Alma-Tadema-Joseph - Overseer of Pharaoh`s Graneries - info

Drawn from the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, it depicts Joseph seated on a throne

in his role as the Pharaoh’s overseer of the royal granaries, while a scribe works on the

floor next to him, carefully counting each piece of grain.

Alma-Tadema based the ancient Egyptian decorations and accoutrements in his picture

on actual artifacts. He owned a large collection of photographs of archeological sites

and objects, and one showed a photograph of a distinctive wig found in a tomb at

Thebes. Alma-Tadema patterned Joseph’s wig after the photograph, although the wig

was believed to have been worn by a woman, not a man. The wall painting behind the

figures is from the tomb of Nebamun in the British Museum and the cartouche on the

throne is that of Tuthmosis II, who ruled during the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1504–1450

BC), the period 19th-century scholars believed to have coincided with Biblical Egypt.