Stela Fragment of Pay Adoring Re-Harakhty

Stela Fragment of Pay Adoring Re-Harakhty

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The relief shows Pay, Overseer of the Royal (private) Chambers, raising his hands in adoration before the god Re-Harakhty to his right. The falcon headed deity is wearing a feathered corselet, a short kilt, and holding a was-scepter, while a sun-disk adorned by an uraeus is set above his head. Pay's pleated tunic and its fringed sash are characteristic of the late Eighteenth Dynasty and the Ramesside Period. Above them, part of a winged solar disk can still be seen. Pay served in the royal residence in Memphis and placed his tomb in the elite necropolis in Saqqara nearby. Near Pay's tomb and in its vicinity, other parts of the stela were found .The upper part of the stela shows Pay adoring Re and most probably Atum, and its lower part contains hymns to Re, Atum, Thoth, and Maat, and an autobiographical text, in which Pay speaks of his eloquence and his just righteous. Pay's son, Raia, later succeeded his father in his role, and he continue to build the tomb and was also buried in it.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Stela Fragment of Pay Adoring Re-HarakhtyStela Fragment of Pay Adoring Re-HarakhtyStela Fragment of Pay Adoring Re-HarakhtyStela Fragment of Pay Adoring Re-HarakhtyStela Fragment of Pay Adoring Re-Harakhty

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.