Hieratic Papyrus fragment

Hieratic Papyrus fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Papyrus was a costly writing material in ancient Egypt. For this reason papyrus documents whose contents were no longer required were retained for further use as scratch paper. This papyrus contains a major and minor text on both the recto and verso. The major texts are a letter between two fan-bearers of the king and a fragmentary record of the cultivation of pharaonic lands in year 16 of Ramesses III; the smaller texts mention the arrival of a shipment of commodities and the quarrying of stone for a tomb. This papyrus joins P. Vienna 38 and belongs to the same archive as a cache of documents discovered at Memphis that record the construction of tombs for several high officials.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.