffith Institute and to the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford; she died in Hinksey Hill, Berkshire, 21 April 1965.

Archival history

Formerly in the possession of Nina de Garis Davies.

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Presented by Nina de Garis Davies.

Content and structure area

Scope and content

Tutankhamun documentation: Nina de Garis Davies' notes on boxes (21) and (540)+(551).

  • Nina de Garis Davies's manuscript notes on the decoration of two boxes:
    • Carter object (21), the "Painted Box" with battle and hunting scenes.
    • Carter objects (540)+(551), with scenes of Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun in a garden on the lid.
  • Includes two small watercolour sketches and a line drawing, all created by Davies.
  • This material was created in January and February 1951 when Davies visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
  • Davies's paintings of box (21) were subsequently published. See below for details.

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Property of the Griffith Institute. No restrictions.

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Copyright Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

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Archived scans in Griffith Institute.

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