Detail of a Griffin, Tomb of Khety

The facsimile of a griffin from the Tomb of Khety reflects early twentieth-century scholarship on Egyptian funerary art, particularly the work of Norman de Garis Davies and his wife Nina, who produced facsimiles for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their reproduction preserved details of the creature's design for study by Egyptologists and informed later interpretations of mythological motifs in Middle Kingdom tombs. The work remains part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's holdings and continues to inform discussions of artistic conventions in the twenty-second century BCE.

The painted detail of a griffin from the Tomb of Khety, rendered by Norman de Garis Davies and his wife Nina, has become a widely reproduced image in Egyptological studies, often cited as an example of Middle Kingdom funerary art, and is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The piece titled “Detail of a Griffin, Tomb of Khety” is a small painted representation of a mythological griffin taken from the wall decorations of an ancient Egyptian burial chamber. The image is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection and was recorded by the early twentieth‑century Egyptologist Norman de Garis Davies, who reproduced the original tomb scene for scholarly study.

Davies employed a fine brush and pigment to trace the tomb’s wall painting, preserving the original’s linear clarity and decorative patterning. The griffin’s claws are sharply delineated, and the feathered head is rendered with precise hatchwork, emphasizing both the animal’s ferocity and its avian attributes. The background is left largely unfilled, allowing the figure to dominate the composition.