Door Jamb of Rau

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two door jambs (26.3.54, .55) are inscribed for a man named Rau who served as Steward of the God's Wife Ahmose-Nefertari, mother of Amenhotep I. The inscriptions on the jambs state that Rau's tomb was given as a favor from Thutmose III whose throne name, Menkheperre, appears in the text on the right jamb (26.3.55). The text goes on to say that the tomb was to take the "exact form" of Thutmose's temple Djeser-akhet at Deir el-Bahri. Rau was also Chief Steward of the god Amun whose principal temple was at Karnak on the east bank of the Nile. Rau's tomb was probably somewhere in the Theban necropolis, perhaps in Dira Abu el-Naga, a cemetery directly across the river from Karnak.Wherever the name of the god Amun appears in the text, it has been erased, probably during the reign of Akhenaten, near the end of Dynasty 18. The god's name was later restored. At the bottom of each jamb, Rau is depicted seated before an offering table.

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