Lentoid Bottle ("New Year's Bottle") inscribed for the God's Father Amenhotep, son of the God's Father Iufaa

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lentoid flask, inscribed for a priest named Amenhotep, is an example of a New Year's bottle. Filled perhaps with perfume, oil, or water from the Nile, it would have been a gift associated with the celebration of the beginning of the year. Around the shoulders of the vase are incised bands of floral patterns, meant to echo the vegetal collar that would have been worn by a participant in a ceremonial or festival event or draped around the neck of a jar of wine or oil (see for example 30.8.214). Two baboons flank the tall neck of the bottle, which is made to echo a bundle of papyrus and lotus plants. The inscription on the front asks that the Theban triad (Amun, Mut, and Khonsu) give protection to the God's Father, Amenhotep, son of the [God's Father} Iufaa; additional inscriptions on the shoulders ask the gods Montu and Amun-Re to grant Amenhotep a Happy New Year. The original glaze would have been a bright turquoise, and the decoration filled with a darker blue to imitate lapis lazuli.

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