Miniature offering table

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Miniature offering tables are a type of dedication to temples in the later periods. On this table loaves and a vessel are depicted in relief on the table itself. A jackal (or a falcon?) sits at the forward corner and a second is missing, and two figures at the rear corners, although difficult to recognize, may represent baboons as known on other examples. A figure of a kneeling offerer would have sat at the rear of the table opposite the spout. The tables seem to have been closely associated with situlae (libation vessels), both from some evidence of finds and from their decoration. It has been suggested that liquid would have been poured from the situla onto the small table as part of a ritual offering.

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