Bivalve-shaped Stone

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This stone is inscribed, "The Good Goddess, Maatkare, she made [it] as her monument for her father, Amun-Re, at the stretching of the cord over Djeser-djeseru-Amun (Hatshepsut's mortuary temple), which she did while alive." Sometimes described as clamshells because of their shape, stones such as this one probably represent tools of some sort, such as hammering stones, that would have been used in the construction of the building.

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