Tomb chapel of Raemkai: North wall of the entrance corridor

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

THE ENTRANCE CORRIDOR Scenes decorating the entrance thicknesses of Old Kingdom tombs often included a movement of people and objects into the interior. The entrance corridor here is decorated on both sides with scenes in several registers. At the very top, parts of two ships can be seen. Only the hulls of ships are preserved, but the absence of rowing oars and the position of the steering oars show that both boats are sailing westward into the tomb, and thus into the realm of the dead. In the registers below, an enshrined statue of the deceased is dragged on a sled over ground moistened by a man pouring water from a jar. The inscription reads: "[accompanying] the statue to its chamber." In the third register offering bearers march into the tomb. Even the slaughter of oxen in the bottom register is a fitting theme for an entrance corridor, as butchering usually took place outside the tomb. Note that on the right wall the backs of the oxen are shown, while on the left their bound legs face the viewer.

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