Painted Restoration of the Hathor-Head Frieze in the Tomb of Senenmut

The Tomb of Senenmut (TT 353) at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna was the private tomb of Queen Hatshepsut's chief steward and closest advisor, and its astronomical ceiling and Hathor-head frieze represent some of the most ambitious decorative programs in the Theban necropolis. Nina Davies's painted restoration of the Hathor-head frieze documents both the surviving evidence and the scholarly reconstruction of what has been lost — a practice that required her to distinguish between documented evidence and informed inference in a way that combined artistic skill with scholarly judgment. The Hathor heads, with their characteristic frontal-face convention within a profile-dominated tradition, were among the most distinctive elements of New Kingdom temple and tomb decoration.

A painted restoration involves Davies in a different task from pure facsimile — she must both reproduce what survives with facsimile precision and reconstruct what has been lost through informed inference about the original pattern. The distinction between these two modes of visual statement requires careful technique and scholarly transparency.