Obelisk

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Carved more than two thousand years after the earliest known obelisks, this is one of four examples erected in the tomb of the sacred rams at Elephantine, the southern border of Egypt proper. The deliberately roughened surfaces indicate that texts were once inscribed on layers of stucco that have now fallen away, so we do not know the exact form of their dedications. However, we do know that the rams buried here were considered incarnations of the creator god Khnum, patron of the First Cataract region and a divinity closely associated with the sun god Re. These obelisks can be traced back to much earlier examples in mortuary contexts as well as to temple obelisks from this area that were dedicated to the composite deity Khnum-Re.

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