Reconstruction of a Foundation Deposit

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Before they constructed a sacred building like Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, the ancient Egyptians would perform a foundation ceremony known as "the stretching of the cord." One part of this ceremony was the laying out of the building's perimeter by stretching a cord between stakes in the ground. Another was the digging of pits, often lined with mud brick, at significant points around the perimeter and filling them with votive objects. The objects in Hatshepsut's foundation deposits included alabaster ointment jars (25.3.46a, b), pottery vessels containing food (27.3.414), folded pieces of linen cloth, reed mats (96.4.9), model tools ( 96.4.7), ritual implements (27.3.400), and meat offerings from cattle that were slaughtered during the foundation ceremony. Eleven foundation deposits can be associated with Hatshepsut's temple, eight of which were discovered by the Metropolitan Museum's Egyptian Expedition. This reconstruction contains a representative selection of objects found in the deposits in the lower courtyard of the temple. More examples of these objects may be seen in gallery 116.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art