Palette inscribed for Smendes (II), High Priest of Amun

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The standard scribe’s palette combined a holder for reed brushes with recesses for red and black ink cakes. This example is unique in that it also has a scale painted on its side. According to Egyptologist William C. Hayes this was used by scribes to enlarge or reduce designs proportionally at a ratio of 1:6. On the underside is a hieratic inscription naming Smendes (II), who was High Priest of Amun and general of the army. The palette was found at Thebes together with tweezers (47.123h) that may have been used to manipulate the ink cakes, and a calendar of lucky and unlucky days which is in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo (JE 86637).

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