Waldemar Janusczak is a UK art critic who has twice won the Critic of the Year award. This is the only article on the subject that I've seen reference Lara Croft!
A jazzier institution than the British Museum might have called its new display of Egyptian wall painting Death and the Accountant, because that, basically, is what it tackles. But the British Museum is not jazzy, thank Isis, so it has chosen something prosaic but accurate: The Painted Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun. Which does not trip off the tongue, and promises a substantial educational workload. If, however, we are seeking a helping of culture lite, we head for Tate Modern, don’t we, not the increasingly pertinent and effective British Museum?
A tomb-chapel turns out to be an ancient Egyptian burial complex with an underground grave surmounted by a suite of painted rooms, in which the deceased’s story is told in pictures. While the burial chamber is sealed for eternity, the painted rooms are open to visitors and subsequent generations of the family, who continue to worship their ancestor’s memory in them. Of course, in an ugly way, Egyptian tomb-chapels are sites of continuing cultural importance for us as well. The other night, as I surfed the airwaves in vain for signs of sentience, I came across Angelina Jolie dashing through one while lightly disguised as the buxom tomb-raider Lara Croft. As she careered from one dangerous underground maze to another, not even the spectacular silliness of her story line could disguise the continuing fascination of such places.
See the above page for the full story.
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