Offering Table of Tjaenhesret, priest of Thoth, son of Iaa

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tjaenhesret is shown pouring a libation over a group of food offerings clustered around three libation jars interspersed with cool lotus plants. The label before his face and above him reads "Libation for the Osiris Tjayenhesret, son of Iaa who held the same titles." Just below his feet an empty space is visible where a place left for the name of his son was never filled in. A tabular offering list appears above and on the right side of the scene, and the whole is surrounded by rows and columns that give an invocation offering to Osiris-Wennefer for Tjaenhesret, who is Overseer of the secrets of the domain of Thoth, and then list his many titles. The latter include particularly titles related to cults of Thoth and other gods resident in Hermopolis, Harendotes, Shepsi, Amon, and Amenemope. The last two are testimony to the wide spread of the cults of Amon throughout the country in the first millennium BC. The offering table must have originated in one of the cemeteries of Hermopolis.

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