The deceased Kha and his wife Merit worship Osiris, Lord of the Underworld and Judge of the Dead, detail of a vignette from the Book of the Dead of Kha. The deceased needed all the help he or she could get on his or her long journey to the afterlife, a place full of evil...
A bas relief depicts Isis kneeling on a stool in the shape of the Nebu or gold symbol in hieroglyphs, goddess of motherhood, magic, healing, and rebirth. In addition to her traditional roles as wife, mother, healer, and protector of the dead, Isis was worshiped as the goddess of good fortune, the sea, and travel....
As a sphinx, Hatshepsut displays a lion’s mane and a king’s beard. Hatshepsut ruled as a man, not as a woman, and for this reason her royal protocols and titles are always written without the feminine qualification, which is the “T” letter in hieroglyphs. This is the case in the text inscribed on the base...
The shrine of Hathor and the cow’s statue were retrieved from under heaps of debris south of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. The shrine is from the reign of Thutmose III. Its roof is painted blue with yellow stars to imitate the Vault of Heaven. The statue of Hathor as the divine...
In this Great Hymn to the Aten, a detail of a painted low relief depicts Akhenaten and his family adoring the sun god Aten. The stele showing Akhenaten and Nefertiti offering to the Aten, followed by their two eldest daughters shaking sistrum. The stele was completed but here is still a grid of red draft...
The stele of Merneptah was originally erected by King Amenhotep III in his mortuary temple on the west bank of Thebes. King Merneptah, the thirteenth son and successor of King Ramesses II, reused the back face of this gray granite stele. The round top of this face, topped by the winged sun disk and flanked...
Portrait head of a princess of one of the daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti from a composite statue, it was discovered within the workshop of the royal sculptor Thutmose at Tell el-Amarna, or Akhetaten. In Amarna art the daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti express the tenets of the new religion. Gathered playfully near their parents,...
The stele of sculptor Bek the chief royal artist is itself a very distinctive product, with two figures contained within a naos but carved almost three-dimensionally. If, as would seem very possible, Bek himself carved the stele, this would be the oldest self-portrait known. The inscription of this stele also mentions him being taught by...
This sunken relief depicts Hatshepsut offering incense to the fertility god Min-Amun, most often represented in male human form, shown with an erect penis which he holds in his left hand and an upheld right arm holding a flail. Although it had been demolished and parts were reused in antiquity, following rediscovery, the chapel has...
This fine limestone statue probably comes from a chapel dedicated to the god Horus, in the vicinity of the tomb of King Djer at Abydos. At the time of the discovery, the statue still retained significant remains of its polychromy. The breast was covered with a gold leaf, and the wings still had, in places,...
