Burial chamber of Sobekmose

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The burial chamber of Sobekmose, a treasury official under Amenhotpe III, is from el-Rizeiqat in Upper Egypt. Decorated burial chambers were not common in private tombs of Dynasty 18, and the scenes and texts usually distributed among several rooms in contemporary tombs are condensed here into a single chamber. The ceiling blocks, south wall, and partially preserved east entrance wall are the parts of the sandstone lining of the tomb installed here. The ceiling's inscriptions include a prayer to the sky goddess, Nut, recitations by Isis and Nut, and standard formulae claiming that "the Osiris [the overseer of the House of Silver] Sobekmose" is "honored by" the Four Sons of Horus and various gods. The east entrance wall as reconstructed is decorated with protective texts and guardian figures of Anubis on the lintel, and scenes of ritual ablution are depicted on the door jambs. The long south wall shows a priest burning incense and pouring a libation, and the rest of the wall is taken up by seven prayers to numerous deities. The north and west walls, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA 54.648), depict Sobekmose's funeral procession and his presentation to the gods of the underworld–Osiris and Anubis. The texts include selections from Spells 1, 15, 125, 130, and 151 of the Book of the Dead, and Utterance 32 of the Pyramid Texts.

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