Nearly five millennia ago, an artist inked an incredibly detailed painting of geese in the tomb of an Egyptian vizier and his wife. This "Mona Lisa" of ancient Egypt may depict a previously unknown and now extinct species of goose, a new analysis suggests.
The 4,600-year-old painting, known as "Meidum Geese," was discovered in the 1800s in the tomb of Nefermaat, a vizier, or the highest-ranking official who served the pharaoh (and was likely also his son) and his wife Itet in Meidum, an archaeological site in lower Egypt, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The painting was discovered in the Chapel of Itet inside the tomb.
The vivid painting, which was once part of a larger tableau that also depicted men trapping birds in a net as offerings for the tomb owner, has since been described as "Egypt's Mona Lisa," study author Anthony Romilio, a technical assistant at The University of Queensland's school of chemistry and molecular biosciences in Australia, said in a statement. But "Apparently no-one realized it depicted an unknown species."
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