False Doors and History 2

Introduction

i

Archaism and Innovation

Archaism and Innovation: Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt

ii

Granodiorite statue of Hetep from Saqqara (Egyptian Museum, Cairo; see page 59, fig. 17).

Introduction

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Archaism and Innovation:Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt

Edited by

David P. Silverman William Kelly Simpson

Josef Wegner

New Haven: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

2009


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Typeset in New BaskervilleCopyedited, typeset, designed, and produced by Peter Der Manuelian

Cover image: Reconstruction of a birth-brick scene of mother and child; painting by Jennifer Wegner (see page 457, fig. 7)

isbn 13: 978-0-9802065-1-7isbn 10: 0-9802065-1-0

© 2009 New Haven: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system,without prior permission in writing from the publisher

Printed in the United States of America by Sawyer Printers, Charlestown, MassachusettsBound by Acme Bookbinding, Charlestown, Massachusetts

Introduction

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Archaism and Innovation: Towards Defining the Cultural Expression of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom

ix–xi

David P. Silverman, William Kelly Simpson, Josef Wegner

i. Royal statuaRy

A Middle Kingdom Masterwork in Boston: MFA 2002.609 1–15

Rita E. Freed and Jack A. Josephson

The Statue Acc. No. 25.6 in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Two Versions of Throne Decorations

17–45

Dorothea Arnold

ii. aRchitectuRe and the Royal MoRtuaRy tRadition

Non-Royal Burials in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery and the Early Twelfth Dynasty 47–101

David P. Silverman

The Tomb of Senwosret III at Abydos: Considerations on the Origins and Development of the Royal Amduat-Tomb

103–169

Josef Wegner

iii. lahun studies

Temple(s) and Town at el-Lahun: A Study of the Ancient Toponyms in the El-Lahun Papyri

171–203

Zoltán Horváth

Lots I and II from Lahun 205–261

Mark Collier

iV. text and language

Old and New in the Middle Kingdom 263–275

James P. Allen

The Stela of Sehetepibre (CG 20538): Borrowings and Innovation 277–293

Ronald J. Leprohon

V. adMinistRation

Rulers and Administrators—Dynasty 12: The Rule of the House of Itj-towy with Some Personal Reminiscences

295–304

William Kelly Simpson

Four Titles: What is the Difference? 305–317

Stephen Quirke


vi

Vi. FuneRaRy aRts Funerary Pottery in the Middle Kingdom: Archaism or Revival? 319–339

Susan J. Allen

Funerary Equipment from Deir el-Bersha in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 341–358

Denise Doxey

False Doors and History: The First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom 359–425

Edward Brovarski

Vii. Religion and iconogRaphy

The Early History of “New Kingdom” Netherworld Iconography: A Late Middle Kingdom Apotropaic Wand Reconsidered

427–445

Joshua Roberson

A Decorated Birth-Brick from South Abydos: New Evidence on Childbirth and Birth Magic in the Middle Kingdom

447–496

Josef Wegner

Introduction

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List of Contributors

JaMes p. allen Wilbour Professor of Egyptology and ChairDepartment of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies Brown [email protected]

susan J. allen Senior Research CuratorDepartment of Egyptian ArtThe Metropolitan Museum of [email protected]

doRothea aRnold Lila Acheson Wallace Curator in ChargeDepartment of Egyptian ArtThe Metropolitan Museum of [email protected]

edwaRd bRoVaRski

Independent Scholar [email protected]

MaRk collieR Senior Lecturer in EgyptologySchool of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool [email protected]

denise doxey Curator, Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art Art of the Ancient WorldMuseum of Fine Arts, [email protected]

Rita e. FReed John F. Cogan Jr. and Mary L. Cornille Chair Art of the Ancient WorldMuseum of Fine Arts, [email protected]

Zoltán hoRVáth

Assistant Curator of Egyptian AntiquitiesMuseum of Fine Arts, [email protected]

Jack a. Josephson Visiting ProfessorAmerican University in [email protected]

Ronald J. lepRohon Professor of EgyptologyDepartment of Near and Middle Eastern CivilizationsUniversity of [email protected]

stephen QuiRke Curator, Petrie Museum of Egyptian ArchaeologyReader, Institute of Archaeology University College [email protected]

Joshua RobeRson Lecturer in EgyptologyUniversity of [email protected]

daVid p. silVeRMan

Eckely B. Coxe Jr. Professor and CuratorUniversity of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and [email protected]

williaM kelly siMpson Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Near Eastern Languages and CivilizationsYale [email protected]

JoseF wegneR Associate Professor; Associate CuratorUniversity of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and [email protected]


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Introduction

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Introduction

Archaism and Innovation: Defining the Cultural Expression of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom

David P. Silverman • William Kelly Simpson • Josef Wegner

the iMpoRtance oF the past to the ancient egyptians is evident in almost every part of their culture. Their very concept of time as both a daily cycle and a linear infinite ensured

that the past was always part of the collective consciousness. The people revered their ances-tors, remembering and paying tribute to them through cults; they handed down funerary texts through generations; they recorded lists of kings that spanned centuries; they included ancient keepsakes in their burial provisions; and they replicated architectural models for mil-lennia. Perhaps an aspect of the principles of maat, this reliance on tradition did not prevent their civilization from marked evolution and development. Certain periods of Egypt’s long history, however, exhibit more reliance on past models than others. A tendency toward selec-tive archaism particularly manifests itself following periods of political instability and disunity, although in Egyptian civilization archaism never comes to constitute a slavish dependence on former achievements.

The Egyptians adapted past models as guidelines for the present. During the more than three thousand year history of pharaonic Egypt, archaism periodically emerged as a significant influence on a wide range of cultural and social expressions. Egyptologists who examine this phenomenon sometimes see it as a politically motivated tool, linked to the ever present need to maintain harmony and order. Periods of strong leadership and territorial unity could serve as a model for chaotic or unsettled times when it became necessary to set a policy to reestablish the pharaonic kingdom and preserve maat (divine order). At a political level, the copying of past models could sometimes aid in affirming the legitimacy of the ruling elite, and symbolically bring the land back to its past glories. Not surprisingly archaism emerges as a notable factor in periods of reunification such as the early Middle Kingdom, the early 18th Dynasty, the Kushite 25th Dynasty, and the renaissance of the Saite 26th Dynasty. As expressed in language, litera-ture, the arts, and architecture, the role of archaism is integral to the long-term resilience of pharaonic high culture, particularly in the periods after the Old Kingdom.

The Middle Kingdom (Dynasties 11–13, ca. 2050–1700 bce) represents a period during which Egypt experienced a process of reunification akin to that of the initial union of Upper and Lower Egypt. The rebirth of the land under a single pharaoh, Nebhepetre-Mentuhotep II, contrasted with the chaos of the First Intermediate Period and the prolonged conflict between the Herakleopolitan and Theban kingdoms. Nebhepetre himself emphasized this pivotal moment of time by adopting the Horus-name, Sema-Tawy: “The Unifier of the Two Lands.” The foundation of the Middle Kingdom, however, did not proceed entirely smoothly and some political disarray is apparent at the end of the 11th dynasty. Just what actually transpired to put political power into the hands of the first of the pharaohs called Amenemhet is not to-tally clear, but the balance of power did shift to this individual who did not descend from the royal family. As new pharaoh, he established the 12th Dynasty, but initially continued using Thebes, his area of origin, as the center of his administration. An astute politician who was also geopolitically aware, he quickly saw the need to consolidate his empire and establish an


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administrative capital in the north. Through this move, he literally became a “Uniter of the Two Lands” and appropriately named his capital city, Amenemhat-Itjet-Tawy (Amenemhat-Seizes-the-Two-Lands). Located perhaps just north of the entrance to the Fayum, this new center of govern-ment restored the state of geographical balance between Upper and Lower Egypt, mirroring the focus on the city of Memphis as a center of administration that had existed during the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdoms.

While the Middle Kingdom often viewed the Old Kingdom positively, they actively used the events of the First Intermediate Period to illustrate the ill effects of a kingship in abeyance. The corpus of literary compositions produced during the Middle Kingdom frequently portrays these times as chaotic, lacking strong, centralized royal control. While conceivably based ultimately on some factual political and economic aspects of the First Intermediate Period, this literature has a common theme: chaos followed by the restoration and maintenance of order. Despite the references to what may appear as historical facts, the underlying motif is the preservation of maat. A strong king and attendant centralized government assures the effective maintenance of the land and the establishment of order. The texts, therefore, are not only propagandistic literature with religious significance, but they also are literary works imbued with a sense of history. They, along with the often-repeated passages in the biographical texts from the First Intermediate Period, form a type of social commentary on the immediate past.

Middle Kingdom art and architecture also drew heavily on past models. Classical Memphite influence is witnessed both in relief and statuary at the beginning of the 12th Dynasty. Artistic styles as they were redefined in the early 12th Dynasty—first in Memphis proper, and then in the new capital of Itjet-Tawy—drew inspiration from the style and canons of Old Kingdom art. The architects who built the royal funerary monuments from the 12th Dynasty relied primarily on the model of Memphite pyramid complexes, and even elite mortuary structures, especially those from Saqqara, used traditions of the past for inspiration. Against the backdrop of the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, coupled with the conscious pursuit of a reinstated unified kingdom, archaism as it occurs in the Middle Kingdom emerged for the first time in Egyptian history as an integral feature in the redefinition of the Egyptian political, cultural, and social organization.

Copying past models formed a tangible means of legitimization of kingship and the ruling elite, but Middle Kingdom Egypt was situated in a political and social setting very different from that of the Old Kingdom. A century and a half of political fragmentation and division into two lines of kings ruling in different part of the country, affected religious beliefs and political ideology. Concepts of kingship and aspects of religion showed changes. Deities prominent in Upper Egypt, such as Montu and Amun came to the forefront of national gods. Mortuary texts for the elite became more prevalent. The Coffin Texts had already appeared not long after the Sixth Dynasty, the time period when the royal Pyramid Texts first appeared. Now, this collec-tion of spells occurred throughout most parts of the country. At the same time, the pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom no longer used such mortuary literature as a part of the decorative program in their funerary monuments.

The Middle Kingdom also saw the rising influence of the middle class, the segments of society that belonged neither to the governing elite nor to the lower levels of agricultural workers. The country also faced increasingly powerful and assertive foreign lands both to the north and south. The growing Levantine city states of the Middle Bronze Age and the powerful Upper Nubian polities of the Middle Kerma culture formed an altered geopolitical context, one that heavily influenced the characteristics and development of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom.

Faced with these internal and external changes, Egyptians utilized archaism as a form of symbolic expression. Past models had an integral part to play in a dynamic and changing society. The influences of archaism and innovation in an era of social and cultural flux came to define the “face” of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom. One explicit area where archaism and innovation mani-fest themselves is the royal mortuary tradition. The resuscitation of the classic late Old King-dom Memphite pyramid complex under Amenemhat I and Senwosret I at Lisht (including the

Introduction

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employment of reused blocks deriving from late Old Kingdom pyramid complexes at Saqqara) represents a statement on the continuity of the Old Kingdom tradition into the early 12th Dynasty. Amenemhat I was the Horus Wehem-Mesut, “repeater of births” who had restored the glory of the Old Kingdom. The strong role of archaism continues in both royal and elite mortu-ary tradition extending into the reign of Senwosret III. The pyramid complex of that pharaoh at Dahshur represents a sophisticated union of archaistic architectural elements copied from and inspired by the Step Pyramid of Djoser within the context of an innovative royal cult. The appearance of a newly emergent royal temple form, the Mansion-of-Millions-of-Years, appears to be a forerunner of the well-defined royal cult temples of the New Kingdom. Despite the use of archaism, the royal pyramid tradition of the 12th Dynasty displays considerable change and experimentation and signifies a dynamic innovative process of redefining the nature of the royal tomb and afterlife.

Two authors in this volume address the opposite ends of the royal mortuary tradition of the 12th Dynasty. David Silverman considers the evidence for the period of transition to Itjet-Tawy during which time the 12th Dynasty’s founder ruled from Memphis and may have initiated the first of the Middle Kingdom royal pyramids in the north, perhaps at or near Saqqara. He also demonstrates how the elite of the Middle Kingdom used royal models of the Old Kingodm as a basis for their own tombs in the Teti Pyramid cemetery. Josef Wegner discusses the later mor-tuary complex of Senwosret III at Abydos and presents evidence that this tomb is the earliest departure from the pyramid form to a hidden royal tomb. He proposes that it is an “Amduat-tomb,” a precursor of later modes of royal burial, and points out that its very form is part of the development of the royal Amduat text during the 12th Dynasty. Susan Allen, in another study, deals with archaism in other aspects of the elite funerary tradition. She shows how craftspeople of the Middle Kingdom copied Old Kingdom red-polished ceramic vessels for mortuary use. The ‘Queen’s ware’ they produced during the 12th Dynasty constitutes an artifactual correlate to the archaism in the architectural tradition. Another author, Edward Brovarski, traces the history and evolution of the false door from the First Intermediate Period through the Middle Kingdom, and he explores how the elite continued certain older traditions, but also adopted innovations in this ubiquitous component of non-royal funerary architecture.

Royal sculpture of the 12th Dynasty displays a sophisticated interplay between archaism and innovation, and the resulting statuary reflects the priorities of kingship during this period. The question arises, however, as to whether the inspiration for more “human” royal faces that becomes popular during the period, suggest that the king who strives for the maintenance of maat is a ruler whose divine office of kingship, depends on the recognition and support of the gods. In whatever ways one interprets this royal sculpture, the artwork during the Middle King-dom is completely distinctive. One paper by Dorothea Arnold and another by Rita Freed and Jack Josephson deals with this subject. Arnold discusses copying and innovation in motifs on a royal statue of the early 12th Dynasty in the Metropolitan Museum. Freed and Josephson focus on the date and identification of a masterwork of 12th Dynasty royal art: a queen’s head now housed in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

A hallmark of Middle Kingdom cultural expression is the increasing use of magical and divine imagery employed both in daily life and funerary traditions. With roots in the First Intermediate Period, the practice quickly expanded. Amulets, particularly scarabs, become commonplace during the early Middle Kingdom. The form of the scarab-beetle and what it represented effectively bridged aspects of life on earth and in the netherworld, by linking them with the cycle of solar birth and rebirth. The scarab, produced in a variety of materials, also became the preeminent administrative tool in sealing practices that Middle Kingdom officials used repeatedly, as a signature of their official duties. Magical imagery also appears on ivory wands used in rituals of childbirth and healing practices, and Joshua Roberson’s study investi-gates this topic. His analysis examines how this type of iconography played a pivotal role in the daily life of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom and established the foundations for later New Kingdom magical iconography. Josef Wegner tackles the subject also in his article on the use of decorated


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birth bricks in birthing practices. He details his discovery of the only known example of such a birth brick at South Abydos and examines the concepts and practices of childbirth during the Middle Kingdom.

No achievement of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom stands out so clearly as the intricate adminis-trative system that came to define the period. Initially facing the age-old questions of central-ization versus regionalism, the early Middle Kingdom pharaohs successfully integrated central governmental and provincial administrative systems, even while maintaining some of the stature of the long-established nomarchies and provincial elites. In her study, Denise Doxey investigates the burial equipment from Deir el-Bersha and points out how this mortuary material illustrates the creative and innovative approach to funerary arts witnessed in provincial elite during the 12th Dynasty.

Egypt’s administrative system evolved significantly over the course of the Middle Kingdom. In order to accommodate the priorities and innovations of the state at that time, administrative titles of the later 12th and 13th Dynasties increased in number and diversity. The fragmentary and fluid relationship between royal power and the provinces characteristic of the 11th Dynasty had now evolved into one in which policies of the central government appear to have fostered a process of centralization and an increasingly intricate subdivision of officialdom. The notable phenomenon of the widespread appearance of personal name and title scarab seals during the later 12th Dynasty is undoubtedly to be understood as part of this evolving administrative approach, and the tendency towards a “professionalization” of the bureaucratic system.

The very effectiveness of the late Middle Kingdom administrative system may have permitted the 13th Dynasty to weather a lengthy period of short reigns. Ultimately, a marked decrease in the visible expressions of royal power accompanied a kingdom that had to face a reduction in its territorial scope. In many respects, the Middle Kingdom administrative system served as a model for emulation during the New Kingdom, as indicated with the adaptation of classical texts such as the Duties of the Vizier that appear in the early 18th Dynasty. W.K. Simpson explores in his paper some of the key figures of the central administration connected with the govern-ment centered on Itjet-Tawy, and Stephen Quirke in his study examines the difficulties that con-front modern scholarship in interpreting the meaning and use of titles of this time period.

With its extensive archive of inscribed papyri and preserved site, Lahun, the pyramid complex of Senwosret II at the entrance to the Fayum, stands out as one of the most important archaeological areas that provide key data on Egyptian society during the Middle Kingdom. Until recently, the body of papyrological material has remained under-published, but now, Ulrich Luft, Stephen Quirke and Mark Collier have addressed several issues from the period. In this volume, Mark Collier offers a discussion of the nature and content of the Lahun papyri that extends his and Quirke and Collier’s ongoing publication of these texts that are in the Petrie collection. An additional paper by Zoltán Horváth highlights the still debated questions surrounding the nature of the Lahun town and temple and the toponyms associated with that key site.

Finally, it is in its language and its literary output that the Middle Kingdom achieved perhaps its most lasting legacy, one that Egyptians of later eras emulated to a great extent. Middle Egyptian, the formal written language of the period became the classical mode of the Egyptian language and retained its status well through the New Kingdom and even into the First Millennium. The importance of the language, and its grammar, structure, and how it was spoken during the Middle Kingdom, becomes clear in the Story of the Eloquent Peasant. This liter-ary text also indicates how language reflects attitudes regarding class distinction. In this type of composition as well as in other genres archaism and innovation play a large role. James Allen examines the role and effects of archaism in language and grammar during the Middle King-dom, especially in the stela of the steward Mentuwoser. Ronald Leprohon investigates a related subject in his study of the practice of copying and selective redaction of earlier model texts. His case study is the famous late 12th Dynasty stela of Sehepibre from Abydos.

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In Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilization, Barry Kemp, presented the hypothesis that as a result of its zeal to create a balanced sociopolitical organization, the Middle Kingdom crystallized into a bureaucratically minded, prescriptive culture. He saw the society a rigid, and ultimately brittle, one that lacked the ability to adapt and change. According to this view, a culture with such maximized governmental control, may have over-developed the level of administration as represented in texts such as the Instructions of Amenemhat and the Loyalist Instructions. Other scholars have interpreted the nature of Egyptian control in Lower Nubia during the Middle Kingdom as similarly representing a form of over-structured and excessive regulation. For these reasons some scholars have tended to view the Middle Kingdom in a somewhat negative light, implicitly suggesting it was a form of failed state system that almost by necessity lost royal power and shed territorial control as the 13th Dynasty gave way to the Second Intermediate Period.

The success of the kingdom of Itjet-Tawy in maintaining unity for some three centuries, as well as in navigating major cultural and social shifts in Egyptian society, however, denotes the remarkably dynamic qualities of this time period. The Middle Kingdom was a time during which archaism, innovation, and change combined to create a successful and long-lasting society, one that ultimately, later generations would look to for inspiration. History would repeat itself; just as the founders of the Middle Kingdom had cast their eyes back to the Old Kingdom for direction, the New Kingdom, the Kushite and the Saite Periods would consider the many achievements of the kings who had ruled Egypt from Itjet-Tawy as models for emulation.

The current volume assembles a series of studies of Middle Kingdom culture gathered around the theme of archaism, change, and innovation. The papers had their origin in a symposium the University of Pennsylvania Museum hosted in 2002, and held in memory of the great Middle Kingdom scholar, Oleg Berlev. The Penn Museum organized the conference that received generous support from the Center for Ancient Studies of the University of Pennsylvania and the Marilyn and William Kelly Simpson Endowment in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. For the publication, the authors revised and augmented their essays, allowing this volume to include up to date information. The editors also invited a few scholars to contribute additional studies resulting in a volume that deals with the Middle Kingdom in a broader context. The Marilyn and William Kelly Simpson endowment in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University generously provided the funds necessary for the publication of the volume. The editors are indebted to Professor John Darnell of Yale University, both for his participation in the 2002 meeting, as well as for his continued support in the publication of this volume. Special thanks go to Dr. Jennifer Houser Wegner, Elizabeth Jean Walker, and Stephen Phillips for all of their help in the prepa-rations for publication. Last but not least, the editors wish to thank Peter Der Manuelian for bringing an Egyptologist’s eye to the production of this volume; he is a fitting colleague for the present project, particularly in light of his own research into the role of archaism as it reemerges a thousand years after the end of the Middle Kingdom during the renaissance of the Saite 26th Dynasty. The models of the past were to be again rediscovered in later times; as the Egyptians would have observed, life is eternal and repeating: ankh djet r neheh.

Brovarski, False Doors and History: The First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom

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False Doors and History: The First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom

Edward Brovarski

nigel stRudwick has deMonstRated the iMpoRtance of the appearance and development of the false door as a criterion for dating even in the chronologically well-defined Old Kingdom.1

The present article endeavors to extend his principles of dating into the First Intermediate and Middle Kingdom, specifically with a view to clarifying the date of the false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara, and especially those that belonged to priests and other function-aries who served in the mortuary cult of the Heracleopolitan sovereign Merikare. This paper is the second of a pair of studies by the current author, the first of which is entitled “False Doors and History: the Sixth Dynasty.”2

i. the False dooRs oF dynasties Viii–ixHenry Fischer has drawn attention to the late Dyn. VIII false door of Princess Nebet, daughter of King Neferkauhor and wife of the vizier Shemai, who features so prominently in the later Coptos decrees.3 The red granite false door was discovered by Labib Habachi in 1956 at Kom el Kuffar, the cemetery of Qift.4 The top half of the central panel extends across the breadth of space between the outer jambs (figs. 1, 2).5 More significant is the fact that the apertures of the central panel do not clearly demarcate the inscribed area above it.6 Unduly short apertures likewise occur on a false door published by Fischer (fig. 3),7 which belongs to the Lady Sat-iy-tjenu, whose name incorporates the nomen of an otherwise unattested king named Iy-tjenu, who evidently belongs to the late Old Kingdom.8

In the Sixth Dynasty, the addition of a cavetto cornice and torus moulding became the norm for false doors.9 So it is no surprise that the false doors of Princess Nebet and Sat-iy-tjenu

1 N. Strudwick, The Administration of Egypt in the Old Kingdom: The Highest Titles and their Holders (1985), pp. 9–29.2 E. Brovarski, “False Doors and History: The Sixth Dynasty,” in M. Bárta (ed.), The Old Kingdom Art and Archaeology

(2006), pp. 71–118.3 H.G. Fischer, Inscriptions from the Coptite Nome (1964), p. 38.4 L. Habachi, “The Tomb of Princess Nebt of the Vlllth Dynasty Discovered at Qift” (1983), pp. 205–13, figs. 2–3,

and pl. 3b. The Qift Regional Survey Project, based in Canberra, Australia, and directed by Gregory Gilbert, has now completed three seasons re-excavating, recording, and conserving the tomb of Shemai and Nebet at Kom el-Kuffar (also known as Kom el-Momanien); see http://www.koptos.com. It is my understanding that the tomb is to be published by Dr. Maha F. Mostafa.

5 The late Dr. Henry G. Fischer very generously permitted a photograph of the false door made by Labib Habachi and a sketch made by him from Habachi’s photograph to be reproduced here. A number of discrepancies exist between this sketch and that provided by L. Habachi “The Tomb of Princess Nebt of the Vlllth Dynasty Discovered at Qift” (1983), fig. 3. In particular, Fischer’s sketch shows a lacuna where Habachi has restored d¡.f prt-∞rw, an expression which is not otherwise known before Dyn. XII (see below, p. 396).

6 H.G. Fischer, “A Stela of the Heracleopolitan Period: the Osiris ⁄t¡ (1963),” p. 36 and n. 5.7 The photograph of the false door of Sat-iy-tjenu is reproduced here from ibid., pl. 6, with the kind permission of

Dr. Lutz Popko, editor of the ZÄS, and Mrs. Christina Gericke of the Akademie Verlag GmbH.8 Ibid., pp. 35–38, pl. 5. D. Nord, “

Õ

∑

Û flkrt nswt = ‘King’s Concubine’?” (1979), pp. 1–16, has argued persuasively

that flkrt nswt is to be translated “She (One) Who is Ornamented by the King.” As the English translation of the title is somewhat cumbrous, I prefer the translation “Lady” in the sense of a woman of good breeding or some social position. In all probability, the title is the female equivalent of the male title smr w™ty, commonly rendered in English as “Sole Friend.”

9 N. Strudwick, The Administration of Egypt in the Old Kingdom (1985), p. 15.

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both have a cornice and moulding, as do the other false doors of the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom discussed below, unless noted otherwise.

Regrettably, the central panel of Nebet’s false door is badly damaged. All that remains of the representations it once bore is a seated figure of the princess, sniffing an unguent jar, and with her other hand extended towards a now destroyed offering table.

Nebet’s false door has two pairs of jambs. The upper lintel and outer pair of jambs are all in one plane, while the inner jambs are stepped back. It is not at all uncommon in false doors with two pairs of jambs belonging to the latter part of Dyn. VI to find that the upper lintel and outer jambs are treated as a “surround,” to use a term coined by Battiscombe Gunn in speaking of the Dyn. X false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara (see p. 370).10 As Gunn pointed out, strictly speaking the lintel should project over the jambs. A consciousness of this is apparently shown by the way in which the lower framing-line of the inscription often runs right across the Dyn. VI false doors to mark off the lintel from the jambs.11 The decoration on the upper lintel of Nebet’s false door is destroyed, so it is impossible to tell if the lower framing-line of the inscription demarcated the lintel in this fashion. At the bottom of each of the four jambs stands a figure of Nebet sniffing a lotus.

10 E.g., L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pls. 15 [left], 17, 18 [left]); W. K. Simpson, Mastabas of the Western Cemetery, Part 1 (1980), pls. 18, 19, 20, 30a; H. Altenmüller, Die Wanddarstellungen im Grab des Mehu in Saqqara (1998), pl. 95

11 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p.179 and n. 4.

Fig. 1–2. Photograph (by Labib Habachi) and sketch (after Henry G. Fischer) of the false door of Princess Nebet from Kom el-Kuffar.



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The central niche of Nebet’s false door is wide and the “drum” at the top of the niche unusually large. Inscribed on the drum are the words: ¡ryt-p™t Nbt. Within the niche at the bottom, the two leaves of a door are represented as though they belonged to a shrine with their battens and closed bolts shown on the outside, and two wedjat-eyes towards the top.12 Fischer has observed that the presence of wedjat-eyes in the niche itself is characteristic of the late Sixth Dynasty and the First Intermediate Period. He further remarks that this position is not known to occur on false doors of Dyn. X or the Middle Kingdom.

On the panel of her false door, Sat-iy-tjenu sits behind a table of bread (fig. 4). On the groundline to the right of the table leg is set a nested ewer and basin on a low table and along-side the low table a hezet-jar and a qebeh-jar. Above the basin and ewer and the jars is an array

12 H.G. Fischer, Inscriptions from the Coptite Nome (1964), p. 38; idem., The Tomb of ⁄p at El Saff (1996), pp. 91–98.

Fig. 4. False door of Mereri from Dendera (Petrie 1900: pl. 8A).

Fig. 3. False door of Sat-iytjenu (after Fischer 1963: pl. 6).



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of offerings.13 A nested ewer and basin on a low table regularly features in Old Kingdom table scenes on tomb walls and false door panels, but when hezet- and or qebeh-jars also appear, they are generally placed in a rack. Only rarely are the vessels set on a groundline as here.14

If hezet- and or qebeh-jars are hardly ever placed on groundlines during the Old Kingdom, false doors panels of the Heracleopolitan Period from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara not infrequently have a hezet-jar set on the groundline of the table scene to one side of the pedestal of the offering table (see p. 369). The absence of the jar rack in Sat-Iy-tjenu’s false door may bespeak her transitional position between the Old Kingdom and the Heracleopolitan Period.

Sat-Iy-tjenu’s false door, like Nebet’s, possesses two pairs of jambs. As is also the case with Nebet’s false door, the upper lintel and outer pair of jambs in Sat-Iy-tjenu’s are all in one plane, while the inner jambs are stepped back. The texts are preserved on the upper lintel of Sat-Iy-tjenu’s false door, and it is clear that the funerary prayer begun on the upper lintel continues right down the left outer jamb. Thus, Sat-Iy-tjenu’s false door, like Nebet’s, seems to be following the later Old Kingdom tradition that treats the upper lintel and outer jambs as a surround.

At the bottom of the outer jambs of the false door a standing figure of Sat-Iy-tjenu’s sniffs a lotus blossom. In contrast to Nebet’s false door, the inner jambs lack figures and instead bear columns of text with the titles and name of the deceased only. The same combination of figures on the outer jambs and text columns on the inner jambs occurs in a substantial number of later Old Kingdom false doors with two pairs of jambs. These include the Abydene false doors of the Vizier and Overseer of Upper Egypt Idi [II],15 the Overseer of Priests Iuu,16 and the Lector Priest Id,17 all from Abydos, as well as several other false doors from Giza,18 North Saqqara,19 and South Saqqara.20 The same arrangement (with two or three pairs of jambs) is found in the Heracleopolitan Period (Dyn. X) and in the Middle Kingdom (Dyn. XII) (see pp. 373, 405).

The lower lintel of of Sat-Iy-tjenu’s false door bears a short text giving her name and titles. The drum in the central niche is on the same plane as the inner jambs. It is completely flat with no hint of roundness and is inscribed pr ∞rw n flkrt nswt w™tt. As a matter of fact, drums are often flat rather than semi-circular in false doors henceforward and not infrequently left uninscribed.

In Dyn. IX false doors from the Upper Egyptian sites of Khozam in the Coptite nome and from Dendera in the adjacent Denderite nome (with one exception) the table scene on the panel completely fills the space between the outer jambs or else the space between the torus moulding.21

13 Over Sat-iy-tjenu’s head are two horizontal lines of inscription; the topmost gives her name and titles and the one below an ideographic offering list. An investigation of the nature and placement of such inscriptions is beyond the scope of the present article though virtually every false door panel includes such a list. A detailed analysis might result in the definition of further dating criteria.

14 N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, Part II (1902), pl. 28 (Henqu: Kheteti). The tomb in question belongs to the period after the end of Dyn. VI; see H.G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millenium B.C. (1968), p. 130, n. 572; Y. Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom (1987), p. 280.

15 E. Brovarski, “Abydos in the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period, Part II” (1994), pp. 34–38, fig. 2.6.

16 Ibid., fig. 2.7. For the monument in question, see now C. Ziegler, Stèles, peintures et reliefs égyptiens de l’Ancien Empire, cat. no. 5.

17 L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pl. 43.18 S. Hassan, Excavations at Giza, 6:3 (1950), fig. 220; W.K. Simpson, Mastabas of the Western Cemetery, Part 1 (1980),

fig. 25.19 A. Mariette, Les mastabas de l’Ancien Empire (1889), fig. on p. 367; C. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries

(1926), pl. 73 [2]; N. Kanawati et al., Excavations at Saqqara North-west of Teti’s Pyramid 1 (1984), pl. 12; A. El-Khouli and N. Kanawati, Excavations at Saqqara North-west of Teti’s Pyramid 2 (1988), pls. 9, 22; N. Kanawati and A. Hassan, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara 1 (1996), pls. 12a, 45b; K. Myslíwiec, “West Saqqara 1999 Polish–Egyptian Mission” (2003), fig. 8, pl. 3.

20 G. Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II (1929), fig. 97; G. Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de Pepi II vol. 3 (1940), fig. 64.

21 H.G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millenium B.C. (1968), p. 196.



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Examples of false doors in which the table scene completely fills the space between the outer jambs include the false doors of the Coptite Overseers of Upper Egypt User and Tjauti,22 and those of the Denderite Overseer of Priests Mereri (fig. 4),23 and of his son Sen-nedjesu.24 The lack of apertures in these four false doors might be seen as a logical conclusion of the diminishing height and emphasis on apertures of false doors at the end of the Old Kingdom, such as is evi-dent in the false doors of the Princess Nebet and the Royal Favorite Sat-iy-tjenu. Never-theless, sporadic instances of false doors in which the table scene fills the space between the outer jambs are seen as early as the reign of Pepy II. The false door of Hetepka, grand-son of the vizier Mehu, about the middle of that reign,25 and the false door of the nomarch Izi at Deir el-Gebrawi,26 provide instances of this structural feature. Izi prob-ably belongs to the late Old Kingdom.27

Examples in which the table scene com-pletely fills the space between the torus moulding are the Denderite false doors of the triple nomarch of the Denderite, Diospolite, and Thinite nomes Ab-ihu (fig. 5),28 who probably belongs to the third generation of Dyn. IX.29 The same feature is apparent in the false door of Ab-ihu’s con-temporary, Neferiu.30

The exception referred to above is the false door of Men-ankh-pepy: Meni from Dendera, in which apertures occur on either

side of the table scene.31 Otherwise, Meni’s false door is structurally related to those of Ab-ihu and Neferiu, particularly in respect to the extension of the lower lintel above all the jambs and niches.32 A few examples of this last feature occur in Dyns. VI–VIII in the tombs of Hemre: Izi33

22 H.G. Fischer, Inscriptions from the Coptite Nome (1964), pls. 13, 14 [left].23 W.M.F. Petrie, Dendereh 1898 (1900), pl. 8A.24 Ibid., pl. 9.25 H. Altenmüller, Die Wanddarstellungen im Grab des Mehu in Saqqara (1998), pl. 96; N. Strudwick, The Administration

of Egypt in the Old Kingdom (1985), p. 153 [149]).26 N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, Part II (1902), pl. 21.27 H.G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millenium B.C. (1968), p. 86, n. 386.28 Ibid., pp. 195–206, fig 40, pl. 24. The drawing of the false door is reproduced thanks to the kindness of the late

Henry G. Fischer. 29 E. Brovarski, “The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1989), pp. 34–35,

969–971, Chart 1.30 H.G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millenium B.C. (1968), pp. 206–209, pl. 25. 31 W. Petrie, Dendereh 1898 (1900), pl. 1.32 H.G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millenium B.C. (1968), p. 196.33 N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, Part II (1902), pl. 16.

Fig. 5. False door of Ab-ihu (after Fischer 1968: fig. 40).



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and Henqu: Kheteti34 at Deir el-Gebrawi and of Pepyankh the Middle at Meir,35 although only in the latter false door do all the jambs reach up as high as the lower lintel, as they do in the false doors of Meni, Ab-ihu, and Neferiu.36 On palaeographic grounds, it is likely that Meni dates to the early Ninth Dynasty, before all the other individuals from Dendera referred to above.37

In contrast to the panels of the false doors of late Old Kingdom date from South Saqqara and other sites, in which the decorative scheme is generally limited to a seated figure of the deceased at an offering table together with a nested ewer and basin or to just a seated figure of the deceased a a table of bread alone,38 nearly every available space on the Ninth Dynasty false door panels from Khozam and Dendera is filled with offerings. These provincial doors of Dyn. IX appear to follow an alternative tradition of later Dyn. VI false doors which shows offer-ings piled up on the far side of the offering table.39 Be that as it may, an important innovation in the Ninth Dynasty false doors from Khozam and Dendera (except for Meni and Mereri), and one that was to have a lasting effect on the decorative scheme of later false doors, is the place-ment of offerings above or on top of the stylized bread loaves on the offering table.

The false doors from Dendera and Khozam exhibit varying numbers of jambs. Those of Meni, Abihu, and Neferiu from Dendera employ two pairs of jambs and have four jamb figures of equal height. The false doors of User and Tjauti from Khozam also have two pairs of jambs, with the middle pair being shorter. Even so, the jamb figures on User’s false door are of equal height as well. Except for one jamb, the lower part of the false door of Tjauti is destroyed, so it is unclear if all the jamb figures were of the same height.

Like the false doors of Princess Nebet and the Lady Sat-Ii-tjenu referred to at the beginning of this article, those of User and Tjauti treat the upper lintel and outer jambs as a surround. Both of the latter false doors treat the lower lintel and middle jambs as a surround as well. The same treatment of lintels and jambs is visible at Dendera in the false doors of Mereri and his son Sen-nedjesu

In both Meni and Abihu’s false doors, the deceased stands at the bottom of the false door, holding in his hands a staff and scepter. In the false door of User, the deceased’s hands hang at his sides. This was probably the case with Tjauti’s false door as well, although only one jamb figure is preserved.

The false door of Neferiu from Dendera is less conventional in that his wife is also depicted. The inner jambs bear both a youthful and an elderly portrayal of the deceased, while the outer jambs show the wife’s figure. In both cases, she reaches across the jambs and holds her husband’s hanging rear arm. This last feature is unusual, but wives are now and again included on the jambs of their husbands’s false doors towards the end of Dyn. VI and later.40

Unlike the other false doors from Dendera and Khozam, those of Mereri and Sen-nedjesu have three pairs of jambs. Both false doors lack jamb figures, however. The absence of jamb

34 Ibid., pl. 28.35 A.M. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir, Part IV (1924), pl. 26.36 H.G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millenium B.C. (1968), n. 386. In Hemre: Izi’s and Henqu: Kheteti’s false doors,

there is an additional lintel spanning the middle jambs and the central niche. Fischer, ibid., p. 86 and n. 386, dates the Gebrawi nomarchs to Dyns. VI–VIII. For the date of Pepyankh, see K. Baer, Rank and Title in the Old Kingdom (1960), pp. 70, 289 [133]; Y. Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom (1987), p. 280.

37 H.G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millenium B.C. (1968), fig. 15; E. Brovarski, “The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1989), p. 24, n. 27.

38 See E. Brovarski, “False Doors & History: The Sixth Dynasty” (2006), p. 114ff.39 Ibid., p. 94ff.40 E.g., J.A. Wilson, “A Group of Sixth Dynasty Inscriptions” (1954), fig. 3; E. Brovarski, “The Senedjemib Complex

at Giza: an Interim Report” (1982), fig. 21; A. El-Khouli and N. Kanawati, Excavations at Saqqara North-west of Teti’s Pyramid, vol. 2 (1988), pl. 39.



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figures is not unique to these two monuments, for jamb figures are likewise absent in a number of late Old Kingdom false doors from South Saqqara and other places.41

The false doors of User, Meni and Neferiu have wedjat-eyes on the door leaves in the cen-tral niche. It has previously been noted that the presence of wedjat-eyes in the niche itself is characteristic of the Sixth Dynasty and the First Intermediate Period (see p. 361). In Mereri and Sen-nedjesu’s false doors the door leaves of the central niche were carved. Mereri’s false door shows the bolts as well, but Sen-nedjesu’s door is damaged at this point.

Although the Dyn. IX false doors from southern Upper Egypt are of the cornice-and-torus type, none have a supplementary frame. Given the popularity of the frame in late Old Kingdom false doors, this is perhaps surprising, but in fact numerous examples of false doors without the supplementary frame also survive from the end of the Old Kingdom, and the two types continued in use side by side.42 Three of the false doors from Dendera, those of Meni, Mereri, and Sen-nedjesu have a funerary formula inscribed on the flat surface at the top of the cavetto cornice. This feature appears in a number of late Old Kingdom false doors,43 including the false door of the Thinite nomarch Gegi, who probably belongs to the very end of the Sixth Dynasty.44

At present it is difficult to identify false doors of Dyn. IX date at the Memphite cemeteries with any certainty.45 It is possible that certain of the false doors from North or South Saqqara, which are generally assigned to the late Old Kingdom, actually belong to Dyn. IX and that the style of that time continued without interruption into the succeeding early Heracleopolitan Period at Saqqara. Then again, if the Heracleopolitan sovereigns of Dyn. IX resided at Hera-cleopolis itself and were buried there, they may have been followed in this practice by their most important courtiers and officials.46 Still, the citizens of Memphis would have to be interred somewhere in the early Heracleopolitan Period, and the area at Saqqara which contained their tombs may simply not have been discovered as of yet. A logical place to search would be the un-excavated area to the north of the mastabas of Kagemni and Mereruka, where so many tombs of Dyns. VI–VIII have recently been discovered.47

ii. the False dooRs oF dynasty x FRoM the teti pyRaMid ceMeteRyIn the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara, in the street between the northern enclosure wall of the pyramid of Teti and the Sixth Dynasty mastabas of the viziers of Teti and Pepy I, J.E. Quibell found three false doors belonging to officials of the pyramid cult of the Tenth Dynasty king, Merikare, and Cecil M. Firth found another.48 Three of these officials, Ipi, Inpu-em-hat, and

41 E.g., G. Jéquier, Les Pyramides des reines Neit et Apouit (1933), fig. 31 (Queen Ankhnespepy III); G. Jéquier, Le monu-ment funéraire de Pepi II, vol. 3 (1940), figs. 62, 63; N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, Part II (1902), pls. 12, 13 (Djau), 21 (Hemre: Izi); A. M. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir V (1933), pl. 33 (Pepyankh Heny the Black); N. Kanawati et al., Excavations at Saqqara North-west of Teti’s Pyramid 1 (1984), pl. 23.

42 See E. Brovarski, “False Doors & History: The Sixth Dynasty” (2006), pp. 109–110.43 E.g., T.G.H. James and M. R. Apted, The Mastaba of Khentika called Ikhekhi (1953), pl. 42; S. Bosticco, Museo

Archeologico di Firenze: Le stele egiziane dall’Antico al Nuovo Regno, vol. 1 (1959), pl. 1; L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pl. 35.

44 E. Brovarski, “The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1989), pp. 125–34.45 P. Munro, “Bemerkungen zur Datierung MÊÊJ’S”(1993), pp. 250–52 and passim, has dated a number of false

doors and tombs in the Unis Pyramid Cemetery to Dynasty IX, but I am not at all certain that they are actually as late as this; see E. Brovarski, “The Date of Metjetji” (forthcoming).

46 J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), p. 207, thinks it improbable that the Heracleopolitan kings would have been buried outside the traditional Memphite necropolis, but no vestiges of their pyramids—other than that of King Merikare—have been found. The same is true of Heracleopolis, although the pyramid (or square mastaba) at Dara, not far from Heracleopolis, may have been the burial place of an earlier king of Dyn. X; see S. Seidlmayer, “The First Intermediate Period (c. 2160–2055 BC)” (2000), pp. 143–44.

47 N. Kanawati, et.al., Excavations at Saqqara North-west of Teti’s Pyramid 1 (1984), pls. 10, 23, 24, 29; A. El-Khouli and N. Kanawati, Excavations at Saqqara North-west of Teti’s Pyramid 2 (1988), pls. 8, 21, 23.

48 For the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, see B. Porter and R. Moss, Topographical Bibliography (1978), pp. 508–73.



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Gemni-em-hat: Gemni are mty n s£ W£∂-swt-Mrk£r™,49 while Hetep is zß pr-¢∂ W£∂-swt-Mrk£r™ and ¡my-∞t prwy-¢∂ W£∂-swt-Mrk£r™.50

Quibell and Firth assumed the monuments which bore the name of Merikare’s pyramid to be contemporary with that sovereign. The same assumption was made by many scholars until the appearance in 1962 of an important monograph by W. Schenkel entitled Frühmittelägyptische Studien. On palaeographic grounds Schenkel redated the Saqqara false doors bearing the name of Merikare’s pyramid to the beginning of Dyn. XII.51

Henry Fischer,52 Jaromir Malek,53 and the present writer,54 amongst others, differ with Schenkel’s conclusion and believe that the false doors which bear Merikare’s name indeed belong to the Heracleopolitan Period (Dyn. X).55

In a recent article, in which she argues that the material excavated by Quibell and Firth in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara indeed dates to Dyn. XII, Dorothea Arnold remarks: “Since funerary services for deceased kings were continued, in most cases, for many genera-tions, Gemniemhat’s office does not help in placing him chronologically.”56 On the other side of the issue, both Hans Goedicke,57 and Jaromir Malek have observed that, while there is no evidence of persecution of the Heracleopolitan sovereigns by the rulers of the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, it is unlikely that the cult of Merikare would have flourished and a cemetery of priests developed after the pr-Ôty was overrun by the rival Theban Dynasty.58

Fischer has drawn attention to an interesting title dating to the end of the Eleventh Dynasty,59 which is claimed by a governor of the Heracleopolitan Nome buried at El Saff: . As

49 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pl. 15; 1908: pls. 6, 13.50 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 27B. For a complete list of the officials who held office

at Merikare’s pyramid, see J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), pp. 207–209.51 W. Schenkel, Frühmittelägyptische Studien (1962), p. 145, n. 1.52 H.G. Fischer, “An Example of Memphite Influence in a Theban Stela of the Eleventh Dynasty” (1959), p. 12 and

n. 12.53 J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), pp. 206–207.54 E. Brovarski, “The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1989), pp. 243,

n. 281; 1058, n. 85; idem, “A Coffin from Farshût in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” (1998), p. 66, n. 260.55 For a fuller discussion of the date of the Heracleopolitan false doors from Saqqara, see K.A. Daoud, Corpus of

Inscriptions of the Herakleopolitan Period from the Memphite Necropolis (2005), pp. 184–88 and passim; Y. Gourdon, “Elements de datation d’une groupe de stèles fausses-portes de la Premiere Période Intermédiaire” (2005). The present article was written before either of these studies appeared in print and there is of necessity a certain amount of duplication. Daoud publishes a number of false doors of Heracleopolitan date from the Teti Pyra-mid Cemetery and other sites to which I did not have access. Some of these, especially those from the Zakaria Ghoneim Cemetery at South Saqqara, may be later than the reign of King Merikare, as Daoud himself recog-nizes (K.A. Daoud, Corpus of Inscriptions of the Herakleopolitan Period from the Memphite Necropolis (2005), pp. 8–9. Given the form of the prt-∞rw formula, which incorporates oxen, fowl, alabaster, and linen, in a fashion similar to the coffin of Mentuhotep; Buau (P. Lacau, Sarcophages antérieurs au Nouvel Empire 1 (1904), p. 66), the false doors in question may indeed belong to the late Eleventh Dynasty. For the date of Mentuhotep; Buau’s coffin, see below, pp. 387–88.

56 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), p. 25.57 H. Goedicke, “Probleme der Herakleopolitenzeit” (1969), p. 140.58 J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), p. 207. In fact, there may just conceivably be one piece of

evidence for the persecution of Heracleopolitan sovereigns. In 1905–1906, Quibell found the false door of a certain Mrt-[ . . . ]-¡y.t(¡) (J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pl. 17 [2]). The form of the name, the pattern of which is seemingly duplicated by the name of the owner of another false door from the Teti cemetery, Mrt-Tt¡-¡y.t(¡) (“She whom Teti loves has come;” see H. Ranke, Die ägyptischen Personennamen (1952), p. 291.8. J. E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1906–1907) (1908), pl. 10, suggests that the missing element was a royal name in a cartouche. In both occurences of the name Mrt-[…]-¡y.t(¡), the missing element appears to have been hacked-out, while the adjacent hieroglyphs are undamaged. Since Teti was worshipped at Saqqara in the course of the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom (H. Goedicke, “Teti” (1985), p. 458 and n. 10), it is unlikely that his was the defaced name. It is possible that the name destroyed was that of King Merikare. A counter argument is that none of the other occurences of his name on the other false doors where it occurs were damaged; see J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), pp. 207–209.

59 H.G. Fischer, Egyptian Studies, vol. 3: Varia Nova (1996), p. 76; idem., The Tomb of ⁄p at El Saff (1996), pp. 21, 26, and Pl. G.



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in other titles in which a ¢m-n†r priest is associated with a pyramid, this must refer to a specific funerary cult, and Fischer believed the cult was that of Merikare, for his pyramid is once desig-nated on a piece of plaster from Saqqara, which contains a negative impression of a lost monu-ment decorated in relief, as , again omitting the initial element .60 Fischer comments that the geographical and chronological context evidently sufficed to identify even so undistinctive an abbreviation as “the places.”

If Fischer is correct in identifying with , this would provide evi-dence for the funerary cult of Merikare continuing into post-unification Dyn. XI. In its turn, this would raise the possibility that the cult of Merikare could have survived in Dyn. XII, as Dorothea Arnold posits. However, the El Saff title omits the cartouche of Merikare, whereas the cartouche occurs in the title at Saqqara. This may not be without significance, and the omission might conceivably be interpreted to mean that the Theban rulers suppressed Merikare’s memory, but allowed the foundation at his Saqqara pyramid to continue for some time, so as not to alienate the priests and other officials who formerly served the Heracleopolitan Dynasty and who lived off the proceeds of that cult. In the aftermath of the conquest of the north by the Thebans, the good will of even modest functionaries like these would undoubtedly have been desirable.

But there is yet another possibility to be considered. There was another pyramid name at Saqqara that mentions a plurality of swt “places.”61 This is the pyramid of King Teti of Dyn. VI, which bore the name . A number of the Heracleopolitan officials who held office at the pyramid of Merikare simultaneously did so at the pyramid of Teti.62 Since Teti’s pyramid cult is known to have survived into Dyn. XII,63 it is possible that the governor Ipi at El Saff was attached to Teti’s cult, not Merikare’s. In fact, Malek argues quite plausibly that the inscription on the piece of plaster from Saqqara originally contained the cartouches of both Teti (now destroyed) and Merikare,64 and that the w£∂-sign is missing because the title referred to the cult-places in the pyramids of both kings, that is, Îd-swt of Teti and W£∂-swt of Merykare.

Fischer observed that in three of the four false doors which mention Merikare, that is, the doors of Inpu-em-hat, Gemni-em-hat (fig. 6), and Hetep, the sides of the panel curve outward at the top.65 Strudwick elaborated on this observation and provided an important new dating criterion when he observed that the flaring T-shaped panel evident in the three false doors had ceased to exist by the early Twelth Dynasty! Strudwick’s observation was, in fact, the point of departure for the present article.66

Quibell and Firth published nineteen of the intact or largely intact false doors of Heracleopolitan Period date found by them in the course of their excavations in the Teti Pyramid

60 J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), fig. 1.61 H.G. Fischer, Egyptian Studies, vol. 3: Varia Nova (1996), p. 76.62 J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), pp. 208–209.63 H. Goedicke, “Teti” (1985), p. 458 and n. 10.64 J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), p. 204, fig. 2.65 H.G. Fischer, “An Example of Memphite Influence in a Theban Stela of the Eleventh Dynasty” (1959), p. 250, n. 12.

I would like to thank Mogens Jørgensen, Curator of Egyptian Art at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, for providing an image of the false door of Gemni-em-hat together with permission to reproduce it herein. The false door bears the accession number AEIN 1616.

66 N. Strudwick, The Administration of Egypt in the Old Kingdom (1985), p. 18–19. See also E. Brovarski, “A Coffin from Farshût in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” (1998), p. 66, n. 260.



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Cemetery.67 Nine other fragmentary false doors excavated by Quibell were also published by him.68 In addition, there are a number of false doors in museum collections that stylistically belong to the same group of false doors.69

The flaring T-shaped panel is, in fact, the predominant type of panel in these false doors of the Tenth Dynasty, the Teti Pyramid Cemetery alone furnishing seventeen published examples, including those that belong to Inpu-em-hat, Gemni-em-hat, and Hetep.70 This was not the only type of panel in use, however. In ten other false doors from the Teti cemetery, the customary apertures on either side of the false door panel are absent and the panel fills the entire space

67 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pls. 12 (Hershef-nakht I), 13 (Ipi: In), 15 (Inpuemhat), 16 (Sat-khemet); J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1906–1907) (1908), pls. 6 [1] (Sentni: Senen), 6 [2] (Hetep); C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pls. 21 (Sat-in-teti), 27B (Gemni-em-hat: Gemni), 67 [2] (Ipi-ankhu: Ipi), 68 (Ipi-em-sas: Ipi), 69 (Iufenmutef), 70 [1] (User), 70 [2] (Henuut), 71 [1] (Heryshef-nakht II), 71 [2] (Heryshef-nakht III), 72 [1] (Meret-teti-hetepet[i]), 72 [2] (Neithetep), 74 [2] (Gemni-ankhu), 75 (Duahetep: Sat-gemni). The double false door of Ky and Sat-shedabed in the Louvre was also unearthed by Firth in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery (C. Ziegler, Catalogue des stèles, peintures et reliefs égyptiens de l’Ancien Empire et de la Première Période Intermédiaire (1990), cat. no. 45). The false doors listed in this and the following two notes will hereafter be referred to by the name of their owner. A byname is included only in those cases where it is neces-sary to distinguish two individuals. I have added the Roman numerals I–III to the names of the three Heryshef-nakht’s to distinguish them from one another. No chronological implications are thereby implied.

68 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pls. 17 [1] (Karenen), 17 [2] (Meret-[…]iyt[i]), 17 [5] (Ipi-ankhu), 17 [6] (Ni-ankh-hor)(?); J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1906–1907) (1908), pls. 7 [1] (Teti-her-menkhet), 8 [6] (Inbi), 9 [2] (Khu-sobek), 9 [4] (Khenu [Merikare]), 10 (Meret-teti-iyt[i]: Meret).

69 L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pls. 34 (Shed-abed), 36 (Sankh-gemni: Gemni); C. Pietrangeli, Le Sculture del Museo Gregoriano Egizio (1951), no. 122 (Ipi-her-sesenbef); S. Wangstedt, “Einige ägyptische Grabdenkmäler” (1961), fig. 1 (Senet-yotes). K.A. Daoud, “Abusir during the Herakleopolitan Period” (2000), pp. 193–206 has already dealt with the false doors of the Herakleopolitan Period from Abusir, so I have excluded them from the present discussion.

70 Inpuemhat (Merikare), Sat-khemet, Sentni, Meret-teti-iyt(i), Hetep (Merikare), Sat-in-teti, Gemni-em-hat (Merikare), Ipi-ankhu: Ipi, User, Heryshef-nakht II and III, Meret-teti-hetept[i], Neithetep, Gemni-ankhu, Shed-abed, Sankh-gemni, Senet-yotes.

Fig. 6. False door of Gemni-em-hat (Courtesy of Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, Copenhagen).



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between the middle pair of jambs in the larger false doors71 or the space between the outer jambs in the smaller false doors.72 One of the false doors with this full type of panel belongs to Ipi, who held office in the pyramid cult of Merikare. We have already seen that the same panel type is known from a number of false doors of later Old Kingdom date and predominates in southern Upper Egypt in the early Heracleopolitan Period (see pp. 362–63).

A squarish panel with apertures, a type that is very common in the Old Kingdom, appears in only one false door of Heracleopolitan Period date from the Teti cemetery.73 Similarly, there is a single example of a T-shaped panel in which the joint between the vertical and horizontal sides of the T form a right angle.74

It will be recalled that the decorative scheme on many false door panels of the later Old Kingdom from the Memphite cemeteries is either limited to a seated figure of the deceased with a nested ewer and basin on the far side of the offering table or else is restricted to the seated figure at a the table of bread alone (see p. 364). The majority of the table scenes from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery similarly show a nested ewer and basin set on the groundline on the far side of the table. Some eighteen false door panels feature the decorative scheme in question, including the four false doors which make mention of Merikare’s pyramid.75 Gemni-em-hat has the phrase db¢t-¢tp as well, inscribed on the near side of the table leg. A smaller number of the false doors panels from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery have a nested ewer and basin with a hezet-jar opposite,76 a juxtaposed ewer and a hezet-jar,77 a hezet-vessel by itself,78 a hezet-vessel and db¢t-¢tp opposite one another79 or once db¢t-¢tp alone.80 The false door of Duahotep has a ewer on the far side of the table leg, but lacks the customary basin, and this also the case with the panel of Sentni. It is important to note that none of these vessels are set on low tables or in jar racks as is regularly the case in the Old Kingdom.

Four false doors from the Teti cemetery show only the figure of the owner at table.81 In addition, on his false door panel, User has one hand outstretched to a non-existent offering table that may once have been added in paint.

It has already been pointed out that an innovation evident in the Ninth Dynasty false doors from Upper Egypt was the placement of offerings directly atop the bread loaves on the offering table (see p. 364). The false doors of Tenth Dynasty date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery were clearly influenced by this innovation. No matter what appears underneath the table, food offer-ings are set atop of the bread loaves on the table. Indeed, even in the case of two false door pan-els in which the conventionalized half-loaves of bread are absent, the food offerings are present and are set directly on the table.82 Only a single false door, that of Duahotep, stands apart from the others in not having the food offerings set directly on on top of the bread loaves.

With a single exception, the Dyn. X false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery lack the supplementary frame which figures prominently in later Old Kingdom false doors (see p. 365).

71 Heryshef-nakht I, Khu-sobek, Ipi (Merikare). This was probably also the case with the false door of Khenu (Merikare), which is represented by a fragment. Given the fine execution of the hieroglyphs, the door probably belonged to the caregory of larger false doors. On the unpublished exterior of his coffin, Khenu is zß ∞tmt-n†r W£∂-swt-Mrk£r™ (J. Malek, “King Merykare and His Pyramid” (1994), p. 208).

72 Hetep (Merikare), Ipi-ankhu, Ipi-em-sas, Iufenmutef, Duahotep, Ipi-her-sesenbef, Ky and Sat-shed-abed.73 Henuut.74 Heryshef-nakht II. For the distinction between T-shaped and flaring T-shaped panels, see N. Kanawati, Akhmim

in the Old Kingdom, Part 1 (1992), pp. 85–86.75 Ipi (Merikare), Inpu-em-hat (Merikare), Sat-khemet, Meret-[ . . . ]-iyti, Hetep (Merikare), Ipi-ankhu, Meret-teti-

iyt(i), Ipi-ankhu: Ipi, Ipi-em-sas, Iufenmutef, Henut, Heryshef-nakht II and III, Neithetep, Shed-abed, Sankh-gemni, Khuu-sobek, Senetyotes. Duahetep has the ewer but not the basin.

76 Heryshef-nakht I.77 Sentni.78 Meret-teti-iyti.79 Sat-shedabed.80 Ky.81 Meret-teti-hetep(t)i, Sat-in-teti, Gemni-ankhu, Ipi-her-sesenbef.82 Khuu-sobek, Gemni-ankhu.



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This is true both of the larger false doors from the site owned by three of Merikare’s officials and the more numerous smaller false doors unearthed by Quibell and Firth. Nevertheless, it will be recalled that the supplementary frame was likewise absent from the false doors of Dyn. IX from Kom el-Kuffar, Khozam, and Dendera, so that the absence is seemingly in keep-ing with the tradition of the earlier Heracleopolitan Period, at least insofar as it is known to us from southern Upper Egypt.

The exception to the general rule is the false door of Senet-yotes, acquired by the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm in 1930 and said to be from Saqqara. Except for this feature, the false door is stylistically identical with the excavated false doors from the Teti cemetery and is included along with these others in the discussion that precedes and follows. The supplementary frame is inscribed with two ¢tp-d¡-nswt formulae addressed to Anubis for the benefit of the deceased. The first requests food offerings; it begins on the right end of the lintel and terminates on the left jamb. The other prayer is inscribed on the right jamb and requests a proper burial for the deceased.

An innovation of the Heracleopolitan Period is the inclusion of two false doors under a common cavetto cornice.83 The primary example of this and, for that matter, the only intact example clearly datable to Dyn. X is the double false of Ky and Sat-shedabed in the Louvre (fig. 7).84 Quibell did find a fragmentary example of the genre in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery belonging to a certain Teti-her-menkhet. Four examples of double false doors in the family tomb or cenotaph of the Sekweskhet family probably date to the late Eleventh Dynasty (see p. 388), while a another intact example in Athens,85 on account of its orthography, may also belong to the same time (see note 288). Of the seven known examples, the owners of five of the double doors are a man and a woman, and it seems only natural to conclude that the pair are husband and wife.86 In the case of one of the double false doors in the Sekweskhet family tomb, the two individuals appear to be brothers, and the pairing again emphasizes a personal relationship. In Teti-her-menkhet’s double door, it is clear that the owners were once again two men (the name of the other individual is lost), but its fragmentary state deprives us of the knowledge of their connection.

Within the torus moulding, the upper lintel and outer jambs of the Dyn. X false doors are all in one plane. The same is true of the middle lintel and jambs in the larger false doors. As Gunn pointed out, strictly speaking the lintel should project over the jambs.87 Nonetheless, a consciousness of this is shown by the way in which the lower framing-line of the inscription often runs right across the false doors of Heracleopolitan date to mark off the lintel from the jambs.88 It has previously been noted that occasionally in false doors of the later part of Dyn. VI, the upper lintel and outer jambs can also be treated as a “surround” (see p. 360). This was evi-dently not the case with the inner lintel and the inner jambs in the earlier false doors. So this treatment of middle lintel and jambs was seemingly also first introduced in Dyn. X.

Another new feature of the Tenth Dynasty false doors is a list of the Seven Sacred Oils (and sometimes green and black eye paint) that is inscribed on the flat surface over the cavetto

83 A rock-cut false door of putative Sixth Dynasty date at Beni Hasan shares a torus moulding, but does not have a cavetto cornice in common; see J. Garstang, The Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt (1907), fig. 25.

84 C. Ziegler has graciously allowed the reproduction of the photograph of the false door of Ky and Sat-shedabed from her Catalogue des steles, peintures et reliefs égyptiens de l’Ancien Empire (1990), cat. no. 45. It is possible that Sat-shedabed was the daughter of Shed-abed, whose false door was found by Mariette at Saqqara (see note 69). On the other hand, she may simply have been born during the monthly feast of ßd-£bd (A. Erman and H. Grapow, Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache 4 (1930), p. 562, 16) and named accordingly.

85 F. Bissing, Denkmäler ägyptischer Skulptur (1911), fig. 2, pl. 17.86 Cf. J. Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, 2, pt. 1 (1954), p. 410.87 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 179.88 Ibid., p. 179 and n. 4.



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Fig. 7. Double false door of Ky and Sat-shedabed (after Ziegler 1989: 245, cat. no. 45).



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cornice.89 In none of the Old Kingdom false doors known to me does this architectural element bear a list of the Seven Sacred Oils, although we have already referred to a number of false doors of late Old Kingdom date in which the flat surface is inscribed with a ¢tp-d¡-nswt formula (see p. 365). This architectural element is similarly inscribed with a ¢tp-d¡-nswt formula in the early Ninth Dynasty false doors of Meni, Mereri, and Sen-nedjesu from Dendera (see p. 365).

Fischer has remarked on another novel feature of the Dyn. X false doors from the Teti cemetery, namely, the presence of wedjat-eyes on the inner lintel above the central niche.90 In actual fact, the eyes appear on only one of the false doors of the four individuals who held office at Merikare’s pyramid, the false door of Ipi, but they also occur on the inner lintel of Meret-teti-iyti’s false door. Considering that wedjat-eyes on the lintel above the niche are ubiquitous in Dyn. XII false doors, it is conceivable that the false doors of Ipi and Meret-teti-iyti might, on account of this detail, be slightly later than those of Gemni-em-hat and Inpu-em-hat, although this is really the only distinctive feature that sets these two false doors apart.

In the other Heracleopolitan Period false doors from the Teti cemetery, the inner lintel bears a short text. Generally this begins with the phrase ¡m£∞w(t) ∞r n†r-™£ (nb pt) followed by the name of the deceased. Twice ¡m£∞w ∞r n†r-™£ (nb pt) is followed by a title and the name of the deceased.91 Conversely, in one case the deceased’s name is omitted after ¡m£∞w ∞r n†r-™£ nb pt.92 On three lintels the deceased is ¡m£∞w ∞r ⁄npw (tp-∂w.f) instead.93 In two instances a title precedes ¡m£∞w ∞r n†r-™£, which is then followed by the owner’s name.94 In two other cases ¡m£∞w(t) is followed by the titles and name95 or simply the name of the deceased.96 Finally, in two false doors the lintel is blank.97

On a number of occasions above, reference has been made to “larger” and “smaller” false doors. The false doors of Dyn. X date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery fall into two gener-al categories according to size. The larger false doors are taller than 1.05 m in height. The false doors of Ipi, Inpu-em-hat, and Gemni-em-hat, for example, measure respectively 1.90 m, 1.56 m, and 1.49 m in height. The smaller false doors range from 0.74 m to 1.00 m in height.98 At 0.80 m the false door Hetep, who served Merikare’s mortuary cult, clearly belongs to the latter category.

With two exceptions, the larger false doors—those of Ipi, Inpu-em-hat, Gemni-em-hat, Heryshef-nakht I (1.06 m), Ipi-em-zas (1.08 m), Meret-teti-iyti (damaged), and Shedabed (1.54 m)—have three pairs of jambs with six jamb figures of equal height. In this they correspond to the false doors of the viziers of Teti and Pepy I in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara, all of which have three pairs of jambs and six jamb figures of equal height.99 The false doors of Sat-in-Teti (1.75 m) and Duahotep (1.37 m) constitute the exceptions to the rule. The first of these has three pairs of jambs, but only four jamb figures, while Duahotep has two pairs of jambs and only two jamb figures.

The smaller false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery mostly have two pairs of jambs. With three pair of jambs, Senetni (1.0 m) once again forms an exception. The majority of the

89 Ipi (Merikare), Inpu-em-hat (Merikare), Gemni-em-hat (Merikare), Ipi-ankhu: Ipi, Ipi-em-sas, Meret-teti-hetep(t)i, Shed-abed, Ipi-her-sesenbef. Many of the cornices are broken, but a number of intact cornices are cleary blank: Hetep (Merikare), Iufenmutef, Henut, Hershef-nakht II and III, Duahetep, Ky and Sat-shedabed. Except for Duahetep, the rest of these belong to the category of smaller false doors.

90 H.G. Fischer, “An Example of Memphite Influence in a Theban Stela of the Eleventh Dynasty” (1959), p. 250 and n. 12.

91 Hetep, Gemni-em-hat.92 Heryshef-nakht II.93 User, Ky, Senet-yotes.94 Heryshef-nakht I, Henuut.95 Duahetep.96 Ipi-em-sas, Ipi-her-sesenbef.97 Hetep, Gemni-ankhu.98 Sat-khemet, Ipi-ankhu: Ipi, User, Heryshef-nakht II and III, Meret-teti-hetep(t)i, Neithetep, Gemni-ankhu, Dua-

hetep, Sankh-gemni, Ipi-her-sesenbef, Ky and Sat-shedabed.99 N. Strudwick, The Administration of Egypt in the Old Kingdom (1985), p. 17.



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smaller false doors have four jamb figures of equal height100 but, as with certain late Old King-dom false doors (see pp. 364–65), one pair of jambs may bear only columns of text containing the titles and name(s) of the deceased (fig. 8).101

A curious feature of five of the smaller false doors is the horizontal disposition of texts over the figure of the deceased on the inner jambs.102 Unexpected is the absence of text over the figures of Gemni-ankhu on the inner jambs of his false door.

There is a much greater variety in the types of jamb figures on the Heracleopolitan Period false doors than is the case in the Old Kingdom or, for that matter, in the false doors of Dyn. IX from southern Upper Egypt. Indeed, in the false door of Ipi-em-zas (fig. 9), all six figures at the bottom of the jambs adopt different poses.103

At the bottom of the jambs of the false doors, mature figures of the deceased: (1) hold a staff and scepter; (2) grasp a staff, while the rear hand holds a handkerchief or hangs empty behind; (3) have both arms outstretched in prayer ( ); (4) place one hand in a respectful ges-ture against the chest; or (5) have both arms hanging down, in which case one hand may hold a handerkerchief.

Elderly figures of the deceased similarly: (1) hold a staff and scepter; (2) hold a scepter alone, while the rear arm hangs down; (3) have arms outstretched in prayer; (4) hold their arms before their long kilt in a reverential attitude; or (5) simply have arms hanging at their sides.

The figure of the deceased as a mature or elderly man with both arms outstretched in prayer was especially popular, occurring on the jambs of nearly half of the Dyn. X false doors from the Teti cemetery.104 The attitude is not a new one. The earliest well-dated occurrences of the attitude are on the entrance thicknesses of the tombs of Djau: Shemai and Djau at Deir el-Gebrawi,105 and of Mery at Hagarsa,106 in the reign of Pepy II.107

The attitude continued in popularity through the late Old Kingdom and into the Heracleo-politan Period.108 Insofar as false doors are concerned, it first appears on the jambs (and panel) of the false door of the vizier Pepynakht,109 who probably belongs to the end of the reign of Pepy II or to the immediately succeeding period.110 It also appears on the right side-piece of his

100 Iufenmutef, Gemni-ankhu, Sankh-gemni, Ipi-her-sesenbef.101 Iuefmutef, (inner jambs); Gemni-ankhu, Meret-teti-hetep(t)i (outer jambs). The drawing of the false door of

Meret-teti-hetep(t)i reproduced here is after C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 72 [1].102 Sat-khemet, Ipi-ankhu: Ipi, User, Heryshef-nakht III, Henuut.103 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 182, and pl. 68.104 Ipi (Merikare) (elderly), Heryshef-nakht I, Gemni-em-hat (Merikare) (elderly), Inpu-em-hat (Merikare), Ipi-

ankhu: Ipi, Neithetep (elderly), Shed-abed, Heryshef-nakht III, Ipi-ankhu I, Sankh-en-gemni, Karenen, Ipi-ankh II(?), Teti-her-menkhet (elderly and mature).

105 N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, Part II (1902b), p. 3.106 N. Kanawati, The Tombs at el-Hargasa, vol. 2 (1993), pl. 42 [b].107 Y. Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom (1987), p. 280; N. Kanawati, The Tombs at el-Hargasa,

vol. 2 (1993), p. 57. Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom, p. 126, n. 79, observes that this attitude is first attested in private tombs in the reign of Neferirkare, in the case of two offering bearers in the tomb of Iy-mery (K. Lepsius, Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Ergänzungsband (1913), pl. 4c). However, as Kent Weeks observes, the two offering bearers were incorrectly drawn by Lepsius as being empty handed, their hands extended with palms raised. In fact, traces of a nested ewer and basin in their raised hands were noted by Reisner (K. Weeks, Mastabas of Cemetery G 6000 (1994), p. 56, fig. 45).

108 N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, Part I (1902a), pl. 23, Tomb 23, Merut, lintel of false door, Dyn. VI; R. Caminos and H.G. Fischer, Ancient Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography (1976), p. 39, fig. 3, relief of Khenu beside Unis Causeway, later than the Sixth Dynasty; G. Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II (1929), p. 114, fig. 129, “stele-maison” of Weneni and Kheredni; L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pl. 43, false door of Sole Friend and Lector Priest Id; L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1964), pl. 68, stele of Weni: Khedjedji, Abydos; late Old Kingdom, H.G. Fischer, “Review of Three Old-Kingdom Tombs at Thebes” (1979), p. 32; S. D’Auria et al., Mummies & Magic (1988), cat. no. 28, false door of Overseer of Craftsmen Kha, Giza tomb G 7211 B, late Dyn. VI; C. N. Peck, “Some Decorated Tombs of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1958), pl. 11, tomb of Mrw/⁄y £w, late Dyn.X/XI.

109 L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1964), pp. 51–52, pl. 75.110 E. Brovarski, “False Doors & History: The Sixth Dynasty” (2006), pp. 115–16.



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niche-chapel.111 The prayerful gesture continues to appear on false doors of Dyn. XII, if not so frequently as in the Heracleopolitan Period.

Female figures: (1) sniff a lotus blossom or bud, while holding a lotus blossom or bud in the hanging rear hand112 (or that hand may hang empty);113 (2) hold an unguent jar to the nose, while holding a lotus bud in the hanging rear hand114 (or that hand may again hang empty115); (3) place one hand respectfully upon the chest, while the other hand hangs down;116 (4) make a gesture of invocation similar to the hieroglyph , while the rear hand hangs down117 (or again holds a lotus blossom);118 or (5) stand with arms at their sides.119 Ipi-em-zas is the only woman with arms outstretched in prayer (fig. 9).120

Alone among the female figures represented on the jambs of the the false doors, Sat-in-teti holds a lotiform staff. This type of staff, which sometimes exhibits a spearlike tip, is first held by

111 W.K. Simpson, Inscribed Material from the Pennsylvania–Yale Excavations at Abydos (1995), pp. 5–6, fig. 4, pls. 2–3B.

112 Sat-khemet, Ipi-em-sas, Meret-teti-hetep(t)i, Senet-yotes.113 Sentni, Henuut, Meret-teti-hetep(t)i, Senet-yotes.114 Sat-khemet.115 Sat-shedabed.116 Meret-teti-iyt(i), Ipi-em-sas.117 Sentni, Sat-shedabed. Because of the narrowness of the jambs the front arm is more sharply bent at the elbow.118 Ipi-em-sas.119 Sat-khemet, Sentni, Meret-teti-iyt(i), Ipi-em-sas, Henuut, Senet-yotes.120 The drawing of Ipi-em-sas’s false door is after C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 68.

Fig. 8. False door of Meret-teti-hetep(t)i (after Firth and Gunn 1926: pl. 72 [1]).

Fig. 9. False door of Ipi-em-zas: Ipi (after Firth and Gunn 1926: pl. 68).



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women in representations dating to the very end of the Old Kingdom and later.121 It is also held by Queen Iah, mother of Mentuhotep II, in his well-known Shatt er-Rigal relief.122 The wives of Baqet III and Khety I at Beni Hasan likewise grasp the lotiform staff.123

If Sat-in-teti is the only woman in the false doors of Dyn. X from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery to hold a lotiform staff, Duahetep is the only woman in these false doors who holds an ankh-sign in her hand. Fischer has pointed out that prior to the end of the Old Kingdom considerable reticence was felt about placing the ankh-sign in the hand of any but the gods. Towards the end of that period, King Pepy II holds the emblem in his own right, as do his mother and and royal wife.124 During the Heracleopolitan Period there are a few widely scattered instances where non-royal persons hold the ankh-sign.125 These include the example on Duahetep’s false door and a second occurrence on a side-piece of Sat-khemet, also cited by Fischer.126 Otherwise, apart from the king and gods, the only person of this period known to Fischer who holds the sign is Queen Aashyt, wife of Mentuhotep II.127

On the jambs of three false doors from the Teti cemetery, the deceased is depicted as a naked, male child. In these cases, the figures sniff a lotus blossom, while holding a blossom or bud in their hanging rear hand,128 or else stand with their arms at their sides.129 As rare as it may be, the depiction of the deceased as a child in two dimensions appears to be an innovation of the Heracleopolitan Period. The deceased was apparently not shown as a child in relief of the Old Kingdom.130

Like a number of false doors that probably belong to the end of the reign of Pepy II or to the immediately succeeding period,131 many of those from the Teti Cemetery Pyramid probably once possessed side-pieces, or rectangular slabs of stone, decorated with scenes in relief on their inner side. These side-pieces flanked the false doors at right angles and formed the north and south walls of a niche-chapel, the false door itself comprising the west wall ot the niche. The side-pieces would have been surmounted by a lintel which formed a roof to the niche, which would have been set into the east face of a small rubble or mud brick mastaba.132 Regrettably, the majority of the side-pieces were found separated from the mastabas into which they had originally belonged. Only those of Sat-in-teti, Iufenmutef, and Meret-teti-iyti appear to have

121 H.G. Fischer, “Eleventh Dynasty Relief Fragments from Deir el-Bahri” (1958), p. 36 and n. 2; C.L. Soghar, “Mendes 1965 and 1966 II: Inscriptions from Tell el Rub’a” (1967), p. 28; E. Brovarski, “An Unpublished Stele of the First Intermediate Period in the Oriental Institute Museum” (1973), p. 461 and n. 27.

122 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Midle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), pl. 12.123 P.E. Newberry, Beni Hasan, Part I (1894), pls. 4, 16. H. Willems, “The Nomarchs of the Hare Nome and Early

Middle Kingdom History” (1985), pp. 92–93, thinks the tombs of Baqet and Khety belong to the reign of Amenemhat I. I hope to show elsewhere that this is not the case, and that Newberry was correct in assigning the two tombs to the latter part of the Eleventh Dynasty (E. Brovarski, “The Hare and Oryx Nomes in the First Intermediate Period and early Middle Kingdom” [forthcoming]). If I am right, there then would be no example of the lotiform staff that clearly dates to Dyn. XII.

124 H.G. Fischer, “An Eleventh Dynasty Couple Holding the Sign of Life” (1973), p. 23, nn. 27–29.125 Ibid. (1973), p. 23 and nn. 31, 32.126 Ibid. (1973), p. 23, n. 33; Lilyquist, Ancient Egyptian Mirrors (1979), p. 16, fig. 136.127 H.G. Fischer, “An Eleventh Dynasty Couple Holding the Sign of Life” (1973), pp. 23–24. Another example

occurs in BM 159 [96], the stela of Rudj-ahau of the reign of Mentuhotep II, where the wife of the owner holds the sign of life against her chest; see R. O. Faulkner, “The Stela of Rudj’ahau” (1951), pl. 7; E. Brovarski, “The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1989), p. 244, n. 284; Appendix E (u). Naga-ed-Deir furnishes three additional instances of the ankh-sign held by women in stelae of late Dyn. X/XI date; see E. Brovarski, ibid., pp. 236–37.

128 Heryshef-nakht II and III129 Ipi-ankhu.130 H.G. Fischer, “Some Early Monuments from Busiris, in the Egyptian Delta” (1976), p. 14 and n. 51.131 E.g., G. Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II (1929), figs. 109–116, 124–127, pl. 15; E. Drioton

and J-Ph. Lauer, “Un groupe de tombes à Saqqarah: Icheti, Nefer-khouou-Ptah, Sebek-em-khent et Ânkhi” (1958), pls. 4–5; W.K. Simpson, “Two Egyptian Bas Reliefs of the late Old Kingdom” (1972), figs. 1–2.

132 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 203.



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been found in situ and, unlike the side-pieces of the other two individuals, those of Iufenmutef, along with his lintel, were only inscribed on the front edge.

Many of the side-pieces from the Teti cemetery are fragmentary.133 There are only eight intact or largely intact examples in our corpus.134 The representations on the side-pieces are generally disposed in three to four registers. As is the case with side-pieces of late Old Kingdom date, table scenes are fairly common on the side-pieces of Heracleopolitan Period date from the Teti cemetery.135 The arrangement of the scenes on the side-pieces does not follow a set for-mula, however. The niche-chapels of Sat-in-Teti and Merer-teti-iyti, for example, feature table scenes on both north and south side-pieces. In Sat-in-Teti’s case the table scenes occupy the middle part of the side-pieces with, on the left-hand side piece, a large register below showing an ox being butchered. On the right-hand side-piece, there are two smaller registers below the table scene with an ox being lassoed for slaughter in the upper register and a procession of maid servants in the lower. In Merer-teti-iyti’s side-pieces, on the other hand, the table scenes are located in the lowermost registers. Above the table scenes on both side-pieces are two registers.

133 J E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pls. 19 [1] (NN), 20 [2] (Ipi-ankhu II), 20 [3] (Teti-em-zaf), 20 [4] (NN), 20 [5] (Ipi II); J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1906–1907) (1908), pls. 8 [3, 5] (NN), 9 [3] (NN), 10 (Meret-teti-iyt[i]); Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1964), pls. 62 (CG 1559) (NN), C. Lilyquist, Ancient Egyptian Mirrors from the Earliest Times through the Middle Kingdom (1979), figs. 123 (Saqqara storeroom 7), 124 (Saqqara storeroom 7, nos. 14072/3), 136 (Sat-[?] khemet); W.K. Simpson, “Two Egyptian Bas Reliefs of the late Old Kingdom” (1972), fig. 13 (Kh[ety]); side-piece of Ipi-senbes, collection of Dr. Edwin J. and Alicia DeCosta, Chicago, 1970s. The provenance of the fragmentary side-piece represented by the first of the Borchardt citations is unknown (L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1964), p. 21). This side-piece and the one in Chicago are ascribed to the Teti cemetery on stylistic grounds. Gunn also describes, but does not illustrate, a number of other fragmentary side-pieces that may be of Heracleoplitan Period date: C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 206 [4] (Heryshef-nakht), 206 [5] (Nefret-wa), 207 [7] (Gemni-em-saf), 208 [8] (Ipi-ankhu II). The owner of the last piece has the same rare title ¡my-r£ ß(n)™ty (see W. Ward, An Index of Egyptian Administrative Titles (1982), p. 48, nos. 372, 373; H.G. Fischer, Egyptian Titles of the Middle King-dom (1997), p. 49, no. 373; E. Brovarski, The Senedjemib Complex, Part I (2001), p. 104) as the like-named owner of a coffin in Berlin (K. Lepsius, Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien II (1849–1859), pls. 131, 132), and the two individuals may be identical, even though the latter has the byname Ipi. The owner of the Berlin coffin is also mty n z£ [W£∂-swt]-Mrk£r™ (H. Schäfer, et al., Aegyptische Inschriften aus den königlichen Museen zu Berlin (1913), p. 132). There are at least two individuals named Ipi-senbes from the area of the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. They are represented by a coffin (J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1906–1907) (1908), p. 19, 77, pl. 30 [4]) and two fragmentary side-pieces; see B. Porter and R.L.B. Moss et al., Topographical Bibliography (1978), p. 558, 564, 569. The description given on Porter and Moss et al., ibid., p. 558, raises the possibility that the block in Chicago may be the part of the side-piece cited on Porter and Moss et al., ibid., p. 569. At any rate, the different occurences of the name in the Teti pyramid are a further indication that the Chicago block may derive from Saqqara.

134 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pls. 19 [3] (Inpu-em-hat: Inep), 20 [1] (Inpu); C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pls. 21 (Sat-in-teti), 88 (Ipi-em-sas); Z. Saad, “A Preliminary Report on the Excavations of the Department of Antiquities at Saqqara, 1942–1943” (1943), pl. 35 (Ipi II); L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1964), pls. 71 (Gemni); B.J. Petersen, “A Tomb-Relief from the End of the First Intermediate Period” (1973), fig. on p. 4 (Sat-Hathor); C. Ziegler, Catalogue des stèles, peintures et reliefs égyptiens (1990), cat. no. 45 (Ky and Sat-shedabed). The side-piece of Ipi-em-zas is definitely from Saqqara (L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1964), p. 123), and it may well belong together with the false door of Ipi-em-zas found by Firth (see note 66). The height of the false door is 1.08 m (C. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyra-mid Cemeteries (1926), p. 182), while the side-piece measures only 0.82 m in height (L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1964), p. 123), but the top of the latter is broken off. The provenance of the side-piece of Gemni is also Saqqara (ibid., p. 43). Gunn suggests that it belongs with the false door of Gemni-em-hat: Gemni (C. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 208), but this is unlikely since the side-piece of Gemni measures 1.78 m in height, while the false door of Gemni-em-hat: Gemni is only 1.49 m high (ibid., p. 187). False doors and side-pieces had of necessity to be of pretty much the same height, so that the lintel would fit snugly on the tops of the side-pieces; see e.g. ibid., pl. 20C = D’Auria et al., Mummies and Magic (1988), cat. no. 30 (Sat-in-teti). Gunn also provides a description of the intact side-piece of yet another Heryshef-nakht, who bears the title ¡my-r£ pr (Firth and Gunn, ibid., p. 205 (3)). Once again, in the following discussion, the side-pieces and fragmen-tary side-pieces will be referred to by name of the owner wherever possible or by an alternative identification where not possible.

135 Ipi-em-zas, Meret-teti-hetep(t)i, Sat-in-teti, Hershef-nakht IV?, Gemni-em-zaf?, Ipi-ankhu II, Ky and Sat-shed-abed (husband and wife at table of bread), Gemni, Saqqara storeroom 7, nos. 14072/3, Ipi-senbes.



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Those on the left-hand side-piece again show an ox being lassoed, while in the register above is a procession of offering bearers. On the right-hand side-piece another procession of offering bearers appears in the upper register, while the lower register is occupied by two more offerings bearers and behind them jars for (three of) the Seven Sacred Oils on a table, jewelry, bags of eye-paint, and a bowl with a mounded substance (see p. 381).

Above the head of the deceased on both side-pieces of Sat-in-teti is a compartment lists of offerings. The upper parts of Merer-teti-iyti’s side-pieces are lost, but what may be the bottom of a kneeling figure at the top edge of the right-hand side piece suggests that compartmental offering lists originally appeared at the top of Merer-teti-iyti’s side pieces as well.

Registers of male or female offering bearers are also depicted above or below the table scenes in other side-pieces.136 In the case of Ipi-em-zas, a file of offering bearers again intrudes between the table scene and the compartment lists of offerings. An evolvement of the theme shows maid servants bringing mirrors and other personal equipment to their mistress.137

Registers showing a steer being lassoed for slaughter138 or in the process of being butchered139 are associated with table scenes on side-pieces other than Sat-in-Teti’s and Merer-teti-iyti’s. Rarer vignettes show a man carrying a calf on his shoulders,140 an ox kneeling to reach the food in a trough,141 and a bird being force-fed.142 A famished herdsman leading a cow or bull represents a novel motif in the iconographic repertory developed at Saqqara during Dyn. X.143

In lieu of the traditional table scene with the figure of the deceased seated at an offering table, in three side pieces the deceased and his wife stand behind a table of bread, while a son or priest standing on the other side of the table proffers a fowl.144 In three other side-pieces, there is no table and a son or priest offers the fowl directly to the deceased.145 Once a daughter presents flowers to her mother.146 These scenes too may be accompanied by offering bearers147 or vignettes of oxen being thrown.148 On a single side-piece the owner stands before a heap of offerings with a compartmental offering list above.149 All these scenes have to do with provision-ing the offering cult. An unusual detail though is the harp behind the seated figure of Sat-in-teti on her right-hand side-piece. The harp may represent a rare instance of the intrusion of the personality and pastimes of the owner into the relatively limited repertoire of funerary motifs.

In contrast to the side-pieces of later Old Kingdom date, whose decoration is largely confined to table scenes, priests performing rites, and files of offering bearers, those of Dyn. X include on occasion a selection of scenes of daily life. The latter include fowling with a boomer-ang in the marshes150 and trapping birds with the clapnet.151 On one fragmentary side-piece an

136 Meret-teti-iyt(i), Ipi-em-zas, Sat-in-teti, Gemni.137 Sat-in-teti, Sat-hathor, Ipi-em-zas, Sat-[?]khemet.138 Meret-teti-iyt(i), Sat-in-teti, Ipi, CG 1559. CG 1559 has the Seven Sacred Oils and jewelry on tables above the

scene of lassoing and offering bearers below. The bottom of the side-piece is lost and a table scene may have occurred on the missing part.

139 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1906–1907) (1908), pl. 8 [3, 5]; Ky and Sat-shedabed, Ipisenebes. See also Kh[ety], Saqqara storeroom 7, no. 14011.

140 Ipi II.141 T.G. Allen, Egyptian Stelae in the Field Museum of Natural History (1923), figure on page 35.142 Kh[ety].143 Ky and Sat-shedabed, Inpu-em-hat II. For this motif, which was subsequently adopted by Theban artists after the

reunification by Mentuhotep II, and then passed into the artistic repertory of the Middle Kingdom, see H.G. Fischer, “An Example of Memphite Influence in a Theban Stela of the Eleventh Dynasty” (1959), pp. 249–51.

144 Ipi, Gemni, Ky and Sat-shedabed. In the latter side-piece, an offering list appears above the scene.145 Gemni, Inpu-em-hat, Teti-em-sas.146 Sat-hathor.147 Ipi II, Inpu-em-hat II.148 Ipi II.149 Inpu.150 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pl. 20 [4] (Ipi-ankhu).151 General Ipi



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abbreviated agricultural sequence with plowing and the harvest in one register and a gleaner in a register below appears.152

Not infrequently, at the top of the side pieces, jewelry (usually beaded collars and coun-terpoises, as well as necklaces) and the different shaped vessels which in real life would have contained the Seven Sacred Oils,153 jewelry alone154 or vessels for the sacred oils alone155 are displayed on tables. Twice different kinds of service vessels are exhibited on tables.156

iii. the sekweskhet FaMily toMb oR cenotaphThe Sekweskhet family tomb or cenotaph was unearthed by Firth in the 1921–1922 field season at the entrance to the “Rue de Tombeaux,” at the eastern end of the wide passage extending along the northern enclosure wall of the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara.157 This is the same passage which contained the tombs of the Heracleopolitan Period (Dyn. X), and the Sekweskhet tomb or cenotaph effectively sealed off this street at its eastern end.158 As Abdalla describes it, the structure comprises a series of five offering niches along its western wall, each of the niches consisting of a false door, with side pieces which separate the false doors from one another. On the pavement in front of each false door was an offering stone.159 In actual fact, the niche of Sekweskhet consists of a single false door, two side pieces and a single offering stone; otherwise, the other four niches comprise a double false door, two side pieces, and a double offering stone.160 The small rectangular building which contained the five niches was built of mud brick, but was in ruins at the time of its discovery.161

Silverman has observed in his article in the present publication a discrepancy in orthography and phraseology between the false doors of the Sekweskhet family and the offering tables that accompanied them. Whereas the latter seem for the most part, on the basis of palaeographic and phraseological features, to belong to the Twelfth Dynasty, other details of the texts on the false doors and side-pieces, as well as elements of their iconography, indicate perhaps an earlier date for the false doors themselves.

In point of fact, the false doors of the Sekweskhet family display a marked affinity for the false doors of Dyn. X date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. As is the case with all but one of the Dyn. X false doors, the supplemental frame which was popular in the later Old Kingdom

152 Ipi-ankhu.153 Gemni, Ky and Sat-shedabed, CG 1559, Ipi, Saqqara storeroom 7a.154 Saqqara storeroom 7.155 Meret-teti-hetep(t)i, J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pl. 20 [4].156 Storeroom 7 and no. 14011.157 See G. Posener, Princes et pays d’Asie et de Nubie (1940), p. 15. A. Abdalla, “The Cenotaph of the Sekweskhet

Family from Saqqara” (1992), pp. 108–109 reconstructs the relationships of the family members as follows. Mery and Hetep were the parents of Sekweskhet ™£, ¢ry-¡b, and n∂s. Sekweskhet the Elder married Mut-em-zas and their son Ni-ankh-hor married Shedi. The latter couple had a son called Sekweskhet. I think it equally possible that Sekhweskhet was the father of Sekhweskhet ™£, ¢ry-¡b, and n∂s, who would thus have been named after him. Their is little to substantiate either geneaology. However, it should be noticed that Ipi-sa-hathor, who dedicated the five offering stones in front of the niches calls Sekhweskhet “his father” (Abdalla, ibid., fig. 2), while Sekweskhet ¢ry-¡b and Sekweskhet n∂s are similarly designated “his fathers who are in the necropolis” on the offering stone in front of their niche (Abdalla, ibid., fig. 2). This is not the case with the offering stones in front of the other false doors (Abdalla, ibid.), and it is possible that either Sekweskhet ¢ry-¡b or n∂s was the father of Ipi-sa-hathor and Sekweskhet his grandfather. Sekhweskhet clearly had an important position in the family; he was, for example, the only family member to have a niche all to himself. Moreover, Sekhweskhet’s right-hand side-panel has a depiction of a servant lassoing a bull for slaughter, a motif that was popular in the side-pieces of Heracleopolitan date from the Teti cemetery. It is the only one of the side-pieces of the Sekweskhet family to display such a vignette, and it is conceivable that his niche was decorated before the others because he belonged to an older generation and passed away before the other members of the family.

158 See B. Porter and R.L.B. Moss, Topographical Bibliography (1978), pl. 52.159 Abdalla, “The Cenotaph of the Sekweskhet Family from Saqqara” (1992), pp. 93–94 and fig. 1b.160 Abdalla, ibid., p. 95.161 Abdalla, ibid., p. 93. For a photograph of the building as excavated, see G. Posener, Princes et pays d’Asie et de

Nubie (1940), fig. 2.



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is lacking in the false doors of the Sekweskhet family (Fig. 10).162 Moreover, four of the false doors are actually double false doors of the type that appears to have been an innovation of the Heracleopolitan Period (see p. 370).

Two specific features show a kinship with the false doors of Tenth Dynasty date from the Teti cemetery. The first of these is the presence of the list of the Seven Sacred Oils which is inscribed on the flat surface over the cavetto cornice in six out of the nine false doors of the Sekweskhet family. (In the other false doors the flat surfaces are blank).

The second feature is the absence of wedjat-eyes on the inner lintel above the central niche of the false doors of the Sekweskhet family. The observation has already been made that, with two exceptions only, wedjat-eyes do not appear on the inner lintel above the central niche of the Heracleopolitan Period false doors from the Teti cemetery, whereas they are ubiquitous on false doors of Dyn. XII (see p. 372). The lack of wedjat-eyes on the false doors of the Sekweshet family comprises one argument for their being earlier in date than Dyn. XII. Instead of the wedjat-eyes, the Sekweshet family false doors bear a short line of text that begins with the phrase ¡m£∞w(t) ∞r and name the deceased “honored” by Hathor, Anubis, or his lord (¡m£∞w ∞r nb.f ny mrwt m£™).163 In a like manner the inner lintel of the Heracleopolitan false doors from the Teti

162 The drawing of the false doors and side-pieces of Ni-ankh-hor and Shedy are reproduced from Abdalla, “The Cenotaph of the Sekweskhet Family from Saqqara” (1992), fig. 3, with the gracious permission of the author.

163 In one instance only, on the false door of Sekweskhet, ibid., fig. 2a, the lintel bears the formula sßm.tw.f ¡n k£w.f m ¡mnt.

Fig. 10. False doors and side-pieces of Ni-ankh-hor and Shedy (after Abdalla 1992: fig. 3).



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cemetery is on the whole inscribed with a text that begins with ¡m£∞w(t) ∞r n†r-™£ (nb pt) followed by the name of the deceased (see p. 372).

All of the false doors of the members of the Sekweskhet family have broad panels that fill the space between the outer jambs. It was pointed out above that, while the flaring T-shaped panel is prevalent in the Heracleopolitan false doors from the Teti Cemetery, the broad panel also occurs (see pp. 368–69). We will see shortly that the full panel predominates in Dyn. XII false doors (see pp. 398–99).

The decorative scheme of the panel in false doors of the Sekweshet family also resembles the program of decoration in the Heracleopolitan Period false doors. On the left-hand side of the panel the deceased sits behind a table of bread heaped with offerings. In the majority of cases a nested ewer and basin rests on the groundline on the far side of the table leg, while the words db¢t-¢tp are inscribed on the near side of the table leg opposite. In the false doors of Sekweskhet the Middle and Sekweshet the Younger, the ewer and basin appear to be replaced by a hezet-jar.164 In addition, however, offerings are piled up on the far right of the panel in the false doors of Sekwesket, Niankhhor, and Hetep, a feature that is lacking in the Heracleo-politan Period false doors from the Teti Cemetery. The arrangement hearkens back to Old Kingdom models (see p. 364), but also occurs in the false doors of Dyn. IX from Upper Egypt. As we will see, it is rare in false door panels of Dyn. XII. As a matter of fact, in our corpus offer-ings otherwise appear only on the far right of the panel in the false door of Ihy from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery (see fig. 17).

The false doors of the Sekweskhet family measure 1.21 m in height, but possess only two pairs of jambs, like the smaller false doors of the Heracleopolitan Period. The outer jambs are treated as a “surround,” with the lower framing-line of the inscription on the upper lintel marking off the lintel from the jambs. The inner lintel is on the same plane as the outer jambs, while the inner jambs are set back.

All of the false doors from the Sekweshet family chapel have four jamb figures of equal height. The jamb figures themselves, however, are not as varied as the figures in the Heracleo-politan Period false doors. In the false door of Sekweskhet himself, all four figures hold a staff, with either a scepter or a handkerchief in the hanging rear hand. In the false doors of Mery, Sekweskhet the Elder, the Middle, and the Younger, the jamb figures are identical in pose, with a staff in the front hand and the rear hand hanging empty. The figures on the inner jambs of the false door of Ni-ankh-hor hold a staff and scepter, whereas those on the outer jambs have their hands upraised in prayer. The latter attitude occurs frequently in the Dyn. X false doors (see p. 373), but is also found in false doors of Dyn. XII (see p. 406). The figures of the women uniformly have arms hanging at their sides.

As was seemingly the case with the false doors of the Heracleopolitan Period from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, the false doors of the Sekweskhet family are flanked by decorated side-pieces. The latter side-pieces though are much more uniform in decoration than those of Hera-cleopolitan Period date. This circumstance may reflect a longer period of experimentation and development and provide circumstantial evidence that the Sekweskhet side-pieces are indeed later than the Dyn. X side-pieces. Conversely, it may simply be a reflection of the fact that the Sekweskhet tomb or cenotaph appears to be a single work, erected essentially at one time.165

The left-hand side-pieces have three registers with a compartmental list of offerings in the top register, a table scene below that, and a file of offering bearers in the bottom register. In the left-hand side-pieces of Sekhweskhet the Middle and Sekhweskhet the Younger, the lower regis-ter has instead a servant proferring a fowl to the owner and the owner standing alone before a pile of offerings, respectively. Both types of offering scenes also occur in the Dyn. X side-pieces (see p. 377).

164 I am not certain about this detail. Although the photographs of the false doors are quite good, they are repro-duced at a disappointly small scale. Surely, after such a long wait for their publication, the monuments deserved better treatment.

165 A. Abdalla, “The Cenotaph of the Sekweskhet Family from Saqqara” (1992), p. 107.



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The right-hand side pieces have at their top the different-shaped jars for the Seven Sacred Oils together with jewelry (usually beaded collars and counterpoises, as well as necklaces). The oil jars and the jewelry, again usually arrayed in racks or on low tables, are also a common element at the top of side pieces of Heracleopolitan Period date from the Teti cemetery (see p. 378) but, in side pieces of the Sekweskhet family, they occupy the greater part of the deco-rated area on the side-pieces, with usually a standing figure of the deceased depicted in a single, large register below.

In the three offering niches shared by a man and his wife(?)—those of Ni-ankh-hor and Shedy, Sekweskhet the Elder and Mut-em-zas, Mery and Hetep—the man appears in the table scene on the left-hand side piece, while a standing figure of the wife(?) appears in the large reg-ister at the bottom of the right-hand side-piece. In the niche shared by Sekweskhet the Middle and Sekweskhet the Younger, the older brother, Sekweskhet the Middle appears in the table scene on the left-hand side piece, while a figure of Sekweskhet (the Younger?) appears at the bottom of the opposite side piece.

In the large register at the bottom of the right-hand side-pieces of the offering niches shared by a husband and wife(?), Shedy, Mutemsas, and Hetep appear in a toilet scene in which a maid servant holds up a mirror before her mistress’s face. In her other hand, the maidservant holds a face-cloth, while a tall, cylindrical bas-jar occupies the space between them. In all likelihood, the motif of mistress-and-maid derives from the files of offering bearers on Dyn. X side-pieces which contain figures of maid servants bringing personal equipment to their mistress, including mirrors (see p. 377). Otherwise, the scenes of daily life which are evident on the side pieces of Dyn. X (see pp. 377–78) are absent from the side pieces of the Sekweskhet family.

In the niche shared by Sekhweskhet the Middle and Sekhweskhet the Younger, the lowest register on the right-hand side piece is occupied by a figure of Sekweskhet (the Younger?) standing before a a tall, cylindrical bas-jar, a bowl containing what appears to be a mounded substance, and a curved strip, possibly a piece of cloth, like the face-cloth(?) the maid servants carry to their mistress in the toilet scenes of Shedy, Mutemsas, and Hetep. In Dyn. X a similar bowl with mounded substance(?) also appears along with vessels for the Seven Sacred Oils and jewelry in the right-hand side-piece Meret-teti-iyti from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery (see p. 377) and under a low table piled with jewelry on the coffin of Nefer-smendet from the same place.166 In the late Eleventh Dynasty, it is again associated with jewelry in the object frieze on the cof-fin of Mentuhotep: Buau.167 In a stela of First Intermediate Period date (Dyn. IX) published by Edwards,168 a woman is shown, seated at an offering table in the conventional manner, but holding in her left hand a mirror, and in her right a cloth, with which she applies unguent(?) to or removes it from her face. Taking into account its association with jewelry and oil vessels, and the evidence of the First Intermediate Period stela, the mounded substance in the different bowls may represent some kind of cosmetic cream. Under the hot Egyptian sun, such oils and unguents were necessary to keep the skin from drying and cracking.169

In the case of Sekhweskhet, who has a niche all to himself, a figure of the owner naturally enough appears both in the table scene on the left-hand side-piece and at the bottom of the right-hand side-piece. Sekweskhet’s is the only right-hand side-piece of the group to have an additional register with figural representation. This is a depiction of a servant lassoing a bull for slaughter, a motif that was popular in the side-pieces of Heracleopolitan date from the Teti cemetery (see p. 377).

An interesting innovation in the side-pieces of the niches of Sekhweskhet, Mery and Hetep, and Sekhweskhet the Middle and Younger is the inclusion of weapons along with the jewelry. To

166 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1906–1907) (1908), pl. 24.167 P. Lacau, Sarcophages antérieurs au Nouvel Empire (1904), pl. 23 [68]. For the coffin of Mentuhotep Buau, see

pp. 387–88.168 I.E.S. Edwards, “A Toilet Scene on a Funerary Stela of the Middle Kingdom” (1937), p. 165, pl. 20; see E. Brovarski,

“The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1989), p. 695.169 R. Freed, The Development of Middle Egyptian Relief Sculptural Schools (1984), p. 199.



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my knowledge weapons do not appear on Heracleopolitan Period side-pieces, although they are certainly depicted in the object friezes of Heracleopolitan Period coffins.170

Thus, from both structural and iconographic points of view, the false doors of the Sekweskhet family exhibit many similarities to the false doors of Dyn. X from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. These include double false doors, the Seven Sacred Oils on the cavetto cornice (in one case at least eye-paints as well), the simple nature of the table scene in the majority of the false doors, the absence of wedjat-eyes on the inner lintel, the presence of figures of the deceased on the jambs, including figures with hands upraised in prayer.

All the same, there are differences notable as well. Among these are the lack of the flaring T-shaped panel which is so prominent in the false doors of Heracleopolitan Period date. Then too, three false doors of members of the Sekweskhet family incorporate offerings on the right side of the table scene on the false door panel, a feature that is not evident in the Dyn. X false doors.

The flaring T-shaped panel is also absent from false doors of Dyn. XII, but the false doors of the Sekweskhet family are unlikely to be this late. They lack, for example, the wedjat-eyes on the lintel that are ubiquitous in Dyn. XII false doors (see p. 405).

The orthography of the false doors is helpful in defining more closely the question of their date. Most significant in this connection is the arrangement of the pr¡ ∞rw formulae on the Sekweshet false doors. Since the relevant formulae are all inscribed on the jambs of the false doors, they are reproduced in fig. 11 in their original vertical arrangement. The predominant arrangement is (a), which occurs in the false doors of Sekweskhet himself, of Ni-ankh-hor, Sekweskhet the Elder, the Middle, and the Younger, and Mery. Shedy and Hetep have the cor-responding feminine equivalent (b). Mut-em-zas alone has group (c). Sekhweskhet the Elder, the Middle, and the Younger also display the arrangement represented by (d). The double false door of Ni-ankh-hor and Shedy exhibit arrangement (e), which also appears on the false door of Mut-em-zas. Sekweskhet the Middle shows the grouping represented by (f). Sekweskhet the Elder has arrangement (g).

I am unable to provide exact parallels to all these vertical writings. Nevertheless, the pre-sumed horizontal equivalents of (a) and (d) appear both on Heracleopolitan Period monu-ments from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery and on monuments from Thebes that postdate the reunification of Egypt by Mentuhotep II. The horizontal equivalent of (d) with feminine pro-nominal indirect object occurs once in early Dyn. XII. Arrangement (g) is directly paralleled only in Dyn. XII, although the horizontal equivalent is known earlier.

Arrangement (a) is paralleled by the equivalent horizontal group on four coffins from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara. One of the four coffins from Saqqara belongs to the Army Scribe Ipi-ankhu (Sq5Sq),171 while the owners of the other coffins are a second Ipi-ankhu (Sq6Sq),172 the Army Scribe Ipi-ha-ishetef,173 and Gemni-hotep (Sq 12).174 The same arrangement is also found at Thebes on the walls of the burial chamber of the Overseer of Seal-bearers Meru under Mentuhotep II.175

Meru’s stele is dated to Year 46 of Mentuhotep II,176 and he presumably died in that year.177 It is hard to imagine to what other event the date on the stela could refer. The date of its erection at Abydos hardly seems important enough to commemorate in this fashion, unless it corresponded with the year of Meru’s demise. James Allen nevertheless believes that the date

170 See G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), §124, figs. 35 a–d.171 C. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 232 [4].172 Ibid., p. 237 [5].173 G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), pl. 8 a, b.174 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 261 [18]. All that remains of the coffin of Gemni-hotep

are two boards from the front and back of the coffin with incised text; nothing is visible on their inner sides.175 K. R. Lepsius, Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien II (1849–1859), pl. 148176 A. Donadoni, Egyptian Civilization: Religious Beliefs (1988), figs. 137–38; and see H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall

of the Midle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), p. 34.177 Cf. W.K. Simpson, The Terrace of the Great God at Abydos (1974), p. 3, n. 20.



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of Meru’s demise is unknown,178 and thinks it could have occurred as late as the beginning of Dyn. XII on the basis of the architecture of Meru’s tomb and the orthography of his sarcophagus. Allen states that the group , which appears on Meru’s sarcophagus, is otherwise attested only in Dyn. XII.179 He cites Schenkel as his authority,180 and the latter gives for Dyn. XI only the occurences on Meru’s sarcophagus and stele. In fact, the same arrangement also occurs on the coffin found together with the well-known statue of Mentuhotep II wearing the Sed-festival garment and the Red Crown from the Bab el-Hosan,181 on the sarcophagus of Queen Tem,182 and on the coffin of the Lady Amenet (T8C).

According to Dieter Arnold, the Bab el-Hosan was sealed up and consecrated by the cer-emonial burial of the seated statue of the king and an empty coffin in Phase C, simultaneously with the construction of a new royal tomb. This occurred at a time not long after the king had changed his Horus name from N†ry-¢∂t to Sm£-t£wy.183

Queen Tem’s corridor tomb is located in the southwest corner of the hypostyle hall in the Eleventh Dynasty temple of Deir el-Bahari, adjacent to the king’s own tomb.184 Arnold observes that the entrance passage of her tomb was dug when Phases C–D of the temple were in prog-ress. He estimates that she may have passed away around her husband’s fortieth year of reign.185 Given the inscriptions on her gigantic alabaster sarcophagus, which name her King’s Mother as well as King’s Wife, she was presumably mother of his son, Sankhkare Mentuhotep III.186 Since Tem was identified as “King’s Mother” on her sarcophagus, she presumably lived on into her son’s reign and, in all probability, it was he who buried her, although the tomb itself was apparently constructed during her husband’s lifetime.

Amenet was depicted in the reliefs of the Deir el-Bahari temple.187 Her tomb was apparently located in the extreme northernmost corner of the north triangular court at Deir el-Bahari. On her bandages were the name, not only of “the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Son of Re, Mentuhotep,” but those of his daughter Ideh and the Ladies Menet, Tenenet, and Tem, along with dates in the king’s 28th, 35th, and 42nd(?) years.188 She was presumably interred in the final years of Mentuhotep II’s reign.

The evidence just cited demonstrates that the group cannot be used to date the Over-seer of Seal-bearers Meru to Dynasty XII. Allen’s first-rate review of the development of the tombs of the high officials who served Mentuhotep II,189 and in some cases lived on into the reigns of his successors, reveals that Meru’s tomb is clearly earlier than the vizier Ipi’s and Meketre’s, but the evidence is not sufficient, in my opinion, to assign TT 240 to Dyn. XII (see Appendix A).

Willems has noted that the decoration of the burial chamber of Meru does not stand in the same tradition as other monuments from the Theban region, but instead has a strong resem-blance with patterns found at Saqqara. He thinks the Theban artists were probably influenced by models current in the Memphite workshops.190 Since he believes Meru’s tomb TT 240 is

178 J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), p. 6.179 Ibid., p. 6, n. 43.180 W. Schenkel, Frühmittelägyptische Studien (1962), §4.181 H. Carter, “Report on the Tomb of Mentuhotep Ist at Deir el-Bahari” (1901), p. 204.182 G. Daressy, “Notes et remarques” (1893), p. 30.183 D. Arnold, The Temple of Mentuhotep at Deir el-Bahari (1979), pp. 41, 42, 45.184 E. Naville, The XIth Dynasty Temple at Deir el-Bahari, Part I (1907), pp. 51–52; and ibid. (1910), p. 3, 21.185 D. Arnold, Der Tempel des Königs Mentuhotep von Deir el-Bahari (1974), pp. 35–36.186 H. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), p. 43; and E. Thomas, The Royal Necropoleis

of Thebes (1966), p. 22.187 E. Naville, The XIth Dynasty Temple at Deir el-Bahari, Part I (1907), pl. 17B; ibid., Part II (1910), p. 6; H. Winlock,

The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), p. 43.188 G. Daressy, “Les rois Mentouhotep” (1913), pp. 99–100; H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in

Thebes (1947), p. 43.189 J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), pp. 15–25.190 H. Willems, Chests of Life: A Study of the Typology and Conceptual Development of Middle Kingdom Standard Class Coffins

(1988), p. 106.



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datable to the very end of the Eleventh Dynasty, he also prefers an early Middle Kingdom date for the material from Saqqara.191

The coffins of Ipi-ankhu (Sq6Sq) and of the Army Scribe Ipi-ha-ishetef (Sq1Ch) are included in the list of coffins cited by Willems that share a strong resemblance with Meru’s burial chamber.192 The selection and arrangement of the object friezes on the interior back of the coffins of these two individuals and on the walls of the burial chamber of Meru come close to Willem’s frieze type a, but differ from it in: (1) the absence of ß™wty, ¢smny, and ¢zt-vessels in the center of the frieze; (2) the absence of headrests and mirrors at the head; and (3) the absence of aprons. At the same time, staves and weapons from the Pyramid Texts are also rep-resented in the object frieze of both coffins and Meru’s burial chamber.193

Also included in Willem’s list of coffins which bear a strong resemblance to Meru’s burial chamber is the inner coffin of Gemni-em-hat: Gemni (Sq2X), whose false door has been dated above to the reign of King Merikare (see p. 365ff.). Unlike the coffins of Ipi-ankhu (Sq6Sq) and a second Ipi-ankhu (Sq5Sq), Ipi-ha-ishetef, and Gemni-hotep (Sq12), which have , both Gemni-em-hat’s inner and outer coffins (as well as his false door) write , an orthography that is also found on Meru’s stele from Abydos (see p. 382). Even though the orthography of the pr¡ ∞rw formulae on the coffins differ, the design of the object frieze on the interior back of the coffins of Ipi-ankhu and Ipi-ha-ishetef resemble closely those on the coffins of Gemni-em-hat.

The interior front decoration of the coffin of Ipi-ankhu (Sq6Sq), the coffin of Ipi-ha-ishetef, and the outer and inner coffins of Gemni-em-hat all belong to Willems front type FR 3 (as does Meru’s burial chamber). Each coffin shows a false door that occupies the full height of the front side, an offering table and heaps of offerings to the right of the false door, and to the right of the offerings a compartmental offering list.194 The resemblance is particularly close between the coffins of Ipi-ha-ishetef and Gemni-em-hat. For example, the scalloped bowls containing lotus flowers represented in fig. 12a and b appear among the offerings in both Gemni-em-hat’s and Ipi-ha-ishetef’s coffins. A curious feature in both coffins is the inclusion of a basketwork lid that would surely have crushed the frail lotus blossoms in real life.195

Only the texts of the coffin of Ipi-ankhu (Sq6Sq) and a verbal description of the coffin decoration have been published.196 Nevertheless, the arrangement and spelling of the items in the offering lists in the coffins of Ipi-ankhu, Ipi-ha-ishetef, and Gemni-em-hat are likwise quite similar, in particular as regards the writing of ™rf.wy in a separate compartment after w£∂ and msdmt, but also in the nature of the determinative of z(£)† .

The inner coffin of the Army Scribe Ipi-ankhu (Sq5Sq) is inscribed on all four interior sides with funerary texts alone, and in this it is unique. Regrettably, only the head and foot ends of his outer coffin are preserved.197 All the same, with the exception of two bags of eyepaint, which appear under the table on the foot end of Gemni-em-hat’s coffin, and which may or may not have appeared at the destroyed bottom of the foot end of Ipi-anku’s coffin, the component elements of the object frieze on the foot end of Ipi-ankhu’s coffin are esentially the same as on

191 Willem’s article was written before the appearance of Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991) and J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996).

192 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), p. 106, n. 216a.193 Ibid., p. 218 and n. 183.194 Ibid., fig. 21.195 The sources for fig. 12 are the following: (a) C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 25; (b)

G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), pl. 8; reproduced with the kind permission of the author; (c) Oriental Institute Museum P.19470/N.11045. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute Museum, The University of Chicago. I owe a debt of thanks to John A. Larsen, Archivist of the Oriental Institute Museum, for providing me with xeroxes of the coffin of the General and Army Scribe Ipi-ha-ishetef, OIM 12072, and for permission to illustrate details of the coffin in fig. 12c and 13c.

196 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 238.197 Ibid., p. 231 [3].



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the foot end of Gemni-em-hat’s inner coffin, although they are set out on two tables rather than one and Ipi-ankhu has two pairs of sandles as opposed to Gemni-em-hat’s one (fig. 13a–b).198

If the resemblance between the two coffins can be taken as an indication of date, as I believe it can, then the coffins of the two Ipi-ankhus, of Ipi-ha-ishetef, and of Gemni-em-hat are probably more or less contemporaneous. Moreover, if Gemni-em-hat indeed belongs to the time of Merikare, as we have argued, so undoubtedly do the other three individuals. This would mean in all likelihood that the forms and were in use at the same time at Saqqara, an assumption that receives support from the appearance of and in Meru’s stele and burial chamber. It would therefore seem that the artist who decorated Meru’s burial cham-ber was not only inspired by the interior decoration of the Saqqara coffins, but also copied a contemporary funerary formula that was in use towards the end of the Heracleopolitan period at Saqqara. So too did the draftsman who designed Meru’s stele.

The that appears in the form probably represents the indefinite pronoun in pr.tw n.f ∞rw.199 A closely related arrangement occurs on the coffin of Wah, a retainer of the Chancelor Meketre, early in Dyn. XII.200 Also to be compared is in the coffin of Ipi-her-sesenbef (Sq4Sq) from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery,201 and in the late Eleventh Dynasty coffin of

198 The sources for fig. 13 are as follows: (a) O. Koefoed-Petersen, Catalogue des sarcophages et cercueils égyptiens (1951), pl. 18 b; (b) G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), p. 48, fig. 41; reproduced with the kind permission of the author (c) Oriental Institute Museum P.19470/N.11045. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute Museum, The University of Chicago. The drawing of the foot end of the coffin of Ipi-ankhu (Sq5Sq) is mistakenly labelled Sq6Sq by Lapp. The confusion is understandable as the latter coffin belongs to another Ipi-ankhu, and the two coffins were found together in a single grave; see C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pp. 50–51 (HMK. 26) 231 (3), 233 (4), 237 (5), fig. 54. I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. Jennifer Houser Wegner for inking the drawings in figs. 12 and 13.

199 J.J. Clére, “Le fonctionnement grammatical de l’expression Pr¡-Órw en ancien égyptien” (1935), pp. 780–81.200 For the date, see Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), pp. 34–35. I would

like to thank Christine Lilyquist, formerly Lila Acheson Wallace Curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for permitting me to examine, some years ago, the records of the Metropolitan Museum Expedition which document the tombs and finds of Eleventh Dynasty date at Thebes. The finds from the tomb of Wah, including his coffin, are now on exhibition in the Egyptian galleries.

201 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), p. 239 [6].

Fig. 11. Pr¡ ∞rw formulae in false doors of the Sekweskhet family.



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Heqaib the Elder from Aswan.202 The arrangement in the early Twelfth Dynasty tomb chamber of Khesu the El-der at Kom el-Hisn is likewise comparable.203 Wah’s writing

is especially close to the arrangement of pr.tw n.f ∞rw in the Saqqara coffins of the two Ipi-ankhus (Sq5Sq, Sq6Sq), Ipi-ha-ishetef, and Gemni-hotep but, as on the coffins of Ipi-her-sesenbef and Heqaib the Elder, and the Kom el-Hisn tomb chamber, the and the are inverted.

Wah served the Chancelor Meketre as “overseer of the store-house” and was buried in a subsidiary tomb excavated in the upper right-hand corner of the courtyard of Meketre’s tomb.204 Winlock believed that Meketre was born under Mentuhotep II, in whose Deir el-Bahari temple his name appears,205 and that he apparently survived into the reign of his son and successor, Sankhkare Mentuhotep III.206 More recently, Dorothea Arnold has argued persuasively that the date of the tomb of Meketre and the finds therefrom must be advanced to the early years of Amenemhat I.207 She has been followed in this by James Allen in an appendix to her article, and in a subsequent article on Theban officials of the early Middle Kingdom.208 If they are correct about Meketre’s date, as they may well be, and Wah was buried during the years following Meketre’s death,209 then his coffin too would belong to the early Twelfth Dynasty.

The date of Heqaib the Elder is discussed in Appendix B, where the conclusion is reached that his coffin belongs to late Dyn. XI.

The coffin of Ipi-her-sesenbef (Sq4Sq) is also included by Willems in the list of coffins that share a strong resemblance with Meru’s tomb chamber.210 A description of its interior decoration is provided by Gunn.211 Although the interior front of the coffin has the same arrangement as Gemni-em-hat’s, the arrangement on the interior back is completely different, with the larger part of the available space occupied by funer-ary texts, except for a very short register with an object frieze

near the foot end.212 Nor is the object frieze as close to Gemni-em-hat’s as Ipi-ha-ishetef’s is, the designer of the frieze having incorporated a hezet-vessel and basin with above two pellets of incense(?) and above these a crescent-shaped object that may represent a magical wand.213 Nevertheless, the design on the head end of both Gemni-em-hat’s and Ipi-her-sesenbef’s coffins includes a headrest, and these are the only coffins from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery to do so. Otherwise, the design is disparate, and Gemni-em-hat has a khnumet-weret object, two bags of

202 H. Willems, The Coffin of Heqata (1996), pl. 15.203 D. Silverman, The Tomb Chapel of Khesu the Elder (1991), figs. 7, 9.204 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1942), pp. 29–30, 222–28.205 E. Naville, The XIth Dynasty Temple of Deir el-Bahari, vol. 1 (1910), pl. 9D.206 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1942), p. 19.207 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), pp. 21–32.208 Ibid., pp. 39–40 and J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), pp. 1–26.209 Ibid. (1991), p. 34.210 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), p. 106, n. 216a.211 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pp. 241–43.212 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), figs. 20–21.213 For magic wands, see e.g., H. Altenmüller, Die Apotropaia und die Götter Mittelägyptens (1965); B. George, “Drei

atlägyptische Wurfhölzer” (1980); and articles by J. Wegner and J. Roberson (this volume).

Fig. 12. Flower vases on the interior of the coffins of (a) Gemni-em-hat (Sq2X), (b) Ipi-ha-ishetef, and (c) Ipi-ha-ishetef (Sq1Ch).



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eye-paint, and three cloth-bundles (or vessels?),214 whereas Ipi-her-sesenbef has what are prob-ably two pellets of incense over a basin and a tall, cylindrical bas-vessel.215 Both the head and foot ends of Ipi-her-sesenbef’s coffin have a more modern pattern than Gemni-em-hat’s, with funerary texts occupying the lower part of the side.216 Even so, the design of the foot end of Ipi-her-sesenbef’s coffin, like that of Gemni-em-hat’s coffin (fig. 13), incorporates a pair of sandals and two ankh-signs. It is consequently difficult to decide if Ipi-her-sesenbef’s coffin is later than Gemni-em-hat’s and, if so, by how much. This will require further investigation into the nature and development of coffins from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. In the meantime, there are certainly no palaeographic or epigraphic indications that the coffin of Ipi-her-sesenbef dates to Dyn. XII.

I am unable to provide a precise horizontal equivalent to arrangement (d). However, a verti-

cal arrangement with pronominal rather than nominal indirect object appears on the false doors of Gemni-em-hat: Gemni’s,217 and Ipi,218 both of whom held priestly office at the pyramid of King Merikare. The horizontal equivalent of this is more common and occurs, for example, both on Gemni-em-hat’s and Ipi’s false doors and on the coffins of Gemni-em-hat.219 The same arrangement is found as well on the walls of the burial chamber of the Chancelor Khety [I] at Thebes,220 and on the stela of the Overseer of Seal-bearers Meru from Abydos.221 With femi-nine pronominal indirect object, appears on stela BM 152, which is included by Freed in her “Packed Offerings Group” of early Dyn. XII (late Amenemhat I–early Senusert I).222 This is the only Dyn. XII example of such an arrangement I am able to provide, however.

According to Allen, the Chancelor Khety probably became ¡my-r£ ∞tmt before the final decade of Mentuhotep II. He was most likely succeeded by Meketre in that king’s last years.223

Arrangement (g) occurs in the false door of a certain Senkay from Kom el-Akhdar (Busiris) in the Nile Delta, which has been dated by Fischer to the Eleventh Dynasty.224 Both arrange-ment (g) and its horizontal equivalent are found in the false door of Shedy from Heracleo-polis (see note 242).225 The conspicuous factor here is the omission of the bread loaf .226 At Thebes the horizontal writing appears on the sarcophagus of Queen Tem (see p. 383) and the coffin of Mentuhotep: Buau from Deir el-Bahri.227 It also occurs on the hezet-vessels from Yachts T and U of Meketre in early Dynasty XII.228 In addition, the arrangement is found on the cof-fins of Nakht-kau,229 and Khent-kheti from Sedment.230 It likewise occurs in the false door of Khety-ankh: Khety from Heliopolis (see fig. 15).

Like Amenet, Mentuhotep: Buau was buried in the northern triangular court of the Eleventh Dynasty temple of Deir el-Bahri temple; his burial chamber was apparently situated under the later Hathor shrine of Queen Hatshepsut.231 His titles of ¡my-r£ pr m t£ r-∂r.f “steward in the entire

214 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 26B.215 Ibid., pl. 32C.216 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), p. 181, fig. 19.217 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 27B.218 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905–1906) (1907), pl. 13.219 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pls. 23–25.220 H. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1942), pl. 16.221 See note 176.222 R.E. Freed, “Stela Workshops of Early Dynasty 12” (1996), pp. 312–13, fig. 5a.223 J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), pp. 3–4.224 H.G. Fischer, Egyptian Studies, vol. 1: Varia (1976), pp. 161–65, figs. 3–4.225 J. Lopez, “Rapport preliminaire sur les fouilles d’Hérakléopolis (1968)” (1975), fig. 12.226 The loaf is regularly omitted in inscriptions of early Dyn. X/XI at Naga-ed-Deir, but not in those of late

Dyn. XI/XII: E. Brovarski, “The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1989), p. 230 [4], 247 [4].

227 P. Lacau, Sarcophages antérieurs au Nouvel Empire (1904), p. 66.228 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1943), p. 64.229 W.M.F. Petrie and G. Brunton, Sedment I (1924), pls. 24, 25.230 Ibid., pls. 18, 19.231 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), p. 42.



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land” and ¡my-r£ ¡pt m Ím™w M¢w “overseer of every census in Upper and Lower Egypt”232 sug-gest that he exercised his various functions after the reunification of Egypt by Mentuhotep II. Willems dates his coffin (T9C) to the later reign of Mentuhotep II. Lapp similarly assigns it to Dyn. XI.233

Willems thinks that some of the coffins from Sedment, including those of Nakht-kau, may be as late as the early Twelth Dynasty.234 The coffins of Nakht-kau (Sid2X) and Khent-kheti (Sid1Sid) from Sedment have been dated by Lapp to Dyns. XI–XII.235 However, as Willems himself observes, Schenkel has shown that the pottery evidence from Sedment may in fact sup-port a date in the late Eleventh Dynasty.236 An interesting correspondence in the object frieze on the coffins of Mentuhotep: Buau and Khent-kheti’s may conceivably serve to date the latter coffin to late Dyn. XI, when the Sedment area came under Theban influence. Both object friezes show bales of cloth and alongside them a list of linen in compartments (fig. 14a, b).237

The false door of Khety-ankh: Khety originally belonged to an individual named Heni, from whom he usurped the monument in early Dyn. XII. If the arrangement of pr ∞rw n is part of the original decoration of the false door, as seems likely, it belongs to late Dyn. XI rather than to early Dyn. XII (see p. 397).

Interestingly, in addition to the above citations, an isolated occurrence of the horizontal equivalent of (g) is encountered on the late Dyn. XII coffin of Intef from Riqqeh. For the date, Willems cites Lilyquist, who tentatively attributes the coffin to the reign of Amenemhat III.238

Unlike its horizontal equivalent, there are numerous instances of the vertical arrangement (g) in Dyn. XII. It occurs, for example, on the fragmentary false door of the Overseer of Lower Egypt Ipi in the early Twelfth Dynasty (see p. 404). It also appears somewhat later on two statues from the Heqaib sanctuary at Elephantine. The first statue belongs to Queen Weret, the wife of Senusert II and mother of Senusert III,239 and the second to the Overseer of Priests Khakaure-seneb, who seemingly served King Amenemhat III.240 The vertical arrangement occurs as well as on the stele of the High Steward Sen-ankh of less certain date.241 In Dynasty XII, the same group is found after d¡.f.242

From an orthographic perspective, the Sekweskhet family false doors thus appear to occupy an intermediate position between the Heracleopolitan Period and Dyn. XII. In terms of decora-tion, the niche-chapels of the family appear more closely related to false doors and side panels of Heracleopolitan date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. For these reasons, it is likely that the Sekweskhet family tomb or cenotaph belongs to the late Eleventh Dynasty, after the defeat of the Heracleopolitans by the Thebans.

iV. the False dooRs FRoM heRacleopolisIt is only natural to assume that the false doors excavated by the Spanish mission at Heracleopolis itself belong to the Heracleopolitan Period, since Heracleopolis was the place of origin of the kings of Dyns. IX–X. In actual fact, this may or may not be the case. Some twelve false doors

232 W.A. Ward, Index of Egyptian Administrative Titles (1982), p. 11 [35].233 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1998), p. 114; and G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), p. 308.234 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), p. 101.235 G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1993), p. 298.236 W. Schenkel, “Zur Datierung der “Herakleopolitanischen” Keramik aus Sedment” (1973), pp. 33–38.237 The sources for fig. 13 are: (a) G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), fig. 180; reproduced with the

kind permission of the author; (b) W. M. F. Petrie and Brunton, Sedment I (1924), pl. 18.238 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1993), p. 102, n. 198; C. Lilyquist, Ancient Egyptian Mirrors (1979), pp. 18–19.239 L. Habachi, Elephantine IV: The Sanctuary of Heqaib (1985), p. 112, fig. 4, pls. 193–94.240 Ibid., pp. 56–57, fig. 2, pls. 81–86.241 H. Lange and H. Schäfer, Grab- und Denksteine des Mittleren Reichs (1902), pl. 21.242 E.g. R. Engelbach, Riqqeh and Memphis VI (1915), pl. 24; W. K. Simpson, The Terrace of the Great God at Abydos

(1974), pls. 53 (ANOC 35.1), 56 (ANOC 38.1); L. Habachi, Elephantine IV (1985), p. 33, fig. 6 a–b; 56, fig. 2.



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Fig. 13. Foot ends of the coffins of (a) Gemni-em-hat (Sq2X), (b), Ipi-ankhu (Sq5Sq), and (c) Ipi-ha-ishetef (Sq1Ch).

Fig. 14. Bales of cloth and linen list in the coffins of: (a) Mentuhotep: Buau from Thebes (T9C); and (b) Khent-khety from Sedment (Sid8).



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were published by J. Lopez, an additional false door by María del Carmen Perez-Die and Pascal Vernus, and two more false doors by Dr. Perez-Die.243

Speaking of the pottery found in the tomb of Saket, Lopez says:“Les objets trouvés à l’intérieur de ce tombeau semblent démonter qu’il avait été violé dès l’époque hérakléopolitaine. S’il en était ainsi, il faudrait conclure non seulement que Z£-kt et sa familie furent enterrés à Hérakléopolis à l’époque où cette ville était la capitale de l’Egypte, mais encore qu’ils ne vécurent pas forcement à la fin de la période hérakléopolitain.”244

Regrettably, the majority of the pottery in question has yet to be published. In the mean-time, Willems245 has expressed doubt about Lopez’s dating of two of the tombs found by the Spanish team at Heracleopolis whose walls are inscribed with Coffin Texts.246 He thinks that the occurrence of Coffin Texts on the walls of the tombs of Neferirut and Saket may instead be indicative of a date in Dyn. XII.

A comparison of the false doors from Heracleopolis (fig. 16) with the false doors of Dyn. X from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery as well as with the false doors of Dyn. XII in our corpus may thus be revealing as regards their date.247

Although there are some general resemblances between the false doors from Heracleopolis and the false doors of Heracleopolitan Period date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, the dis-crepancies outweigh the similarities. For instance, the observation has been made above that, with a single exception, the false doors from the Teti cemetery lack the supplementary frame which is so prominent in false doors of late Old Kingdom date from the Memphite cemeteries. The false doors from Heracleopolis, on the contrary, all possess a supplementary frame. The supplementary frame is not as common on Dyn. XII false doors as it is at Heracleopolis, but it does appear in the early Dyn. XII false doors of Hep and Hornakht (see pp. 400–401, 403).

The lintel of the supplementary frame in the false doors from Heracleopolis is inscribed with a symmetrically arranged two-way ¢tp-d¡-nswt formula addressed to Osiris and Anubis for the benefit of the deceased. Two-way symmetrically arranged ¢tp-d¡-nswt formulae are fairly common on the upper lintel of false doors of Dyn. XII, if not on supplementary frames.248 In contrast only two false doors of Heracleopolitan date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery have two-way texts,249 while the false doors of the Sekweskhet family are entirely lacking in two-way inscriptions of this sort.

In each of the false doors from Heracleopolis, the jambs of the supplementary frame appear to bear images of the deceased at their bottom. Unfortunately, while all of the false doors found by Lopez are represented by sketches, only five of them are illustrated by photographs,250 so

243 J. Lopez, “Rapport preliminaire sur les fouilles d’Hérakléopolis (1968)” (1975), figs. 7 (Imi), 8 (Sat-sobek: Henut), 9 (Tjau), 10 (Heryshef-nakht A), 11 (Ankhef), 12 (Shedy), 13 (Wah-Khety), 14 (Heryshef-nakht B, Neferirut, Saket), 15 (Nefret), 16 (Djadjay); M. Perez-Die and P. Vernus, Excavaciones en Ehnasya el Medina (Heracléopolis Magna) (1992), fig. 5, pl. 9 a (Ibnen). M. Perez-Die, “The ancient necropolis at Ehnasya el-Medina” (2004), pp. 21–24 (Meret, Ipi). Once again the false doors will be referred to hereafter by the name of the owner. The letters A and B have been added after the names of the two Heryshef-nakhts in order to distinguish the two individuals.

244 J. Lopez, “Rapport preliminaire sur les fouilles d’Hérakléopolis (1968)” (1975), p. 64.245 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), pp. 102, 245. See more recently, idem, “A Note on the Date of the Early Middle

Kingdom Cemetery at Ihnâsya al-Medîna” (1996), pp. 99–109.246 A. Roccati, “I testi dei sarcofagi di Eracleopoli” (1974), pp. 169–80.247 The author would like to express his appreciation to Dr. María del Carmen Perez-Die for an image of the false

door of Wah-Khety and permission to reproduce it here.248 Hornakht, Hetep, Emhat, Khnumhotep, Senusert and Sat-hathor, Queen Aat(?), Shemai, Amenemhat, Senbi II,

Ukhhotep, Mersi (see p. 405). A two-way symmetrically arranged ¢tp-d¡-nswt formula appears on both the lintel of the supplementary frame and the upper lintel of the false door of Khety-ankh: Khety, but this false door is evidently a product of Dyn. XI re-used in Dyn. XII (see p. 397).

249 Sat-shed-abed, Meret-teti-hetep(t)i.250 J. Lopez, “Rapport preliminaire sur les fouilles d’Hérakléopolis (1968)” (1975), pls. 20 (Imi), 21 (Shedy), 22

(Nefret), 23 (Wah-khety).



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Fig. 15. False door of Khety-ankh: Khety (after Simpson 2001: fig. 1).

0 5 10 cm

1

5

62

3 4

8 7

9

10

11

12 1317

16 1514

18

1920

Drawn by Lynn Holden with additions by Peter Der Manuelian, 2000 Compiled from EG 4418, 4419, 4420 and hand drawn elements



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it is not possible to be certain about this detail. No figures appear on the jambs of the supple-mentary frame of the false door of Sent-yotes, the one false door of Heracleopolitan date that possesses a supplementary frame (see p. 370), but figures do occur at the bottom of the jambs of the supplementary frame of the early Dyn. XII false doors of Hep and Hornakht, as well as on the corresponding elements of the false door of Khety-ankh: Khety, which was usurped from its previous owner early in Dyn. XII.

In more than half of the false doors from Heracleopolis, there is an extra lintel on top of the cornice of the supplementary frame.251 In the cases where this additional architectural element exists, it is inscribed with a pr¡ ∞rw formula. The list of the Seven Sacred Oils which appears on the flat surface over the cavetto cornice in false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara occurs neither on the flat element above the cavetto cornice in the doors from Heracleopolis nor on the lintel on top of the supplementary frame, even though such a list apparently occupied the jambs of two false doors (see p. 393).

The cavetto cornice is much taller in the false doors from Heracleopolis than in those of the Heracleopolitan Period from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery or in the false doors of the Sekweskhet family. The proportions of the cavetto cornice on most of the Dyn. XII false doors in our corpus also approach normal height, except for the false door of the Overseer of All the King’s Works Hep from Abydos, in whose case the cavetto cornice is again considerally taller than is usual. A taller cornice (though without any indication of the fronds) is also to be seen in the Eleventh Dynasty false door of Senkay from the Nile Delta referred to above (see p. 387). Hep served kings Senusert I and Amenemhat II (see p. 399), and it is possible that the propor-tions of his cornice hearken back to earlier models like these. In our present state of knowledge, it is not possible to explain why Hep’s false door has the very tall cornice, while the other false doors of Dyn. XII in our corpus do not.

The flaring T-shaped panel, which predominates in the false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, is completely absent at Heracleopolis. Instead the full panel without apertures is met with in all the published false doors from the latter site. The full panel also occurs in a minority of the false doors of Heracleopolitan date from the Teti cemetery, in the false doors of the Sekweskhet family, and again in the larger number of the false doors of Dyn. XII (see pp. 398–99).

Insofar as it is possible to make out the details in the published photographs, the deceased sits at a table of bread, the pedestal of which rests on the groundline of the register in false doors of Wah-khety (fig. 16), Nefret, Ibnen, Meret and Ipi or, in the panels of Imi and Shedy, is set on a low, rectangular table.252 In two cases food offerings are set atop the conventionalized half-loaves of bread on the offering table.253 In three other panels, there are no bread loaves and the offerings are piled directly on the table itself.254 This last feature also appears in two panels from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery (see p. 369). A new feature evident in the panel of Shedy, which is one of those in which the food (two forelegs of beef or a foreleg and another cut of meat) rests directly on the table, is that the piled offerings above the cuts of meat are placed on a mat or tray. The offerings on the tray form a rectilinear unit, as is also the case in certain Dyn. XII false doors (see p. 399). Vessels—including ewers and basins, hezet-vessels, and sealed beer jars—are visible beneath the tables.

We have already seen the compact type of arrangement which occurs on the false door panels from Heracleopolis in the Ninth Dynasty false doors from Upper Egypt (see p. 364). Even though many of the same elements recur in the two sets of panels, the grouping of the offerings does not closely correspond. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the pedestal of the offering table, which is set upon a low, rectangular table in the panels of Imi and Shedy

251 Imi, Sat-sobek, Heryshef-nakht A, Ankhef, Shedy, Nefret, Djadjay(?), Meret, Ipi.252 The table scenes are not included in the sketches of the other false doors, but a certain amount of detail can

be made out in the photographs.253 Imi, Wah-khety, Meret, Ipi.254 Shedy, Nefret, Ibnen.



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from Heracleopolis is also placed on low table in the panel of the Ninth Dynasty false door of Neferiu from Dendera.255 Offering tables are also set on rectangular tables in the paintings on the walls of the burial cham-ber of of Kemsit.256 and in the sarcophagus of Kauit,257 both queens of Mentuhotep II, who were buried before the reunification of Egypt,258 although the table in the later case is much taller than these others.259

Whereas only two of the false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery have wedjat-eyes on the inner lintel, all of the false doors from Heracleopolis (except for Meret) show the eyes in this position. It has already been noted more than once that wedjat-eyes appear ubiquitously on the inner lintel of Dyn. XII false doors (see p. 405).

The lower part of the false doors from Heracleo-polis is also treated differently than in the false doors of Heracleopolitan date from Saqqara. The false doors from Saqqara have two to three pairs of inscribed jambs with figures of the deceased at the bottom of each. Those from Heracleopolis (except Im) have a pair or two of inner jambs and outside that a plain “surround” that more or less corresponds to the outer jambs and upper lintel of the Saqqara false doors. In all but one of the fifteen published false doors from Heracleopo-lis, this surround is left uninscribed. The exception is the false door of Tjau. In ten of the false doors pub-lished by Lopez, the inner jambs are left uninscribed as well.260 This is also true of the false door of Meret.

In only two doors do the inner jambs bear texts.261 In the false door of Ibnen, the inner jambs apparently originally bore depictions of the jars for the Seven Sacred Oils, although only one jar and its label actually survives. In the case of Meret, the jars containing the Seven Sacred Oils are depicted on the right-hand surround and an adjacent lintel. Again, only two false doors have figures at the bottom of the outer jambs and, on one of these, the false door of Shedy, they appear to represent male relatives of the deceased rather than the women herself. On the false door of Tjau, the figures do depict the deceased owner.

In the absence of jamb figures, the false doors from Heracleopolis are more closely allied to Twelfth Dynasty false doors, the majority of which likewise lack jamb figures (see pp. 405–406). On the other hand, the lintel and jambs of the surround in Dyn. XII false doors ordinarily bear texts, and so too do the inner jambs of the doors.

In summary, the false doors from Heracleopolis exhibit important differences from the false doors of Dyn. X date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. At the same time, they share an assortment of features with a number of the Dyn. XII false doors, for example, the supplementary

255 H. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millenium B .C. (1968), pl. 25. Also on the contemporary „atrophied false door“ of Idi: ibid., pl. 28.

256 E. Naville, The XIth Dynasty Temple of Deir el-Bahari, Part III (1913), pl. 3.257 E. Naville, The XIth Dynasty Temple of Deir el-Bahari, Part I (1907), pl. 20.258 D. Arnold, The Temple of Mentuhotep at Deir el-Bahari (1979), pp. 40–41.259 This feature occurs sporadically already in the Old Kingdom; see e.g. H. Junker, Giza VI (1943), fig. 9; S. Hassan,

Excavations at Giza 3 (1941), fig. 57; idem, Excavations at Giza 6:3 (1950), fig. 81.260 Imi, Sat-sobek, Heryshef-nakht A, Ankhef, Wah-khety, Heryshef-nakht B, Neferirut, Saket, Nefret, Djadjay.261 Tjau, Shedy.

Fig. 16. False door of Wah-khety from Heracleopolis (courtesy of Mariá del Carmen Perez-Die).



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frame, the wedjat-eyes on the lintel above the central niche, a rectilinear arrangement of offer-ings on a mat, and the absence of jamb figures. Notwithstanding, substantial differences also exist between the false doors from Heracleopolis and the Twelfth Dynasty false doors. These include the additional lintel atop the cavetto cornice, the uninscribed surround, and the com-pact arrangement of the table scene on the panel.

The orthography of the false doors is not as helpful as it might be in settling the question of date. Nearly all the false doors from Heracleopolis (except Ipi) write or the vertical equivalent of the same.262 The horizontal arrangement prevails at Bersheh in Dyns. X–XI, as the present writer has pointed out in an earlier article.263 It also occurs at Thebes in the anony-mous coffin found together with the statue of Mentuhotep II in jubilee garb in the Bab el-Hosan (see p. 383) and in the coffin of Amenet (see p. 383) and Mentuhotep: Buau (see pp. 387–88) from Deir el-Bahri, in the sarcophagi of Queen Tem (see p. 383) and the vizier Dagi,264 and in the burial chamber and sarcophagus of Horhotep from Deir el-Bahri.265 all of which appear to belong to the late Eleventh Dynasty.266

To my knowledge, no instances of the arrangement appear on monuments which clearly date to Dyn. XII. Neither of the monuments cited by Willems display this orthography.267 The first, Cairo stele CG 20480 writes , with nfrt intruding between pr(t)-∞rw and nt.268 The second, CG 28097, a coffin in Cairo which Willems correctly assigns to the Twelfth Dynasty, on account of its vaulted lid, has .269

The arrangement does appear in a stela, Cairo JE 36420, found by Lady William Cecil in the cemetery of Qubbet el-Hawa at Aswan in 1901.270 The stela depicts two brothers, Mesenu’s son Heqaib the Elder and Mesenu’s son Heqaib, and their respective spouses.271 The elder is clearly distinguished by the epithet ™£ “the Elder.” The name of the owner of a coffin found in the same tomb as the stele is “Heqaib the Elder whose good name is Heqata.”272 (The coffin is discussed in more detail in Appendix B.) I would agree with Willems that the coffin probably belongs to the elder of Mesenu’s sons shown on the Cairo stela.

Cairo JE 36420 has recently been included by Rita Freed in her “Packed Offerings Group.”273 Freed assigns a date range of late Amenemhat I to early Senusert I to this stele group. She then

262 For a discussion of the formula prt ∞rw nt from its origins in Dyn. VI to Dyn. XII, see L. Postel, “Une variante septentrionale de la formule d’offrande invocatoire” (2005), pp. 255–78.

263 E. Brovarski , “Ahanakht of Bersheh and the Hare Nome in the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom” (1981), p. 23–25, fig. 13; cf. G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), § 172, pls. 4–6.

264 K.R. Lepsius, Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien II (1849–1859), pls. 147–48.265 P. Lacau, Sarcophages antérieurs au Nouvel Empire (1904), pp. 42–56.266 A variant appears in the coffin from the Bab el-Hosan, in the sarcophagi of Intef (K. Lepsius, Denk-

maeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien II (1849–1959), pls. 145–46) and Dagi, and in the steles of the ¡my-r£ ß Khety (A. Gardiner, “The Tomb of a Much-Travelled Theban Official” (1917), pls. 8, 9). For the date of the latter, see R.E. Freed, The Development of Middle Egyptian Relief (1984), pp. 79–82.

267 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1983–1984), p. 88 and n. 58. In reference to my article (E. Brovarski, “Ahanakht of Bersheh and the Hare Nome” (1981), p. 25 and fig. 13), Willems remarks that the formula prt ∞rw nt can not only point to a date prior to the 11th Dynasty.“ It was never my intent to say that this was the case. The observa-tion I was making concerned the specific writing under discussion here, not the wider use of the formula prt ∞rw nt. L. Postel, “Une variante septentrionale de la formule d’offrande invocatoire” (2005), pp. 255–78, comes to the conclusion that the construction with nt disappears at Memphis towards the end of Dyn. XI or the begin-ning of Dyn. XII.

268 H. Lange and H. Schäfer, Grab- und Denksteine des Mittleren Reichs (1908), p. 76.269 P. Lacau, Sarcophages antérieurs au Nouvel Empire (1904), p. 73. 270 M.R.M. Cecil, “Report on the Work Done at Aswan” (1903), p. 69, pl. [5].271 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), p. 22. Willems considers as less likely the option that two different Mesenu’s

are mentioned, that Mesenu was a name cherished in the family of the two men, in which case Mesenu’s son Heqaib the Elder and Mesenu’s son Heqaib could belong to two different generations of the same family and one of the two sons might antedate the Twelfth Dynasty. Of course, the possibility cannot be entirely rejected, but it does seem implausible.

272 H. Willems, The Coffin of Heqata” (1996), pl. 19.273 R.E. Freed, “Stela Workshops of Early Dynasty 12” (1996), pp. 312–14.



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goes on to say that the low, flat relief style and rigidly symmetrical composition which character-izes all the stelae in the group support a date in the reign of Amenemhat I. No stela in the group is dated by a cartouche, but one bears a Year 10 date. On the basis of its style and organization, Freed believes the year date is most likely to be Year 10 of Senusert I, although she does not elaborate on her reasons for thinking so.

According to Freed in a different context, low, flat relief lacking in elaborate interior detail appeared as early as the upper and lower colonnades, hall, and sanctuary of Mentuhotep II’s mortuary temple.274 It continued to be used in the tombs of his high officials the Chancellor Khety, the Vizier Dagi, and in the stele of Intef, born of Tjefi.275 It will be recalled that the Chancelor Khety probably became ¡my-r£ ∞tmt before the final decade of Mentuhotep II and was most likely succeeded by Meketre in that king’s last years (see p. 386). The stela of Intef, born of Tjefi, is dated to the later part of Mentuhotep II’s reign by the latest form of the king’s titulary.276

On the basis of its relief style, Freed dates Dagi’s tomb to the end of the reign of Mentuhotep II.277 Allen, on the other hand, thinks Dagi may have continued in office through the reign of Mentuhotep III to be succeeeded by the vizier Amenemhat (later King Amen-emhat I), who is first attested in that office in Year 2 of Mentuhotep IV.278 The very low, flat relief of Dagi’s tomb, with its very sparing use of incised inner detail and a total absence of inner modeling continues the tradition of the last years of Mentuhotep II’s reign.279 Like Dagi’s relief, the relief of the Aswan stela is very low and lacks incised or modeled detail.280

An iconographic feature suggests that the Aswan stela indeed belongs to the late Eleventh Dynasty. This is the placement of an overlapping foreleg of beef and bundle of leeks directly on top of the half-loaves of bread on the offering table. The exact same arrangement of foreleg and leeks occurs in the stela of Intef, born of Tjefi, which, as we have already seen, bears the latest form of the titulary of Mentuhotep II.281 Like the Aswan stela, the latter stela also exhib-its two small tables laden with service vessels beneath the offering table. The foreleg of beef and bundle of leeks are identically arranged on a second monument of the “Packed Offerings Group,” Detroit 81.4, the stele of Khety,282 although the offering table in this instance rests on a low, rectangular table on whose top is set an array of service vessels. The iconographic detail of the foreleg of beef and bundle of leeks is so specific, it may indicate that all three steles belong to late Dyn. XI rather than early Dyn. XII.

Taking into account how little is known about the style of private monuments from the reigns of Menuhotep III and IV, in a recent conversation, Freed felt it was conceivable that the Aswan stele could belong to the end of the Eleventh Dynasty, rather than to early Twelfth Dynasty.

Found in the same tomb at Aswan as stele Cairo JE 36420 was a coffin inscribed for Heqaibre the Elder, CG 28127/Cairo JE 36418. Citing Freed, Willems apparently dates the coffin to the

274 Idem, The Development of Middle Egyptian Relief (1984), pp. 38–48.275 Ibid., pp. 55–59, 60–63, 71–73, 76–78.276 H.G. Fischer, “An Example of Memphite Influence in a Theban Stela of the Eleventh Dynasty” (1959); idem,

“The Inscription of ⁄n-¡t.f, born of Êf¡” (1960).277 R.E. Freed, The Development of Middle Egyptian Relief (1984), p. 63.278 J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), pp. 8–10, fig. 3.279 R.E. Freed, The Development of Middle Egyptian Relief (1984), p. 61. Royal relief of the reign of Mentuhotep III

exhibits an elaborate and meticulous use of incised detail on a very low relief (ibid., p. 118, 130). This differs from Dagi’s relief in which details were painted. However, Freed, ibid., p. 61 calls attention to a winged sundisk from Dagi’s tomb in which uraei and wing feathers bear intricately incised markings. It may well be that the expense of incised relief precluded its being used in private tombs whose owners, even viziers like Dagi, had to, by and large, be content with the cheaper painted details.

280 R.E. Freed, “A Private Stela from Naga ed-Der and Relief Style in the Reign of Amenemhet I” (1981), pp. 75–76.

281 H.G. Fischer, “An Example of Memphite Influence in a Theban Stela of the Eleventh Dynasty” (1959), fig. 1.282 R.E. Freed, “Stela Workshops of Early Dynasty 12” (1996), fig. 5d.



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early reign of Senusert I.283 Given the argumentation presented above that the Aswan stele actually dates to the late Eleventh Dynasty, Willem’s assignment of the coffin found in the same tomb as the stele to Dyn. XII deserves to be reconsidered. We have re-examined the date of the coffin in Appendix B.

The false doors from Heracleopolis exhibit at least one other feature of interest. In the false doors of Sat-sobek, Heryshef-nakht B, Saket, and Ipi, the burial wish is qrst nfrt nt ¡m£∞(t) fol-lowed by the name or title and name of the deceased. The contrasts with the usage at Saqqara, where the majority of false doors of Heracleopolitan Period date and all of the coffins of the same time utilize the form qrs.t(w).f. Only two false doors from Saqqara, those of Shed-abed and Hetep (Merikare) have qrst nfrt. Qrst nfrt is the predominant form at Thebes in Dynasty XI, for example, in the sarcophagi and coffins of queens Aashyt, Henenet, and Kawit, in the middle part of the reign of Mentuhotep II284 and in the burial chamber and sarcophagus of Horhotep (see p. 394) and Mentuhotep: Buau (see pp. 387–88) from post-unification Dynasty XI. Only Queen Tem and Meru write qrs.t(w).f. Qrst nfrt in the false doors from Heracleopolis might thus be seen as a sign of Theban influence. On the other hand, qrst nfrt also appears in the tomb of Khety II at Asyut in the time of the Heracleopolitan sovereign Merikare.285 For that matter, qrst nfrt is utilized as early as Dynasty X in tombs, coffins, and so forth at Bersheh.286 Thus, its appearance in the false doors at Heracleopolis may reflect a wide spread tradition in Upper Egypt in the late Heracleopolitan Period and early Middle Kingdom.

Structurally and stylistically the false doors from Heracleopolis bear little resemblance to the false doors of Dyn. X from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara. Although they do share a number of features with Dyn. XII false doors, substantial discrepancies also exist between them. Regrettably, the epigraphic indications are conducive of two interpretations. On the one hand, they exhibit affinities with inscriptions of the Tenth Dynasty. On the other hand, there are features that point to the late Eleventh Dynasty. If they indeed belong to the Tenth Dynasty, it seems clear that the false doors from Heracleopolis are following a tradition all their own, quite distinct from the traditions of Dyn. X in the Teti cemetery at Saqqara. The problem is not likely to be settled until the material uncovered by the Spanish Mission at Heracleopolis is pub-lished in full along with a thorough exposition of the archaeological contexts of the same.

It is important to observe in the case of the false doors (and coffins) from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, the false doors of the Sekweskhet family, and the false doors from Heracleopolis—as Spanel has done in his discussion of palaeographic and epigraphic distinctions between texts of the First Intermediate Period and the early Twelfth Dynasty287—that none of the significant epigraphic innovations that are typical of Dyn. XII occur in the texts on these three groups of monuments, that is: (1) the interpolation of the prospective d¡.f before prt-∞rw; (2) the appear-

283 R.E. Freed, “A Private Stela from Naga ed-Der” (1981), p. 76; idem, The Development of Middle Egyptian Relief (1984), p. 198; H. Willems, Chests of Life (1998), pp. 21–25.

284 J.J. Clère and J. Vandier, Textes de la première période intermédiaire et de la XIe dynastie (1948), §§ 27 e 3, 7; t, 3; j, 3.285 H. Brunner, Die Texte aus den Gräbern der Herakleopolitanzeit von Siut (1937), p. 60.286 E.g., F.Ll. Griffith and P.E. Newberry, El Bersheh, Part II (1893–1894), pp. 38, 44, pl. 13; E.L.B. Terrace, Egyptian

Paintings of the Middle Kingdom (1968), fig. 8; E. Martin-Pardey, Corpus Antiquitatum Aegyptiacarum, Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim, vol. 10 (1978), pp. 1–4.

287 D. Spanel, “Palaeographic and Epigraphic Distinctions between Texts of the So-called First Intermediate Period and the Early Twelfth Dynasty” (1996), p. 768.



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ance of the commodities incense and oil, linen and “alabaster” immediately thereafter; and/or (3) the phrase ∞t nbt nfrt w™bt ™n∞t (or wnmt) n†r ¡m.288

This is not the case with the offering slabs found at the foot of the false doors of the Sekh-weskhet family which exhibit a number of the epigraphic innovations enumerated by Spanel, and on that account clearly belong to Dyn. XII. As David Silverman concludes in his article in the present volume, the offering slabs were probably dedicated by a descendant of the Sekhwes-khet family in honor of his ancestors.

V. twelFth dynasty False dooRsThe cavetto cornice and torus moulding remain standard features in false doors of Twelfth Dynasty date.289 The supplemental frame, on the other hand, occurs in only three false doors, those of the Overseer of Lower Egypt Khety-ankh: Khety,290 the Overseer of All the King’s Works Hep,291 and the Chamberlain Hornakht.292 Even the false door of King Amenemhat I from his pyramid temple at Lisht lacks the supplemental frame.293 It therefore seems unlikely that the inclusion or exclusion of the frame was a question of sufficient resources.

The false door of Khety-ankh: Khety, which was found at Heliopolis in 1980 or earlier, is of special interest (fig. 15).294 It originally belonged to an official named Heni from whom it was usurped, seemingly in the time of Amenemhat I or Senusert I. The lower part of the false door with the name of the son of the deceased, Sehetepibre-ankh, and the figures of a seal-bearer named Hotep and his wife, as well as the accompanying texts, may have been added by Khety-ankh.295 The inscriptions on the false door and the supplementary frame appear to be original, since Khety-ankh merely replaced the original owner’s name with his own. The same is probably true of the table scene, except for the fact that the original owner’s name was changed, and of the wedjat-eyes below it. It is also likely that the jamb figures are original and that only the name of the son was changed, inasmuch as the words s£.f smsw mry.f appear to be on the same scale as the other inscriptions, wheareas the hieroglyphs comprising the son’s name and a preceding title or epithet are on a smaller scale.

The false door was reportedly found together with an architrave that bears the cartouche of a king named Sankh-ib-re. The architrave was made for a certain “overseer of the temple” Heni, who may well be identical with Heni, the original owner of the false door, who apparently also had the same title.296 Sankh-ib-re is otherwise unknown, but, if he is earlier than Dyn. XII, he could be a king of the Heracleopolitan Period or might represent one of the last rulers of Dyn. XI whose names are lost in the lacuna in the Turin Canon.297 Regardless of the date of the otherwise unknown king, the name of the Khety-ankh’s son, Sehetepibre-ankh, with the first

288 There are a number of false doors in museums or private collections that probably also belong to late Dynasty XI: F. Bissing, Denkmäler ägyptischer Skulptur (1911), fig. 2 of the commentary to pl. 17 (Ptahnakht and Meret-mutes); T.G. Allen, Egyptian Stelae in Field Museum of Natural History (1936), pls. 1 (Intef), 2 (Sat-impy-iqer); L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pls. 32 (Satsen), 45 (Iry); H.D. Schneider, “Gleanings in the Egyptian Collection at Leiden” (1971), pp. 11–13, fig. 2, pl. 3 [2] (Ankhsen); R. Fazzini, “Some Egyptian Reliefs in Brooklyn” (1972), fig. 2 (Renenites). A detailed discussion of the individual doors would lengthen an already overly long article. Two of these false doors, the double false door of Ptahnakht and Meretmutes in Athens and the false door of Sat-impy-iqer, utilize the same writing of prt-∞rw nt referred to in note 55 above. None of these false doors exhibit the significant epigraphic innovations that are typical of Dyn. XII.

289 I have not included here the inadequately published Middle Kingdom false doors of Sekhmet-hetep and Sat-pensi(?) from Qatta in the Delta: E. Chassinat, el al., Fouilles de Qattah (1906), pp. 72–74.

290 W.K. Simpson, “Studies in the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty II” (2001), figs. 1–3b.291 L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pl. 18.292 A.M.R. Donadoni, Egyptian Civilization: Religious Beliefs (1988), fig. 14.293 A.M. Lythgoe, “The Egyptian Expedition” (1907), fig. 4.294 Kelly Simpson has graciously agreed to the repoduction of the drawing of the false door of Khety-ankh first

reproduced his article “Studies in the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty II” (2001), fig. 1.295 Ibid., p. 10.296 Ibid.297 Ibid., pp. 9–10.



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element in a cartouche, clearly indicates a date for the usurpation of the false door in or after the reign of Amenemhat I.298

It appears unlikely that the false door of Khety is as early in date as the Heracleopolitan Period. It has already been pointed out above that (with a single exception) the false doors of the Heracleopolitan Period date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara lack the supple-mental frame (see p. 370). Conversely, Khety-ankh’s false door has the frame. In addition, the false door of Khety-ankh lacks the list of the Seven Sacred Oils that appears on the flat part of the cavetto cornice of many of the false doors from Saqqara, in particular on the large false doors which bear the name of Merikare’s pyramid (see pp. 370–71). The lack of this last feature is not entirely conclusive, because not every false door from the Teti cemetery features the Seven Sacred Oils, but its absence probably constitutes one more indication that Khety-ankh’s false door did not belong to Dyn. X.

In fact, of the fifteen false doors of Twelfth Dynasty date in our corpus in which the flat part of the cavetto cornice is sufficiently well preserved to tell, only the false door of the Overseer of All the Works of the King Hep has the list of the Seven Sacred Oils on the flat part of the cavetto cornice. Its occurence on his false door seemingly represents a instance of archaism, since the Seven Sacred Oils otherwise appear in this position in the false doors of the Heracleopolitan Period from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery and in those of the Sekweskhet family (see pp. 370–71, 379). In this and a number of other features, Hep’s false door resembles the false doors of the Heracleopolitan Period from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery (see pp. 399, 406). However, the awkward form and proportions of the cavetto cornice and the distribution and character of the inscriptions, among other particulars, belie these similarities (see p. 392).

As in certain late Old Kingdom false doors, the Dyn. X false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, the false doors of the Sekweskhet family, and the false doors from Heracleopolis, most of the Dyn. XII false doors treat the upper lintel and outer jambs as a “surround” (see pp. 370, 380, 393). A smaller number treat both inner and outer jambs in the same manner.299 In the case of the false door of Khnumhotep in Cairo, the inner, middle, and outer jambs are all treated as a surround.

The principal feature that distinguishes the false doors of Dyn. X from those of Dyn. XII is the absence of the flaring T-shaped panel in the latter. As we have already seen, Strudwick has made the very important observation that this form of panel had ceased to exist by the early Twelfth Dynasty (see p. 367). In fact, it appears that the flaring T-shaped panel had al-ready passed out of use by the late Eleventh Dynasty, at least insofar as the false doors of the Sekweskhet family are concerned (see p. 380). All of the false door panels of Dyn. XII known

298 Ibid., p. 11.299 Em-hat, Amenemhat, Senbi II, Ukhhotep, Mersi, Queen Aat (see nn. 299 and 300).



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to the present writer have either full panels which fill the space between the outer or middle jambs300 or have apertures on either side of the panel.301

The decorative scheme of the false door panels of Dyn. XII exhibit considerable variation. The design of the panels of the Overseer of Lower Egypt Khety-ankh, the Overseer of the Private Apartments of Itj-tawy-Sehetepibre Ihy (fig. 17), the Overseer of All the Works of the King and Steward Hep, and the Steward Hetep are most clearly inspired by earlier models. The date of the false door of Khety-ankh has already been discussed. Ihy and Hep definitely belong to the first half of the Twelfth Dynasty. Ihy’s tomb dates to the reign of Amenemhat I,302 while Hep served kings Senusert I and Amenemhat II.303 Hetep’s date is not known with certainly, but taking the layout of his panel into account, he is probably not much later than these other individuals.

All four panels show the deceased seated behind an offering table, with piled-up offerings set upon the half-loaves of bread, a nested ewer and basin to the right of the pedestal of the offering table, and the phrase db¢t-¢tp at its left. In the false doors of Ihy, Hep, and Hornakht the food offerings are placed atop the bread loaves, while in the panel of Khety-ankh the offerings rest on a mat above the loaves. In the false doors of Dyn. X from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, food offerings are similarly set on the half-loaves of bread. In one of the late Dyn. XI false doors from Heracleopolis the offerings are likewise placed on a mat, but there are no half-loaves present, and the mat is instead set upon two forelegs of beef resting on the surface of the offer-ing table (see p. 392). The mat under the food offerings is fairly common in Dyn. XII. In our corpus it occurs as well in the false door panels of Neferhotep and Ankhi, Khnumhotep, and Nakht. All of these panels display a compact, rectilinear array of offerings, but none more so than Khety-ankh. The same artificially compressed offerings occur in stelae of the late Eleventh (see p. 395) and early Twelfth Dynasties.304

In Khety-ankh, Ihy, and Hetep’s panels, the nested ewer and basin rest on a low table, an indication that the design of their table scenes probably ultimately harkens back to Dyn. VI false door panels which likewise exhibit a nested ewer and basin set on a table and the phrase db¢t-¢tp opposite (infra). We have previously noticed that in the false door panels of Dyn. X, the nested ewers and basins are uniformly placed on the groundline, not on a low table (see p. 369). In Hep’s panel the ewer and basin is set on the groundline of the scene and, in this regard, resembles the panels of Heracleopolitan date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. In fact, of these

300 A.M. Lythgoe, “The Egyptian Expedition” (1907), fig. 4 (Amenemhat I); W.K. Simpson, “Studies in the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty II” (2001), figs. 1–3b (Khety-ankh); J. De Morgan, Fouilles en Dahchour en 1894–1895 (1903), fig. 128 (Prince Amenemhat-ankh); Louvre C 22 (Senusert and Sathathor); C 116 (Emhat); L. Berman, “The Stele of Shemai, Chief of Police” (1996), fig. 1 (Shemai); Sotheby’s (1998), cat. no. 262 (Ipi); L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pls. 16 (Hetep), 38 (Khnumhotep); De Morgan, op. cit. (1903), fig. 129 (Senu-ankh); P.E. Newberry, Beni Hasan, Part I (1893), pl. 12 (Amenemhat); A. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir, Part III (1915), pl. 27 (Ukhhotep, son of Ukhhotep and Mersi); A.M. Blackman and M.R. Apted, The Rock Tombs of Meir, Part VI (1953), pls. 6 (Ukhhotep, son of Ukhhotep and Heny the Middle), 7 (Senbi II); J. De Morgan, op. cit. (1903), fig. 147 (Queen Aat, wife of Amenemhat III); H. Stewart, Egyptian Stelae, Reliefs and Paintings from the Petrie Collection (1979), pl. 36 [4] (Inpy, Lahun); W. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt 1 (1953), fig. 220 (Nakht); J. Romano, In the Fullness of Time (2002), fig. 22 (Ankhi and Neferhotep); C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 83 and our fig. 17 (Ihy). I owe the knowledge of Louvre C 22 and C 116 to Kelly Simpson who very generously shared his extensive photographic file of Middle Kingdom monuments with me. I would like to express my appreciation to David Silverman for the photograph of the false door of Ihy reproduced here. Once again, the false doors in this and the following note will henceforward be referred to by the name of the owner.

301 L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pl. 18 (Hep); A.M.R. Donadoni, Egyptian Civilization: Religious Beliefs (1988), fig. 141 (Hornakht). Two false doors are too fragmentary to ascertain the form of their panels: H. Stewart, Egyptian Stelae, Reliefs and Paintings from the Petrie Collection (1979), pl. 36 [5] (NN); W.K. Simpson, “Mentuhotep, Vizier of Sesostris I, Patron of Art and Architecture” (1991), pl. 45 (Vizier Mentuhotep).

302 R.E. Freed, “Observations on the dating and decoration of the tombs of Ihy and Hetep at Saqqara” (2000), pp. 207–14.

303 D. Franke, Personendaten aus dem Mittleren Reich (1984), Nr. 411.304 R.E. Freed, “Stela Workshops of Early Dynasty 12” (1996), p. 314.



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early Dyn. XII tables scenes, Hep’s most closely resembles the table scenes of the Heracleopolitan Period, such as that on the false door panel of Gemni-em-hat: Gemni (fig. 6).

Ihy’s false door panel (fig. 17) is particularly instructive as regards the copying of earlier models. Indeed, in his case, a possible model was available close to hand, for directly behind Ihy’s tomb is located the chapel of the Sixth Dynasty vizier Tjetju,305 whose false door panel (fig. 18) has a similar arrangement which shows the deceased seated at a table of bread, a nested ewer and basin on a low table to the right of the pedestal of the offering table, and the phrase db¢t-¢tp on the opposite side of the table leg.306 As a matter of fact, Tjetu’s false door, and that of a certain Ankhi in the Übersee Museum in Bremen,307 are the only Old Kingdom false doors known to me with ewer and basin and db¢t-¢tp in this precise arrangement, although the phrase db¢t-¢tp appears alongside a nested ewer and basin (no table) in the false door of Meryre-nefer: Qar at Giza,308 and in the false door of Khnumhotep (low table) from the necropolis surround-ing the pyramid of Pepy II at South Saqqara.309 In actual fact, db¢t-¢tp appears opposite a nested ewer and basin more commonly in table scenes on tomb walls than on false door panels of Dyn. VI.310

A nested ewer and basin and db¢t-¢tp are also juxtaposed in the Heracleopolitan Period false door of Gemni-em-hat,311 and in the Dyn. XI false doors of Sekweskhet, Niankhhor and Shedy, Sekweskhet the Elder and Mutemzas. The same arrangement also occurs in the Dyn. X table scenes on the side-pieces of Meret-teti-iyt(i) and Ipi-ankhu,312 and then again in the left side-piece of Sekweskhet the Middle and Sekweskhet the Younger. In all these cases, however, the nested ewer and basin rests on the groundline of the scene, not on a table. Thus, the motif of a nested ewer and basin on a low table in Ihy’s false door panel was most likely copied from Old Kingdom rather than Heracleopolitan Period archetypes. In that case, Tjetju’s false door constitutes an obvious model.

If Ihy’s artist was indeed inspired by Tjetju’s false door, he did not follow his model slavishly, for the far right side of his panel is occupied by a jar rack in which are set three hezet-jars, while resting on the jars is a mat piled up with offerings (supra). Hezet-vessels in a jar rack and a nested ewer and basin on a low table are depicted in false doors of Dyn. VI, but the hezet-vessels are not generally placed on the same side of the offering table as the nested ewer and basin, as is the case with Ihy’s false door.313 In table scenes on tombs walls of Dyn. VI, nested ewer(s) and basin(s) and hezet-vessels in a rack are now and again positioned on the same side of the offering table, but then the ewers and basins are usually located above the hezet-jars and often placed on a separate groundline rather than on a table.314 A limited number of the false doors panels of Heracleopolitan date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery which include a single hezet-jar

305 For Tjetju’s date, see E. Brovarski, “A Second Style in the Relief of the Old Kingdom,” in Egypt and Beyond (Fs. Leonard H. Lesko) (2008), pp. 70–71. Fig. 17 here is reproduced from E. Brovarski, “False Doors and History: The Sixth Dynasty” (2006), fig. 9, with the kind permission of Miroslav Bárta.

306 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 61.307 C. Martin, Corpus Antiquitatum Aegyptiacarum: Übersee-Museum, Bremen (1991), pp. 87–90.308 W.K. Simpson, The Mastabas of Qar and Idu (1976), fig. 32.309 E.g., G. Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de Pepi II, vol. 3 (1940), fig. 64.310 E.g., idem., Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II (1929), figs. 115–16; W.K. Simpson, The Mastabas of

Qar and Idu G 7101 and 7102 (1976), fig. 23; A.M. Blackman and M.R. Apted, The Rock Tombs of Meir, Part V (1933), pl. 34.

311 C.M. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 27 B.312 L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pl. 71. 313 In two cases, hezet-jars and nested ewers and basins do appear on the same side of the offering table in false door

panels, but the ewers and basins are placed on separate ground lines: S. Hassan and Z. Iskander, Excavations at Saqqara, 1937–1938 (1975), fig. 34b; N. Davies et al., Saqqara Tombs I: The Mastabas of Mereri and Wernu (1984), pl. 2.

314 A. Barsanti, “Fouilles autour de la pyramide d’Ounas” (1900), fig. 12 = Z. Saad, Royal Excavations at Saqqara and Helwan (1947), pl. 21; J. Capart, Une rue de tombeaux à Saqqarah (1907), pls. 97, 99; A.M. Blackman and M.R. Apted, The Rock Tombs of Meir, Part V (1933), pl. 11; T.G.H. James and M.R. Apted, The Mastaba of Khentika called Ikhekhi (1953), pl. 21; T. Säve-Söderbergh, The Old Kingdom Cemetery of Hamra Dom (1994), pls. 19, 20.



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Fig. 17. False door of Ihy (courtesy David P. Silverman).



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Fig. 18. False door of Tjetju (after Firth and Gunn 1926: pl. 61).



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in their design, have a nested ewer and basin depicted opposite (Heryshef-nakht, Senetni) or a hezet-vessel with the phrase db¢t-¢tp inscribed opposite (Sat-shedabed). But none of these vessels are set on low tables or in jar racks as is generally the case in the Old Kingdom (see p. 369), and as is also the case in Ihy’s false door. A hezet-jar with a ewer and basin opposite is likewise depicted under an offering table in the Dyn. X side-piece of Ipi-em-zas and in the left-hand side-piece of Meret-teti-iyt(i). Db¢t-¢tp appears opposite a hezet-vessel in a jar rack in the left-hand side-piece of Mery and Hetep from the Sekweskhet family tomb, but here again it is a question of a single jar, not multiple jars in a rack as in Ihy’s false door. Therefore, the motif of the jars in a rack in Ihy’s false door panel was once again probably copied from Old Kingdom models.

The inspiration for the arrangement of food offerings on the right side of Ihy’s panel may likewise ultimately derive from the later Sixth Dynasty false doors in which an array of offer-ings occupies the space on the far side of the panel.315 But if so, the placement of offerings on top of the bread loaves on the offering table definitely represents a legacy from the Heracleo-politan Period (see p. 369). Clearly, Ihy’s artist incorporated elements from different models in his panel design. Freed has similarly observed of the wall reliefs of Ihy’s tomb chapel (and of the adjacent chapel of Hetep) that: “although the broad themes of decoration of these two Middle Kingdom tombs were clearly governed by tradition, in the selection of details, there was opportunity for individuality and selection.”316 The setting of the Teti Pyramid Cemetery with standing monuments of the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period close-to-hand may well have encouraged this combination of archaism and innovation.

Hornakht, who in all likelihood also belongs to the early Twelfth Dynasty,317 also has db¢t-¢tp written on one side of the offering table, but his panel differs from those of Khety-ankh, Hepi, and Ihy in that he replaces the nested ewer and basin opposite with a qebeh-jar in a jar-rack. Qebeh-jars sometimes alternate with318 or replace319 hezet-jars in jar racks in tables scenes on tomb walls and false door panels of the end of Dyn. VI and later. In Dyn. X a nested ewer and basin and a qebeh-jar, both set on groundlines, are paired in table scenes in the side-pieces of Sat-teti-in (see pp. 376–77) and Ipi-senbes (see note 133). On the right-hand side-piece of Sat-teti-in, a hezet-jar and ewer and basin appear on opposite sides of the pedestal of the offering table, while in the left-hand side-piece, a qebeh-jar replaces the hezet-jar. The two forms of jars thus seem largely interchangeable.320 A hezet-jar coupled with the phrase db¢t-¢tp also appears in the Heracleopolitan false door of Sat-shedabed. Again in the Dyn. XI false doors of Sekweskhet the Middle and Sekweshet the Younger, a hezet-jar and db¢t-¢tp are found on opposite sides of the leg of the offering table. But none of these Dyn. X–XI hezet- or qebeh-jars are set in a rack, as Hornakht’s qebeh-jar is. So, an Old Kingdom original once again in all probability was the model for Hornakht’s panel.

The false door panel of Neferhotep and his son(?) Ankhi, like Hornakht’s panel, has a table scene with a qebeh-vessel in a rack on the far side of the pedestal of the offering table and the phrase db¢t-¢tp opposite. An unusual feature of the scene is the placement of a standing figure

315 E.g., T.G.H. James and M. R. Apted, The Mastaba of Khentika called Ikhekhi (1953), pl. 13 (Khentika Ikhekhi II); H.G. Fischer, Egyptian Studies, vol. 1: Varia (1976), pl. 20 (Weni the Elder); W.K. Simpson, Mastabas of the Western Cemetery, Part 1 (1980), fig. 16 (Tjetu: Nikainesut).

316 R.E. Freed, “Observations on the dating and decoration of the tombs of Ihy and Hetep at Saqqara” (2000), p. 212.

317 D. Franke, Personendaten aus dem Mittleren Reich (1984), Nr. 431.318 E.g., N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, Part I (1902a), pl. 19; G. Jéquier, La Pyramide d’Oudjebten

(1906), fig. 37; T. G. H. James and M. R. Apted, The Mastaba of Khentika called Ikhekhi (1953), pls. 13, 19; C. Ziegler, Catalogue des stèles (1990), cat. no. 11.

319 E.g., C.M. Firth and J.E. Quibell, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries (1926), pl. 73 [2]; J. Capart, Une rue de tombeaux à Saqqarah (1907), pls. 97, 99; The Sakkarah Expedition, The Mastaba of Mereruka (1938), pl. 57; N. Kanawati and M. Abder-Raziq, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara III: The Tombs of Neferseshemre and Seankhuiptah (1998), pl. 72; H. Altenmüller, Die Wanddarstellungen im Grab des Mehu in Saqqara (1998), pl. 75.

320 In hieroglyphic script, a spouted form of the hezet-jar sporadically substitutes for the ordinary form from Dyn. VI onwards; see H.G. Fischer, Egyptian Studies, vol. 3: Varia Nova (1996), p. 219.



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of Ankhi behind the seated figure of Neferhotep. Subsidiary figures also occur in the table scenes on false door panels at Meir (see p. 405), but Ankhi’s figure is probably included because the false door is dedicated to both father and son(?).

Other false door panels of Dyn. XII follow earlier models less closely. Although they also incorporate table scenes in the design of their panels, the nature of the objects depicted beneath the offering table vary greatly. For example, the anonymous false door panel in Univer-sity College London has a nested ewer and basin set on the ground on the far side of the table leg and an adjacent array of offerings. Prince Amenemhat-ankh, son of Amenemhat II(?), has a heap of offerings to the right of the table leg, while db¢t-¢tp appears opposite.

Yet other panels depart more radically from Dyns. X–XI and early Dyn. XII norms. A nemset-jar and an armlike censer appear to the right of the leg of the offering table in the false door of the Carpenter of the Bark Senu-ankh, from a mastaba near the pyramid of Amenemhat II at Dahshur. On the opposite side of the table leg is a qebeh-jar.

In the fragmentary false door of the Overseer of Lower Egypt Ipi, the offering table appears to rest on a pair of low tables set side-by-side (cf. pp. 392–93). A nested ewer and basin is placed on the right-hand table, while a carinated bowl filled with lotus blossoms rests on the left-hand table.

The table scene on the false door of the ordinary priest Nakht in the Metropolitan Museum has offerings on a mat placed above the half-loaves on the offering table. However, a large jar and triangular bread loaf are set underneath the table.

In the false door panel of the Regulator of a Phyle Khnumhotep from Dahshur and that of Emhat, Louvre C 116, the deceased is shown seated behind an offering table with an array of offerings atop the bread loaves. In neither case, however, does anything at all appear under the table.

Stranger still, in terms of the traditional representations in false door panels are the two standing figures of Senusert and his wife(?) Sat-hathor on the panel of their false door, Louvre C. 22. There is no offering table, but instead a loose array of offerings is placed between the couple and a large ewer and basin at their feet.

The lower part of the false door of the Overseer of Disputes (Overseer of Police) Shemai from Aswan is lost. Other than the upper part of the figure of the deceased and an identify-ing inscription, all that is visible is a heap of offerings that may have rested originally on a mat atop the bread loaves set on the offering table. The stele seemingly dates to the reign of Senusert I.321

Unfortunately, the panels of the false doors of Intefoker, vizier under Senusert I,322 of the Overseer of Priests Senbi II at Meir in the time of Senusert I and Amenemhat II,323 of his suc-cessor Ukhhotep II under Amenemat II,324 of Queen Aat, wife of Amenemhat III,325 and of the Overseer of All the Works of the King Inpy under Senusert III and Amenemhat III,326 are all largely destroyed, so it is impossible to know what appeared on them.

False doors of Dyns. XI and XII from Beni Hasan seem to follow a tradition all their own. The earlier monuments will be dealt with elsewhere. The false door panel of the nomarch Amenemhat, who held office under Senusert I,327 features two confronted, seated figures of the nomarch and his wife Hetepet.328 Between the couple is an array of food offerings. Included amongst the offerings is a splayed-leg table on which rest four sealed bear jars.

321 R.E. Freed, The Development of Middle Egyptian Relief (1984), pp. 212–13; L. Berman, “The Stele of Shemai, Chief of Police” (1996), pp. 98–99.

322 D. Franke, Personendaten aus dem Mittleren Reich (1984), Nr. 146.323 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), p. 87.324 A.M. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir, Part III (1915), pl. 19.325 L. Troy, Patterns of Queenship (1986), p. 159.326 D. Franke, Personendaten aus dem Mittleren Reich (1984), Nr. 155.327 W.K. Simpson, “Studies in the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty II” (2001).328 P.E. Newberry, Beni Hasan, Part I (1893), pl. 12.



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The false door of Mersi, sister(?) of the nomarch Ukhhotep II of Meir, shows the lady seated on a throne-like seat with one hand extended to the bread loaves on the offering table before her.329 Offerings are piled on a mat(?) on top of the bread loaves, on the near side of the leg of the offering table is the phrase db¢t-¢tp, opposite is a splay-legged table with a ewer and other service vessels, and above the table are various vessels resting on a mat. On the far left of the panel an attendant proffers a fowl. The table scene resembles that of the nomarch Amenemhat at Beni Hasan in the crowding of the different elements, but the overall arrangement is more balanced.

Of the seventeen Middle Kingdom false doors in our corpus which are sufficiently well pre-served to exhibit this detail, thirteen have the wedjat-eyes on the lintel above the niche; these include the false door of King Amenemhat I from Lisht. Only four false doors lack the wedjat-eyes.330 This contrasts with a mere two out of twenty-three intact or largely intact false doors of Dyn. X date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery that have the eyes in this position. Nevertheless, the false doors from Heracleopolis provide clear testimony that the motif of the wedjet-eyes on the lintel above the niche achieved greater popularity in late Dyn. X or XI than in the period when it first came into use. Thus the Twelfth Dynasty artists may have copied the motif directly from these late Dyn. X or XI false doors. Alternatively, they could have been inspired by as yet undiscovered models elsewhere.

The false doors of the Vizier Mentuhotep from Abydos331 and of Ihy from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery possess three pairs of jambs. At the same time, the two false doors have only four jamb figures, situated at the bottom of the middle and outer jambs. In both false doors the inner jambs are inscribed, but lack figures of the deceased at the bottom of the columns of text. We have already surmised that the table scene on Ihy’s false door was inspired in part by the arrangement on the panel of the false door of the Vizier Tjetju of Dyn. VI, whose chapel is adjacent to Ihy’s. Tjetju’s false door (fig. 18), like Ihy’s, has three pairs of jambs, with four jamb figures, and texts on the inner jambs. So, in this regard too, Ihy’s false door may have been influenced by Tjetju’s. This is less likely to be the case with Mentuhotep’s false door, since it de-rives from Abydos. For that reason, Mentuhotep’s artist was probably following a wider tradition that goes back to the late Old Kingdom (see pp. 362, 372). (Unless, of course, his false door was made by a sculptor like Shensetji, who was trained at the capital and came to work at Abydos.332) Texts also appear on the inner jambs of Hep and Hornakht, which have only two pairs of jambs and one pair of jamb figures.

Only one of the false doors in our corpus has an equal number of jambs and jamb figures. This is the false door of Amenemhat II’s(?) son, Prince Amenemhat-ankh. If Prince Amen-emhat-ankh’s false door is complete as it stands, it has only one pair of jambs, with a single figure of the deceased at the bottom of each.

In contrast to the five false doors with jamb figures, some fourteen false doors in number are entirely lacking in jamb figures. The absence of jamb figures is also a feature of certain late Old Kingdom false doors and of nearly all of the false doors excavated by the Spanish mission at Heracleopolis (see p. 393). The false door of King Amenemhat I from Lisht likewise lacks jamb figures, and it is conceivable that his false door was the model for private false doors in this regard. But it is unclear whether the designer of King Amenemhat’s false door was himself influenced by the late Old Kingdom false doors or by the false doors of late Tenth or Eleventh Dynasty date from Heracleopolis (not so very far from Lisht) or by as yet undiscovered models elsewhere. Regardless, the absence of jamb figures is in sharp contrast to false doors of the

329 A.M. Blackman and M.R. Apted, The Rock Tombs of Meir, Part VI (1953), pl. 6.330 The false doors which lack the wedjat-eyes are those of Amenemhat-ankh, Senu-ankh, Nakht, and Ukhhotep,

son of Ukhhotep and Mersi. In four false doors the lintel is destroyed or lost: Senet, mother of Intefoker, Mentuhotep, Shemai, Queen Aat.

331 On the person and monuments of the Vizier Mentuhotep, see W.K. Simpson, “Mentuhotep, Vizier of Sesostris I, Patron of Art and Architecture” (1991).

332 R.O. Faulkner, “The Stela of the Master Sculptor Shen” (1952), pp. 3–5, pl. 1.



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Heracleopolitan Period from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara which, in the aggregate, exhibit an extensive repertoire of jamb figures.

The attitudes of the jamb figures in Dyn. XII, where they occur, are very limited in scope. The owner holds a staff and scepter (Khety-ankh, Ihy), a staff alone (Mentuhotep, Amenemhat-ankh), a scepter alone (Hornakht, Amenemhat-ankh), has his arms at his sides (Khenty-ankh, Ihy) or arms outstretched in prayer (Khety-ankh, Hep, Hornakht, Mentuhotep). In instanc-es where the deceased holds a staff, he may have a handkerchief in his hanging rear hand (Amenemhat-ankh) or that hand may hang empty (Mentuhotep). Where he has a scepter alone, his forward hand may be clenched on his chest (Hornakht). Hep has only figures with arms outstretched in prayer, two on the outer jambs of his false door and two more at the bottom of the jambs of the supplementary frame, while Hornakht has the same arrangement on his false door, but figures holding a scepter on the jambs of the supplementary frame.

Khety-ankh is exceptional in having jamb figures in four different attitudes—deceased with staff and scepter, with his arms outstretched in prayer, with his arms at his side, and a fourth figure of the son Sehetepibre-ankh proferring a bird to his father. There are, in addition, two further representations of the owner at the bottom of the supplementary frame. On the left-hand jamb Khety-ankh stands with one arm bent, holding a handkerchief against his chest, while the rear arm hangs down, the hand open. On the right-hand jamb, Khety-ankh is depicted as a soldier, wearing linen cross-bands and holding a bow and battle axe. As we have already seen, however, the greater part of the decoration of his false door probably belongs to Dyn. XI.

The figure with arms outstretched in prayer was popular at Saqqara in Dyn. X (see p. 393). Curiously, it does not occur in the false doors from Heracleopolis. Its appearance on the Twelfth Dynasty false doors of Ihy and Mentuhotep may therefore represent another instance of archaism.

Most of the jamb figures on the Dyn. XII false doors are mature portrayals of the owner. In contrast, in Mentuhotep’s false door, all four jamb figures represent old men with pendulous breasts. In Ihy’s false door two of the four jambs figures are elderly as well.

Properly speaking, the monuments of Khety-ankh and Neferhotep and Ankhi are “atrophied false doors.”333 Although they retain the principle horizontal parts of the traditional false door—the upper lintel, the panel, and the inner lintel (the drum over the central niche is missing)—the elements within the torus moulding are all in one plane. In other words, the stepped-back effect of the jambs of the traditional false door is lacking. In the false door of Neferhotep and Ankhi, the jambs are still clearly indicated, but in Khety-ankh’s false door their existence is merely hinted at by the placement of the figures of the deceased and his son, as well as by the arrangement of the columns of text over their heads, even though these are irregularly distributed amongst the figures.

Atrophied false doors alternate with round-topped stelae as the most popular type of funerary monument of the Twelfth Dynasty.334 Together they appear to have largely replaced the false doors that formed the focus of the funerary cult in earlier periods. This consideration may help explain why relatively few false doors survive from Dyn. XII. On the other hand, it is also possible that scholars more familiar with the funerary archaeology of the Middle Kingdom than the present writer may able to expand the list of Twelfth Dynasty false doors known to me.

333 For the use of this term is a different context, see H.G. Fischer, “The Cult and Nome of the Goddess Bat” (1962), p. 8, n. 15.

334 For atrophied false doors, see e.g., H. Lange and H. Schäfer, Grab- und Denksteine des Mittleren Reichs (1902), pls. 2 (CG 20014), 3 (CG 20020–1, 20023, 20022), 5 (CG 20047), 37 (CG 20526); P. Boeser, Beschreibung der aegyptischen Sammlung des Niederländischen Reichsmuseums (1909), no. 6, pl. 5. The majority of these stelae pre-serve only the cavetto cornice and torus moulding from traditional false doors. For a discussion, see J. Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, 2, pt. 1 (1954), pp. 484–85.



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The only side-pieces of Twelfth Dynasty known to me are those of the Steward Hep in Berlin.335 Presumably, these side-pieces originally flanked the false door of Hep from Abydos in Cairo.336 They represent a very limited sample for purposes of comparison. Even so, it is interesting to observe that the two side-pieces do not incorporate in their design the oil vessels and jewelry which are regularly portrayed at the top of Heracleopolitan Period side panels. A compartmental offering list and a table scene occurs at the top of each side-piece and beneath the latter scenes of spear-fishing and fowling, as well as rows of offering bearers.

So many different influences are evident in the false doors of the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom discussed herein that it is impossible to trace a single diachronic line of development. Possibly, this is a result of lacunae in our documentation. With future excavations at places like Saqqara and Heracleopolis the picture may one day become clearer.

One thing does seem definite from the above review: the false doors found by Firth and Quibell in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara, in the street between the northern enclosure wall of the pyramid of Teti and the Sixth Dynasty mastabas of the viziers of Teti and Pepy I, including the four false doors belonging to officials of the pyramid cult of the Tenth Dynasty king, Merikare, do not belong to the Twelfth Dynasty as has been maintained by both Schenkel and von Beckerath. This seems clear not only from the absence of the flaring T-shaped panel in the Dyn. XII false doors, but also from the decorative scheme of the panels, which vary in a number of particulars from that of the false doors from the Teti cemetery, the wedjat-eyes on the lower lintel in the great majority of false doors, the general absence of jamb figures in the false doors, the limited repertoire of jamb figures on the same, and so on.

appendix a: The Identity of the Unfinished Royal Monument in the wadi behind the Ramesseum at Western Thebes and the Date of Gemni-em-hat, Meru, and Meketre.

The Chancellor Meketre began his career under Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II, but his tomb overlooks an unfinished royal monument in a valley to the northwest of the Ramesseum. Based upon the similarities in the plan of the burial chamber, as well as the general shape of the causeway and mortuary temple to the temple of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri, Herbert E. Winlock identified the monument as belonging to Sankhkare Mentuhotep III.337 In an important and impressively argued article, Dorothea Arnold has suggested that the unfinished monument instead belonged to King Amenemhat I, who abandonned it when he moved north to Itj-tawy and built his pyramid at Lisht.338 If her reassignment of the monument is correct, this has important consequences for the history of the early Twelfth Dynasty. (One specific result being the redating of Meketre’s tomb to the early reign of King Amenemhat I.) But was it really Amenemhat I who began the unfinished monument at Western Thebes?

Winlock found corroborating evidence for the identification of the unfinished monument in the wadi northwest of the Ramesseum in a group of Twelfth Dynasty graffiti inscribed on the rocks of a small valley located between the temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri and the site of the unfinished monument.339 Here a group of priests apparently awaited the arrival of the statue of the god Amun, when it “was brought out of the sanctuary in Karnak in its sacred bark, ferried across the river in a larger ship, and borne on the shoulders of priests from the landing stage on its western bank up to the temple of Nebhepetre, there to pass the night.”340 The occasion of the “Feast of the Valley”—a designation which evidently alludes to the “Valley

335 H. Schäfer et al., Aegyptische Inschriften aus den königlichen Museen zu Berlin, vol. 1 (1904), pp. 156–60; L. Klebs, Die Reliefs und Malereien des Mittleren Reiches (1922), figs. 36–37.

336 L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (1937), pl. 18.337 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), pp. 51, 77–90; Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I

and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), p. 5.338 Ibid., pp. 5–14.339 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Midle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), pp. 78–79.340 Ibid., p. 84.



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(¡n.t) of Nb-¢pt-R™”—became one of the chief religious holidays in Thebes from the New King-dom onwards.341

Of these graffiti, the greatest number belonged to the priesthood of Mentuhotep II and about half as many to the clergy of Mentuhotep III.342 One of the graffiti apparently even records the name of Mentuhotep III’s mortuary temple, which Winlock translates as “Shining is the Pyramid (of Sankhkare).”343

I feel that Arnold has given too little weight to these graffiti,344 which to my mind clearly indicate the presence of a funerary cult of Mentuhotep III in the vicinity. She argues that no temple was actually ever erected on the plateau in the small bay to the south of Deir el-Bahri, since the building activities only reached the stages of leveling the platform, starting to remove rock for a causeway, and cutting and casing an underground chamber. Therefore, if this was really the site of Mentuhotep III’s mortuary temple, his priests would never actually have had a place to perform the ceremonies associated with the funerary cult for the king.345

Further evidence that a mortuary temple of Mentuhotep III existed at Thebes is provided by an incised alabaster plaque with the name of King Sankhkare in the British Museum.346 On the plaque, the king is called “beloved of Montu-Ra, lord of Thebes—a formula that Arnold observes is exactly parallel to the one found on the smaller foundation-deposit tablets from the Deir el-Bahri temple of Mentuhotep II.347

Arnold cites the tradition that gives Dra Abu el-Naga as the findspot of the alabaster foun-dation plaque in order to raise the possibility that Sankhkare Mentuhotep III was buried in the old burial place of the kings of the early Eleventh Dynasty in the plain of El-Tarif, not in the wadi to the northwest of the Ramesseum. According to Arnold the designation “from Dira Abu ‘n Naga” in dealers’ statements about the provenance of certain objects can mean either the hill of Dra Abu el-Naga or the area of El-Tarif. I frankly wonder if so much credibility should be given to a dealer’s statements, particularly since there appears to exist no local designation for the wadi behind the Ramesseum.

The graffiti clearly date to the Twelfth Dynasty.348 One mentions a king Amenemhat and another the throne name of Senusert III.349 In addition, several of the priests had basilophoric names compounded with the throne name of King Mentuhotep III.350 This alone suggests his cult had a certain duration, in order for the parents of these individuals to have named their sons after the king.351 Moreover, objects discovered on the platform itself, including a limestone altar found at the mouth of the underground passage to the royal burial chamber of the unfin-ished monument and pottery, indicate an offering cult was maintained on the platform of the unfinished monument into the Twelfth Dynasty.352 Although doubt has been expressed as to

341 Ibid., p. 84.342 Ibid., p. 81.343 Ibid., p. 81, pl. 42 [33].344 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), p. 8.345 Ibid., pp. 7–8. There is no evidence for a cult of Mentuhotep III in the temple of his father. Winlock, The Rise and

Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), p. 48, asserts that the later king Mentuhotep III was shown together with his father in the Deir el-Bahri temple in E. Naville, The XIth Dynasty Temple of Deir el-Bahari, vol. 1 (1907), pl. 12, but the figure is probably that of a private individual, a soldier named [X] s£ Mn†w-¢tp, ”[X]’s son Men-tuhotep.” The father’s name was probably written in front of the raised bow of his son, but is now lost. Note that there is no trace of a nswt-sign before the s£-goose to yield the title s£ nswt.”

346 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), fig. 20.347 Ibid., p. 17.348 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), pp. 86–87.349 Ibid., p. 81.350 Ibid., p. 83, pl. 43, nos. 43–50.351 Ibid., p. 82, 86–87.352 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), pp. 9–10.



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whether the king was actually interred in this tomb, as Winlock observed, it seems unlikely that the priests named in the graffiti would have served an empty tomb.353

Of all the cliff tombs that pierce the western and southern slopes of the Sheikh Abd el-Qurna hill and the northern face of the hills south of the unfinished monument, only the tombs of Meketre and his dependents and relatives were ever used.354 According to Arnold, the reason this was so was the decision not to use the monument in the royal valley for a royal burial. To Winlock the death of Seankhkare accounted for the abandonment of the cliff tombs.355

If Winlock was correct in assigning the unfinished royal monument in the wadi behind the Ramesseum at Western Thebes to Sankhkare Mentuhotep III, as I believe he was on the basis of the graffiti of the priests of this king, this negates a major argument for the dating of Meketre’s tomb to the reign of Amenemhat I.

Arnold presents a number of other arguments for dating Meketre to the reign of Amen-emhat I that I find more persuasive, in particular her review of the facial features of a series of royal and private statues of the late Eleventh to the early Twelfth Dynasty.356 The comparison of the facial features of the two large female offering bearers from the tomb of Meketre to the Khatana statue of Amenemhat I is especially compelling. I must take exception, however, to her attempt to date the model groups of Gemni-em-hat and Weser-mut and Impu-em-hat from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery to the same reign.

Arnold remarks that a comparison of the models found in the underground passage and side chambers of the tomb of Mentuhotep II indicates unequivocally that at the time of the king’s death the court at Thebes did not have wood carvers of the ability of the wood carvers who made the Meketre models at its disposal.357 A survey of all extant wooden models of the late First Intermediate Period and the early Twelfth Dynasty reveals that there are primarily two groups of models most closely related to the Meketre group in the elaborate architectural details, the intricacy and liveliness of the scenes, and the proportions of the individual figures, as well as the full-bodied roundness and natural character of the figures and their gestures. Both comparative groups were found in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara. The first group comes from the burial of Gemniemhat: Gemni, while the second was found in another burial chamber which contained the coffins of two men named Weser-mut and Inpu-em-hat (Inpu).358

Arnold notes that the latest examples of servant models, which date to the mid-Twelfth Dynasty, often combine various trades in one model unit and are housed in elaborate and detailed representations of architecture, such as courtyards with adjacent rooms, staircases that lead up to second stories, and rooms that have roofs and supporting columns.359 Not many of the containers of the models of Mentuhotep II were as elaborate as these. Instead fairly simple architectural arrangements are suggested, although parts of a slaughtering scene and a pot-tery workshop seem to suggest the presence of more detailed architecture.360 Arnold there-fore thinks the Meketre models and the models from the two Saqqara tombs of Gemni-em-hat, Weser-mut, and Inpu-em-hat are definitely closer to the latest Twelfth Dynasty versions of models, as they share very elaborate architectural details.361 In actual fact, Arnold cites only one mid-Twelfth Dynasty model from the tomb of Djehuty, Mastaba B, South Area, at Lisht South.362 Although the model is complex, with three separate areas in which brewing, baking,

353 H.E. Winlock, Excavations at Deir el-Bahari 1911–1931 (1942), pp. 33–34; E. Thomas, The Royal Necropoleis of Thebes (1966), p. 27; Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), pp. 8–12.

354 Do. Arnold, ibid., p. 14.355 H.E. Winlock, The Rise and Fall of the Midle Kingdom in Thebes (1947), p. 33.356 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), p. 27ff., and, figs. 36–47.357 Ibid., pp. 25–27.358 Ibid., pp. 25.359 Ibid., pp. 25–26.360 Ibid., p. 26 and n. 136.361 Ibid., p. 26.362 Ibid., p. 46, n. 134.



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and weaving take place, unlike the Gemni-em-hat, Weser-mut and Inpu-em-hat, and Meketre models, the Lisht model is low walled with very shallow peaked corners.363

Since she thinks that funerary services for deceased kings were continued, in most cases, for many generations (see p. 366), Arnold is also of the opinion that the fact that Gemni-em-hat served as funerary priest for both King Teti of the Sixth Dynasty and King Merikare of the Tenth Dynasty, does not help in placing Gemni-em-hat chronologically. I have already stated my reasons for believing otherwise and for dating the false door of Gemni-em-hat (along with various other false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery) to the Heracleopolitan Period (Dyn. X).

Arnold believes that a date for both Saqqara burials in the reign of Amenemhat I is pro-vided by the style of the pottery vessels found with them.364 In this connection, she cites a forth-coming article “Pottery at the Time of Amenemhat I.”365 This article has yet to appear in print, so it is not possible to evaluate the strength of this particular argument.

Apparently, neither Weser-mut nor Inpu-em-hat held office at the pyramid of King Merikare. Regardless, the interior layout of Weser-mut’s coffins (Sq11–12C) exhibits strong affinities for both the outer and inner coffins of Gemn-em-hat (Sq1–2X), and the two sets of coffins doubt-lessly belong to the same time.366

Inpu-em-hat’s coffins differ in a number of regards from both Gemni-em-hat’s and Weser-mut’s coffins. Although the layout of the interior front of the outer coffin is the same as Gemni-em-hat’s, the same is not true of the other three sides. Indeed, the outer coffin of Inpu-em-hat is one of only two coffins from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery that has no object frieze.367 Although the back, head, and foot of Inpu-em-hat’s inner coffin (Sq9C) conforms to Willem’s “Archaic Layout,” just like Gemni-em-hat’s coffins (see p. 384), the front exhibits only a false door and menu, but lacks an offering table.368 Inpu-em-hat’s coffin was found on the floor of the shaft and his canopic box was found in a rough niche in the wall at the bottom of the shaft. Weser-mut’s coffin rested partly on a rock ledge on the west side of the shaft and partly on the rough covering of stone blocks, brick and chip that had been laid over Inpu-em-hat’s coffin to protect it from falling debris.369 The archaeological evidence thus indicates that Inpu-em-hat’s burial was the earlier of the two, although by exactly how much we do not know.

The orthography of the coffins of Gemni-em-hat, Weser-mut, and Inpu-em-hat is essentially identical,370 apart from the fact that the first two individuals write , while the Inpu-em-hat has . The latter arrangement appears as well on the coffins of General Ipi-ha-ishetef in Chicago (Sq1Ch) and of Ipi-ankhu (Sq6Sq).371 We have already stated our reasons for believing that Ipi-ankhu’s coffin belongs to the Heracleopolitan Period (see p. 384).

The layout of the sides of Ipi-ha-ishetef’s coffin (Sq1Ch) is virtually identical to Gemni-em-hat’s and the contents of the object frieze on the back are likewise comparable to Gemni-em-hat’s (see pp. 384–85) as well.372 Moreover, the same flower vase that appears beside the offering table on the front of the coffin of Gemni-em-hat recurs among the offerings in the coffin of Ipi-ha-ishetef (fig. 12c). Furthermore, the components of the object frieze on the head end of Ipi-ha-ishetef’s coffin are the same as on the foot end of Gemni-em-hat’s inner coffin,

363 J. Breasted, Egyptian Servant Statues (1948), pp. 38, 54, pl. 38a.364 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), p. 25.365 Ibid., p. 25 and n. 132.366 See H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), figs. 19–21.367 The other is the coffin of Ipi-em-zaf: Ipi (Sq8C), who was zß s∂£wt-n†r W£∂-swt-Mrk£r™ (H.G. Fischer, “A Group of

Sixth Dynasty Titles Relating to Ptah and Sokar” (1964), p. 27 and n. 18). 368 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), figs. 19–21.369 J.E. Quibell and A.G.K. Hayter, Teti Pyramid, North Side (1927), pp. 12–15 and fig. on p. 12.370 See e.g., G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), pls. 26 (Sq15a, b [Inpuemhat]); (Sq100a, b

[Gemni-em-hat]), 27 (Sq33a, b [Weser-mut]). Lapp provides in his plates only the ¢tp-d¡-nswt on the front of the coffins, but see also his Chapter V.

371 Ibid., pl. 26 (Sq 5 [Ipi-ankhu]); (Sq 11 [Ipi-ha-ishetef]) 372 Willems, Chests of Life (1988), figs. 19–21.



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even though they are arranged somewhat differently (fig. 13c). In addition, although is written on the exterior of Ipi-ha-ishetef’s coffin, appears in the interior. The latter orthography also occurs on Gemni-em-hat’s false doors and coffins, as well as on a number of other monuments dating to Dyn. X (see pp. 384–85).

For the aforementioned reasons, I believe the coffins of Weser-mut and Inpu-em-hat, like those of Gemni-em-hat, belong to the Heracleopolitan Period. With the re-unification of Egypt by Mentuhotep II, Theban craftsmen copied the Old Kingdom relief styles, but also Heracleo-politan Period motifs (see p. 377), coffin design (see p. 389), and palaeographic traditions (see p. 385). There is no reason why this would not be the case with sculptural (including wood carv-ing) traditions as well. Such copying would readily explain the resemblances between the model groups of Gemni-em-hat, Weser-mut, and Inpu-em-hat at Saqqara and the wooden models of Meketre at Thebes and, for that matter, the resemblance between the statues of Gemni-em-hat and the Overseer of the Storehouse Wah.373

Allen has likewise argued for assigning Meketre to Dyn. XII.374 Arnold points out that Meketre’s fine wooden coffin had been decorated twice. Initially, the hieroglyphs were simply inked and then incised in the wood; later, the first inscription was covered by plaster, which was gilded, and a second version of inscriptions and decoration was then traced into the golden plaster.375 In the appendix to Arnold’s article, Allen cites a number of palaeographic, contex-tual, and epigraphic criteria that, in his opinion, are sufficient to show that the Phase II (gold leaf and gesso) decoration of Meketre’s coffin is probably not earlier than the beginning of Dyn. XII, with Phase I somewhat earlier. In my opinion, these criteria constitute insufficient evidence for assigning the Phase II decoration of the coffin to the early Twelfth Dynasty, per-mitting instead only a dating in the period extending from late Dyn. XI to early Dyn. XII.

Foremost of the criteria is the bookroll in the Phase II decoration of Meketre’s coffin with two ties . Allen cites Schenkel’s observation that the earliest dated attestation for this fea-ture belongs to the reign of Amenemhat I.376 Similarly, the bookroll with the forms and

first appears in the Twelfth Dynasty, the oldest dated attestations for these forms being from the reign of Senusert I.377 More recently, Spanel has devoted considerable time and en-ergy to an investigation of the bookroll as a dating criteria. He concludes that the form of the bookroll with one or two ties did not evolve suddenly in the Twelfth Dynasty, but rather gradu-ally developed over the course of the First Intermediate Period and even earlier.378 I concur with Spanel’s conclusions and feel that he has demonstrated that the bookroll with two ties should not automatically by and of itself be taken as a definitive criterion of Twelfth Dynasty date without further supportive evidence.379

Allen also observes that the arrangement of PT 23 immediately following the false door in Phase II of Meketre’s coffin is paralleled only on the coffins BH1C, BH3C, and X1Bas. He further remarks that the only other instances of full offering spells (PT 93–96, 108ff.) in place of the shorter offering list, aside from the coffin of Meketre, appear on the coffins X1Bas, B2Bo, and M1NY. Referencing Willems,380 Allen observes that all these coffins (except M1NY) appear to belong to the period from the end of Dyn. XI to the reign of Amenemhat I, whereas M1NY may date to the reign of Amenemhat II or earlier. However, since in actuality the Beni Hasan

373 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), p. 34, figs. 53, 54.374 J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), pp 1–26.375 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), p. 23.376 W. Schenkel, Frühmittelägyptische Studien (1962), § 2d.377 Ibid., §2c.378 D. Spanel, “The Herakleopolitan Tombs of Kheti I and Kheti II at Asyut” (1989), p. 309, n. 40.379 I revisit the issue in a forthcoming article: E. Brovarski, “The Hare and Oryx Nomes in the First Intermediate

Period and early Middle Kingdom.”380 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), pp. 65, 68, 70–72, 98–99.



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and Bersheh coffins cited by Allen may belong to the end of Dyn. XI,381 none of this serves to securely assign Phase II of Meketre’s coffin to the reign of Amenemhat I.

Allen also observes that the nearest parallel to the epigraphic technique of Phase I of Meketre’s coffin, in which the hieroglyphs were inked directly on bare wood, then lightly incised in outline, occurs in B1Bo, the outer coffin of a Bersheh nomarch Djehutynakht in Boston. For the date—end of Dyn. XI to the reign of Amenemhat I—Allen cites Willems and Brovarski.382 In 1981 I believed the Boston coffins inscribed for a nomarch Djehutynakht belonged to Djehutynakht V, the son of Nehri I of the Hatnub graffiti. Subsequently, I have come to think their owner was the earlier, nomarch, Djehutynakht IV, son of the Ahanakht I, an opinion I hope to substantiate in an upcoming article.383 Whereas I assigned the nomarch Ahanakht I to Dyn. X,384 Willems dates him to the last three decades of the Eleventh Dynasty,385 a proposition I likewise hope to refute in the same article.

In the meantime though it should be pointed out that all the early coffins from Bersheh first write the hieratic text in the usual way, and then incised the signs with a sharp object.386 This includes the funerary texts on the coffin of Ahanakht I (or just possibly II).387 If Ahanakht indeed belongs to Dyn. X, as I believe he does, this would carry the practice back two genera-tions earlier. Lapp dates Ahanakht’s coffins to Dyn. XI.388 Even Willems agrees that the coffins of Ahanakht belong to the late Eleventh Dynasty.389

None of this means that Meketre cannot have lived into Dyn. XII and served under Amenemhat I. In addition to the arguments put forward by Arnold concerning the facial features of a series of royal and private statues of the late Eleventh to the early Twelfth Dynasty, I feel that in our present state of knowledge, probably the strongest argument for assigning the tomb to Dyn. XII remains Meketre’s title of “Chief Steward.” As Berlev was the first to observe, in an article quoted by Arnold,390 the specific title ¡my-r£ pr wr does not make its appearance until Dyn. XII. Indeed, it was Berlev’s observation that the title appears in The Eloquent Peas-ant that began the inclination to redate not only that composition, but also the Instruction for Merikare, to the Twelfth Dynasty.

In a subsequent article, Allen reviewed the dating evidence for the officials who served un-der Mentuhotep II and his successors.391 He believes that the Steward Meketre, the Vizier Ipi, and the Overseer of Seal-bearers Meru belonged to a younger generation of officials than the Chancellor Khety, the Steward Henenu, and General Intef. According to Allen, these younger officials began their careers under Mentuhotep II, but Meru (probably) and Ipi and Meketre (definitely) served through the end of Dyn. XI and into the beginning of Dyn. XII.392

As far as Meketre is concerned, he already had the important title of ¡my-r£ ∞tmt or “Chancellor” in the reliefs of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri.393 He must have been a man of some experience by the time he obtained the title in the later years of Mentuhotep. Yet, at the same time, he must have been young enough to anticipate a lengthy career ahead of him, since he chose to build his tomb above the unfinished mortuary

381 G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1992), p. 276 (B 22b = B2Bo); 278 (BH 5 = BH3C; BH6b = BH1C).

382 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), pp. 70–72, and E. Brovarski, “Ahanakht of Bersheh and the Hare Nome” (1981), pp. 23–30.

383 E. Brovarski, “The Hare and Oryx Nomes in the First Intermediate Period and Early Middle Kingdom.”.384 E. Brovarski, “Ahanakht of Bersheh and the Hare Nome” (1981), pp. 26–30.385 H. Willems, “The Nomarchs of the Hare Nome and Early Middle Kingdom History” (1985), p. 102, n. 153.386 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), p. 177 and n. 9.387 S. Fleming et al. The Egyptian Mummy: Secrets and Science (1980), Illustration 14.388 G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern (1993), p. 274 [B4].389 H. Willems, Chests of Life (1988), p. 74.390 O. Berlev, “The Date of the Eloquent Peasant” (1987), pp. 78–83.391 J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), pp. 1–26.392 Ibid., p. 18.393 E. Naville, The XIth Dynasty Temple at Deir el-Bahri, vol. 2 (1910), pl. 9D; J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the

Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), p. 3, n. 4.



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temple of Sankhkare Mentuhotep III (see pp. 407–409), instead of in the northern or south-ern cliffs above the Eleventh Dynasty temple of Deir el-Bahari, as the other high officals who served Mentuhotep II had done. This would certainly support Allen’s contention that Meketre belonged to a younger generation of officials, but I question whether the Overseer of Seal-bearers Meru survived beyond the end of Dyn. XI.

In an effort to sort out the sequence of Mentuhotep II’s high offcials, Allen presents a very important overview of the architecture of their tombs.394 Meketre’s tomb does seem later in form than the tombs of the high officials of Mentuhotep II in the cliffs to the north of the king’s mortuary temple. Instead of a portico of pillars as in the tombs of General Intef and the vizier Dagi,395 the portico of Meketre’s tomb consists of nine polygonal columns similar to the columns of the hypostyle hall and ambulatory of the temple of Mentuhotep II.396 In addition, only the tombs of the Ipi, Meru, and Meketre contained separate chambers for wooden models, excavated in each case in the floor of the entrance corridor.397 In contrast to the tombs of Chancellor Khety, the Steward Henenu, Ipi, and Meru, Meketre’s burial chamber is reached via a deep shaft in the floor of the chapel.398 Again, only the tombs of Ipi and the coordinate burials of Meketre and his son(?) Intef have a canopic chest alongside the sarcophagus.399 Both Ipi and Meketre’s complexes contain a contemporary subsidiary tomb excavated in the upper right-hand corner of the courtyard: that of Wah, Meketre’s storekeeper; and that of Meseh, in the case of Ipi.400 In the same corner, each complex also exhibits a small crypt in which the owner’s embalming materials were stored. Allen believes that the distinctive architectural fea-tures which Ipi’s tomb shares with that of Meketre indicates that the two tombs were constructed at the beginning of Dyn. XII.

As admirable as Allen’s architectural survey of these tombs is, it is important to recognize that it only furnishes a relative chronology for the different tombs. For example, taking into account the separate chamber for wooden models, it appears likely that Meru’s tomb is indeed architecturally later than tombs of Khety and Henenu. At the same time, the lack of a canopic chest alongside the sarcophagus, of a subsidiary tomb excavated in the upper right-hand cor-ner of the courtyard, and of a small crypt in in the same corner of the courtyard in which the owner’s embalming materials were stored, probably indicates the tomb of Meru is earlier in date than the tombs of Ipi and Meketre. Strictly speaking, the architectural development of the tombs in itself does not serve to date the tombs of Ipi and Meketre to Dyn. XII. On the other hand, it very probably indicates that Ipi and Meketre are later in date than Khety, Henenu, and Meru.

We have already shown above (see pp. 382–83) that the group cannot be used, in and of itself, to date the Overseer of Seal-bearers Meru to Dynasty XII. The architectural form of his tomb likewise fails to assign Meru to Dyn. XII. There is no reason to think that he did not pass away in the later years of King Mentuhotep II (see p. 382).

appendix b. the aswan coFFin oF heQaib the eldeR.The coffin Heqaib the Elder: Heqata from Qubbet el-Hawa (CG 28127/Cairo JE 36418) is one of a small group of early Middle Kingdom coffins with diagonal star clocks published by Neugebauer and Parker (1960). The coffin forms a sub-group with the coffin of Queen Aashyt from Deir el-Bahari,401 and the coffin of Iqer from Gebelein (Turin, now perished).402 The

394 Ibid., pp. 13–18.395 D. Arnold, Das Grab des Jnj-jtj.f. Die Architektur (1971), pl. 18.396 Do. Arnold, “Amenemhat I and the Early Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes” (1991), figs. 22, 23.397 J.P. Allen, “Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom” (1996), p. 16.398 Ibid., p. 25.399 Ibid., p. 16.400 Ibid.401 O. Neugebauer and R. Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts 1 (1960), pp. 10–11, pls. 9–10.402 Ibid., pp. 12–13, pls. 11–13.



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star clocks in the three coffins are clearly based on the same model and palaeographically and orthographically the coffins are related to one another.403

The interior of the Aswan coffin bears an exceptional design which consists not only of the customary object frieze, but of entire scenes depicting the enactment of funerary rituals.404 The scenes on the interior of the coffin are likewise matched to a considerable extent by the decoration on the interior of the coffins of Queen Aashyt and of Iqer.405 To this group of of three coffins, Willems has added two more sources, the tombs of Queen Nefru and of the Chancelor Khety at Deir el-Bahri, while a possible third case is formed by some painted relief fragments from the tomb of Meketre. Willems thinks the group of sources testifies to the existence of a southern school of art in the period around the reunification of the country, although it may have evolved before that.406 In the latter connection, he draws attention to a piece of evidence from the tomb of Nakhtnebtepnefer III, Mentuhotep II’s predecessor. This is a relief fragment showing the rear part of a boat, on the deck of which the supports for two steering oars and the figure of a large cobra can be discerned. Below the hull, a hand is visible. For Dieter Arnold this called to mind the scenes of men carrying boats in the tomb of Queen Nefru.407 As Willems notes, the same scene recurs in the object frieze of the Aswan coffin and the related coffins of Queen Aashyt and Iqer.

A fragment of relief from Queen Nefru’s tomb bears the Horus name of Mentuhotep, Sema-ta[wy], and indicates that the tomb decoration (or at least some portion of it) was done after Mentuhotep’s name change, which is generally assumed to have taken place after the reunifi-cation of Egypt.408 Willems observes that the Gebelein tomb in which Iqer’s coffin was found is of the saff-type, to him a strong indication that the find can hardly postdate the end of the Eleventh Dynasty by any significant amount of time.409

Willems concludes that the type of object frieze found on the Aswan coffin originated in the First Intermediate Period in the area between Aswan and Thebes that initially came under Theban control. Earlier, Willems had pointed out that palaeographically the Aswan coffin and the Gebelein coffin of Iqer could be most conveniently placed in the period between the middle and the end of the Eleventh Dynasty.410 Nevertheless, in his monograph on the coffin of Heqata, as has already been seen (see pp. 395–95), he dates the Aswan coffin to the reign of Senusert I.411 He does admit that the interior decoration of the coffin affords an argument against the proposed dating, but he feels that this does not necessarily prove that the coffin itself dates to this era.

In addition to the style of the stela found in Heqata’s tomb (see pp. 394–95), Willems ap-pears to have been influenced by a neighboring burial found by Lady Cecil which contained a coffin with an oyster shell with the name of Senusert I engraved on it. Like Heqata’s coffin the hieroglyphs of the latter coffin were “roughly painted in black on a cream ground, the figures outlined in black and red.”412 The coffin is not illustrated, however, and Lady Cecil does not call attention to any resemblance it might have had to the coffin of Heqata.

In contrast to the stele from the Aswan tomb, the coffin of Heqaib writes . I do not have an exact parallel to offer, but we have already observed that appears on the four coffins of Heracleopolitan Period date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara, as well

403 Ibid., p. 30; H. Willems, The Coffin of Heqata (1996), pp. 331–32.404 Ibid., pp. 22–23.405 The present writer had earlier drawn attention to the resemblance between the Aswan coffin and those of

Aashyt and Iqer: E. Brovarski, “The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-ed-Dêr” (1989), p. 244, n. 284.

406 H. Willems, The Coffin of Heqata (1996), p. 23.407 D. Arnold, Gräber des Alten und Mittleren Reiches in El-Tarif (1976), p. 47 (II 970), pl. 41b, 50.408 R.E. Freed, The Development of Middle Egyptian Relief (1984), p. 15.409 H. Willems, The Coffin of Heqata (1996), p. 23.410 H. Willems, “The Nomarchs of the Hare Nome and Early Middle Kingdom History” (1983), pp. 84–85.411 H. Willems, The Coffin of Heqata (1996), p. 25.412 M.R.M. Cecil, “Report on the Work Done at Aswan” (1904), p. 72.



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as on the burial chamber of the Chancellor Meru from Thebes, while is found on the coffin of Wah, from the subsidiary burial in the forecourt of the tomb of Meketre (see pp. 382, 385, 386). In addition, the vertical arrangement illustrated in fig. 10a is attested in four of the niches of the Sekweskhet family from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, which have been dated above to late Dyn. XI.

Considering that the parallels for the decoration of Heqata’s coffin all belong to pre-unification Dynasty XI and the likelihood that the stele found in the tomb belongs to post-unification Dynasty XI, it follows that Willem’s original dating of the coffin is the correct one.

addenduMAfter this article was written, it occurred to me that the owner of the Aswan coffin (CG 28127/Cairo JE 36418) might not be identical with the older of the two brothers depicted on the Cairo stela (Cairo JE 36420) after all. The latter is named Ìq£-¡b ™£. Closer examination of the back of the coffin, the one place where Heqata’s other name appears, reveals a circle after Ìq£-¡b which is followed by the ™£-column and two strokes. Although the circle lacks the dot that sometimes appears at the center of the sun ideogram or determinative (Sign List N 5), the circle may nevertheless represent the sun disk, in which case Heqata’s other name would be read Ìq£-¡b-R™ (“Re is ruler of the heart”) ™£. One of the two strokes would then belong to the sun disk and the other to the ™£-column.



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