The researchers were able to identify some of the animals in the artwork from the wall paintings. The research team looked at recreations of the wall paintings from the 20th century. The range of bird species depicted in the paintings were not known until now. The team's work is published in a journal. The wall paintings were discovered at Amarna in the 1920s, and the Davies family made facsimiles of them. The father of Tutankhamun broke with tradition by sacrificing the old gods for the sun god Aten in order to start a new life. Tutankhamun reversed the breech.
Some of the most skillfully rendered and naturalistic images of birds known from Dynastic Egypt can be found in the Green Room paintings. The likenesses depicted in the facsimile paintings are very different from the real thing.
The depictions of animals are so realistic that the researchers were able to identify specific species that lived in the region some 3,300 years ago. There were three birds that were all identifiable. There is a chance that the bird is a shrike or a turtle dove.
The rock pigeons are not typically associated with wetlands. There is a chance that the animals may have lived in more varied habitats than previously thought.
The original paintings are gone. There is an attempt to preserve the panels on which they are painted.
According to Barry Kemp, an Egyptologist at the University of Cambridge, the only way to preserve them was tobury them in sand. The archaeologists decided not to do this because they were afraid local people would damage them.
There are fragments of the originals held in a number of cities. The facsimiles are the best representations of birdwatching in the past.
Egypt wants the stone back from the British museum.
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