Double Statue of Nimaatsed
Nimaatsed was a high-ranking official and priest of the 5th Dynasty, serving both the royal funerary cults and the increasingly important worship of the sun god Re. Among his titles were priest of Re and Hathor in the solar temple of King Neferirkare Kakai, as well as judge and priest in the pyramid temples of Neferirkare, Neferefre and Nyuserre Ini.
The Double Statue and the Ka
This remarkable painted limestone statue, discovered in Nimaatsed’s mastaba at Saqqara, presents him twice upon a single base. The two figures are almost identical, although one is slightly taller than the other. Nimaatsed stands with his arms held straight beside his body, grasping small rods of office or dignity in his hands. He wears a broad, short wig which leaves the ears exposed, a colourful collar and a white kilt with a yellow pleated edge. His eyebrows, eyelids and delicate moustache are picked out in black, while his skin is painted the reddish-brown conventionally used for men in Egyptian art.
Double and multiple images of a tomb owner are known from Old Kingdom funerary sculpture and may have served more than one purpose. They could conceivably show different aspects or stages of an individual’s life, but Nimaatsed’s almost identical pair has often been interpreted as an especially striking evocation of the deceased together with his Ka.
The Ancient Egyptian concept of the Soul
The Ka was one of the essential elements of an Egyptian person: the vital force bestowed at birth which continued to exist after physical death. It was not quite a ‘soul’ in the later Western sense, nor simply a ghost, but an enduring life-presence which required food, drink and ritual attention.
Offerings placed within the tomb were therefore made available to the Ka, while statues could provide a lasting physical form through which the deceased might receive them. If Nimaatsed’s second image was intended to evoke his Ka, the two figures together beautifully express the Egyptian hope that death did not extinguish life, but allowed it to continue through ritual, remembrance and nourishment for eternity.
Neferirkare Kakai
Neferirkare Kakai was the third king of Egypt’s 5th Dynasty, ruling during the twenty-fifth century B.C., and was buried within a great pyramid complex at Abusir. His reign belonged to a period in which the cult of Re assumed particular prominence within royal ideology.
Neferirkare founded a solar temple known as Setibre, ‘The Place of the Heart of Re’. Although the temple itself has not yet been securely located, its existence is well attested by ancient inscriptions and by the Abusir Papyri, which record offerings travelling between the solar temple and the king’s funerary establishment. Like the other royal solar temples of the 5th Dynasty, it was devoted to the visible power of the sun god and formed an important counterpart to the king’s pyramid cult.
Summary:
Double Statue of Nimaatsed
Old Kingdom, 5th Dynasty, ca. 2494-2345 BC.
Painted limestone. From the Mastaba of Nimaatsed (D 56), Saqqara necropolis.
Auguste Mariette’s Excavations of 1860. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. CG 133
