TT52

Within the mastaba, the offering chapel was dedicated to the sustenance of the deceased beyond death by magically providing food and water.

The stela on the south wall of the broad hall shows men making offerings to images of the deceased.

[3] Similar scenes could also be found on the walls of Old Kingdom burials, depicting processions of people bringing offerings for the deceased.

These scenes show Nakht and his wife, Tawy, making offerings to Ra, who is manifested by the sunlight that would emerge from the doorway.

Malek[4] wrote "domestic scenes are frequent" because they emphasise the closeness of the family and their continued existence together in the afterlife.

She writes that banquet scenes "are littered with such references" including the inclusion of mandrakes and lotus flowers, which are being held by the women in the second register.

Davies (1917:66) suggests that "sustenance…was not always coaxed from the soil by severe labor [sic]", indicating that this scene was used to show a form of receiving food after death in a different way, for entertainment for the deceased and for an artistic change of genre.

The decoration shows that, in contrast to Old Kingdom beliefs, as depicted of the walls of Memphite mastabas, its most important function was depict a life after death, together with family, with indications of creativity and potency, and "thus the picture of Theban life in a tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty is a clear mirror of existence…of the homesteads around it where the nature-loving Egyptian preferred to dwell".