The Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun at the British Museum: The Digital, the Spectacular, and the Inconspicuous Under One Limestone Roof

This article presents the evaluation of the digital resources for the Nebamun Gallery at the British Museum in the context of other display elements. The gallery exhibits eleven beautiful paintings from the ancient Egyptian tomb-chapel of Nebamun together with 180 objects and a computer simulation of the funerary chapel. The evaluation programme was designed drawing from the concepts and methods of space syntax, design idioms, beauty and usability, object biographies, and visual communication. The research uncovered a symbiotic interplay between exhibits which encourages visitors to view different sources of evidence and to draw connections between the objects, the paintings and the digital reconstruction. INTRODUCTION The dilemma of spectacular and inconspicuous objects in museums At the heart of this research lies the assumption that the way something looks influences our behaviour towards it [1]. In simplified terms, museums objects fall into two categories: spectacular and inconspicuous (figure 1 and 2). Figures 1 and 2. Inconspicuous wooden hoes (left) and a spectacular duck-shaped cosmetic box (right) from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun at the British Museum.