Egyptian Book of the Dead. Night voyage

A bird-headed figure sits astride a boat-like pole crossing directly through a large orange-red sun disc at the centre of the sheet, framed above by robed figures reaching toward billowing striped drapery under a dark blue night sky. Below the sun, clusters of dark-skinned and pale nude figures raise their arms and embrace one another among green reed-like brushstrokes at the bottom of the composition.

Bold black outlines are filled with flat, saturated washes of orange, green, blue and yellow, giving the sheet the look of a hand-tinted print rather than a painted canvas. The registers stack like an ancient frieze, mythic and stylized rather than naturalistic, and the intense color against deep night blue produces a mysterious, ritual atmosphere.