Padiamunrenebwaset, son of Irethoreru, holding a seated statue of Osiris

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This statue depicts the priest Padiamunrenebwaset. Padiamunrenebwaset has balanced, slightly smiling features with very long narrow eyes. The priest's fingertips curl very slightly to hold a seated figure of Osiris. The lower part of the statue is located in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and was discovered in the Karnak Cachette and matched by Egyptologists. Together the two fragments depict the individual in a long kilt with a projecting front; the lower part also reveals that the statue of Osiris is actually seated on a tall pillar that merges invisibly with the skirt in the upper part of the statue, but appears beneath the skirt next to Padiamunnebrewaset's feet. The inscriptions on the statue's skirt reveal that Padiamunrenebwaset was a prophet of Khonsu in Thebes Neferhotep, and state that he served for 80 years, probably an ideal span as it is sometimes claimed by other officials. The statue's appearance reveals this period's a fondness for the style of features seen in the earlier Saite Period; however, the version of the formula on the backpillar and the inscriptions that cover the skirt make it clear that this statue, and another one of the owner's son, actually date to the beginning of the Ptolemaic Period, roughly 300 years later.

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