A WALL painting in an ancient Egyptian tomb, showing an intimate embrace between two male manicurists, could be the first recorded depiction of an openly homosexual couple.

The theory has emerged from an international conference at the University of Wales, Swansea, which debated the significance of the unusual tomb, dating from 4,000 years ago, which contains paintings of the men in a clutch.

The suggestion that the two men, called Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, won social acceptance for their relationship four millenniums before last month’s legal sanctioning of gay unions raises the prospect that the tomb will become a gay honeymoon destination. The site already attracts many gay tourists.

Archeologists have been baffled by the two men’s relationship since the tomb was uncovered in 1964 in the necropolis of Saqqara at Memphis, on the west bank of the Nile. It is extremely rare to find two men of equal status buried together.

While grave robbers had stripped the tomb of relics, the wall paintings revealed tantalising hints about its original occupants. The men are repeatedly depicted together, sometimes holding hands, sometimes with their arms around each other. In two instances they are shown with their noses touching — the most intimate embrace permitted in Egyptian art of the time — seen as a form of kissing.

Their wives and children are relegated to the background. In one scene, in which the two men share a final banquet before their journey into the afterlife, Niankhkhnum’s wife has been plastered over by the craftsmen who decorated the tomb. Khnumhotep’s spouse fails to make an appearance.

Hieroglyphs describe the men as overseers of the manicurists to the pharaoh. They were responsible for the care of the pharaoh’s hands and were among the select few permitted to touch the ruler.

Though the hieroglyphs say nothing of the two men’s relationship, Greg Reeder, an Egyptologist based in San Francisco, believes the wall paintings suggest homosexuality could be the answer.

Reeder said Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep adopted poses usually restricted to husbands and wives in other tombs. “Same-sex desire must be considered as a probable explanation,” he said, though he admits it is impossible to be sure. “We can only say for certain that the carvings show a profound intimacy between the two men, and the people who built the tomb were possibly unsure how to portray this.”

Opponents say the paintings could indicate that the men were blood relatives. Other Egyptologists follow the theory that Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were twins. John Baines, a professor of Egyptology at Oxford University, has previously suggested that this was the most likely explanation for the “exaggerated affection” displayed between the men.

At the conference, however, David O’Connor, professor of ancient Egyptian art at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, said that they may have been conjoined twins. “The artists adapted the visual language relevant to emotional and perhaps sometimes sexual intimacy to express an extremely rare fraternal circumstance,” O’Connor said, though he acknowledged that the paintings do not show a physical connection.

Richard Parkinson, assistant keeper in the department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, said that the similarities between the names of the two men suggested they were brothers, although some Egyptians did adopt new names later in life. “The danger is that people want to find positive (homosexual) images in the past and it is very hard for modern European eyes to resist seeing the images as homoerotic,” he said. “I doubt myself that this is one of them, simply because we have no other evidence of male-male relationships being commemorated.”

However, Reeder observed that, rightly or wrongly, the manicurists’ tomb is being embraced by many gay people. He said that homosexual relationships, commonplace in ancient Greece and Rome, were hinted at in Egyptian papyruses.

“When gay marriage is being discussed and debated, people want to look to the past and find things that would indicate that there were same-sex relationships in ancient times that the state on occasion could sanction,” he said.

Thomas Dowson, an independent scholar formerly at Manchester University, said: “I have absolutely no problem if we have evidence of same-sex unions in the past that is used to challenge the homophobia of our society today, though that doesn’t mean we play fast and loose with the data. ”

The tomb was restored by German archeologists in the late 1970s and opened to the public in the 1990s. While gay tour operators have not targeted the site, in large part because Egypt outlaws homosexual activity, Reeder said: “It has now become famous and lots of gay tourists go there.”

Dowson said it was wonderful that gay tourists were visiting Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep’s tomb. “I think it is beautiful, but if it became too big, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Egyptian authorities closed it down,” he said.

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