Funerary Cone of the Scribe Amenemopet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This cone has the impression of a stamp seal inscribed for a man named Amenemopet (Amen-em-opet) who was also known as Tjanefer (Tja-nefer). He was scribe of accounts of the grain of the god Amun and also had the title overseer of the fields. Amenemopet owned Theban tomb 297 (TT 297) which is in the Asasif area of western Thebes near the former field headquarters of the Museum's Egyptian Expedition Hundreds of ceramic cones like this one have been found in the non-royal cemeteries of the Theban necropolis. The Museum's excavators uncovered a tomb with rows of uninscribed cones embedded along the upper edge of the façade and it seems likely that the inscribed cones were used in the same way, identifying the tomb owner by name and title. However, although a few are inscribed with the names of identifiable tomb owners like Amenemopet, most record the names of people whose tombs have not been identified. In 1915, while excavating an uninscribed tomb near TT 297, the Museum’s archaeologists uncovered this cone and four others (15.10.2,–.4, .23). Three more cones in the collection have the same stamp (09.185.12, .17, .20). The best preserved impressions are on cones 15.10.2 and 15.10.23. (CHR)

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