The inner side of the smaller segment of this cuff bracelet is inscribed for a man with the Libyan name of Nimlot (also rendered as Nemareth or the like). The bracelet was once inlaid with lapis lazuli. The external decoration of the bracelet consists of geometric decoration and a figure of a child god. The...
A middle kingdom wooden model of a sailing boat with the pilot in the bow and the owner resting under a canopy. Boats were the commonest type of funerary models placed in tombs during the Middle Kingdom. They provided the dead person with the magical means of traveling along the waterways of the Underworld. All...
The Gayer-Anderson cat is a bronze figure depicting one form of the goddess Bastet. The goddess was usually shown as a cat-headed woman, or in the form of a cat. Her principal cult center was Bubastis in the Nile Delta. Bastet was a mother goddess and benign counterpart to the more aggressive lion goddess Sekhmet. The...
Ancient Egyptian signet-ring with a rectangular bezel bearing a cartouche with the name of King Amenhotep II flanked by Nile gods (Hapi). The Egyptians primarily used signet, or seal, rings, in which a seal engraved on the bezel can be used to authenticate documents by the wearer. Egyptian seal rings typically had the name and titles...
The ‘Book of the Dead’, Papyrus of Ani (sheet 3): Ani’s Judgment: the scene is the Hall of Judgment. The Weighing of the Heart Ceremony. Centrally placed is a balance, holding in its two pans Ani’s heart (on the left) and a feather (on the right) representing Maat, the divine personification of truth and order....
Nebamun is shown hunting birds, in a small boat with his wife Hatshepsut and their young daughter, in the marshes of the Nile. Such scenes had already been traditional parts of tomb-chapel decoration for hundreds of years and show the dead tomb-owner ‘enjoying himself and seeing beauty’, as the hieroglyphic caption here says. Yet this...
