A quick glance at the paintings in the tomb will show you at least two things:
- that the walls are quite large and finding your way around could be difficult
- that the paintings are quite damaged
Thus when we come to publish the tomb we will need to make it possible for readers to obtain a quick overview of each wall and locate where the various things which interest them are in the book. The only advantage of the damage to the paintings means that we can see details of how the walls were prepared for the paintings. The wall plan is a method which can be used for doing both in one diagram. Here is a sample, of wall 16; click on the image to see a larger version.
Such a diagram, which we have generated on the computer, is a mixture of several elements. In the tomb we make a 1:10 plan of each wall on graph paper, on which we mark the position of the decoration, various elements of plaster and mud which show where repairs were made to the wall prior to final painting, or where later changes have been made, and other things like builders' marks if they exist, and particular large holes and fissures.
This diagram is then scanned and the various important features are drawn over with a vector graphics program (we use Adobe Illustrator), and the different parts are shaded. Then the facsimile drawings of the walls are scanned in and reduced to fit the areas of decoration which we have drawn. The edges of those decorated areas are then tidied up, and the whole thing can be printed, or saved as a file which can be imported into another program.