Facsimile painting from the 'Green Room' in the North Palace at Amarna

The facsimile painting originates from the Green Room of the North Palace at Amarna and was commissioned as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Egyptian expedition documentation. It was created in 1353 by Norman de Garis Davies and his collaborator Nina M. Davies, who produced the work to replicate wall paintings from the palace's Green Room. The piece was subsequently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains in the collection today.

The creation date of 1353 aligns with the reign of Akhenaten, reflecting the artistic and historical context of the original palace decorations. This facsimile serves as a scholarly reproduction of the original wall paintings, capturing the decorative motifs and iconography of the Amarna site.

The facsimile painting from the 'Green Room' in the North Palace at Amarna is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is cataloged under the accession number 30.4.136. Created by Nina M. Davies and Norman de Garis Davies, the work reproduces a scene originally dating to approximately 1353 BCE.

The piece depicts motifs including birds and lotus flowers within a papyrus swamp setting. While the sources confirm its current institutional location and inventory details, no specific exhibition history or past display records are provided in the available documentation.

This reproduction, executed by the Egyptologist‑illustrator Nina M. Davies, copies a fragment from the so‑called Green Room of the North Palace at Amarna. The scene presents a tranquil river flanked by reeds and lotus blossoms, under a luminous sky, while a group of vividly coloured birds, white, black and red, move across the composition.

The Green Room belongs to the North Palace, one of the royal complexes at Amarna, the short‑lived capital founded by Pharaoh Akhenaten. Its decorative program reflects the period’s shift toward a more naturalistic representation of flora and fauna, diverging from earlier, more stylised Egyptian conventions.

Davies’s reproductions continue to serve as reference material for Egyptologists studying Amarna’s art, especially where the original surfaces have deteriorated. The facsimile also illustrates the early twentieth‑century practice of meticulous hand‑copying as a primary method of archaeological documentation.