Restored Egyptian art on display

It was the largest conservation project in the museum's history

Some of the most famous images in Egyptian art are to be displayed at the British Museum after an extensive conservation project.

Paintings from the lost tomb-chapel of Nebamum, located in the hills near Luxor, will go on display.

The images depict an accountant in the Temple of Amun at Karnak, who died in 1350 BC.

Repair work, which should last for 50 years, has been undertaken on the 11 large fragments.

The art works were first acquired by the museum in the 1820s and were on display until the late 1990s.

They show the accountant at work and at leisure - surveying his estates and hunting in the marshes.

The conservation project was the largest in the museum's history.

Richard Parkinson, curator of the Michael Cohen Gallery, said: "The paintings from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun are perhaps the finest to survive from Ancient Egypt's golden age.

The images depict an accountant, both at work and at leisure

"The colourful scenes of the accountant, his family and his workers are full of vibrant detail and form one of Egypt's most exuberant celebrations of its own culture."

He added: "Newly conserved over a seven-year period, they are shown in a radical new display evoking the paintings' original setting in a rock-cut chapel in the desert hills at Luxor, giving us an intimate insight into how one Egyptian wanted his lives to be - walls of colour revealing the dreams of an ancient society."

The gallery will include another fragment for the same tomb-chapel on loan from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.

Admission to the gallery will be free.