Relief Fragment Depicting Merettetiiyet with Offerings
Date:
First Intermediate Period, Dynasty 10, about 2050 BCE
Artist:
Egyptian; offering niche of Merettetiiyet, Teti Pyramid Cemetery, Saqqara, Egypt
About this artwork
This pair of panels (along with 1910.224) was part of a painted offering niche designed for a woman named Meret-Teti-iyet. The fragmentary upper scenes depict people bringing offerings to sustain her in the afterlife. Meret-Teti-iyet sits behind piles of food at the bottom of each panel, facing approaching visitors. On this panel, she holds a closed lotus blossom on her lap; on the other one, she sniffs an open lotus flower. The lotus, which opens with the rising sun and sinks beneath the water at night, was a symbol of renewal and rebirth in ancient Egypt.
Relief Fragment Depicting Merettetiiyet with Offerings
Place
Saqqara (Object made in)
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Inscriptions across panel: "The Beloved Lady of (King) Teti Comes"; the revered in the presence of Anubis, him who is upon his mountain, the embalmer, Merettetiyiyet."; "
1000 loaves of bread, 1000 jars of beer, 1000 oxen, 1000 geese, for the revered one, Merettetiyiyet"; "lassoing an ox".
Dimensions
73.4 × 57 × 12 cm (28 7/8 × 22 7/16 × 4 3/4 in.)
Credit Line
W. Moses Willner Fund
Reference Number
1910.223
IIIF Manifest
The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.
Art Institute of Chicago, Thirty-second Annual Report: June 1, 1910–June 1, 1911 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1911), pp. 19, 62.
J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1906-1907) (Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1908), pp. 18, 73, pl. X.2 (ill.).
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1923), pp. 29, 30 (ill.), 31-32, 35, 39 notes 1-2.
C. Ransom Williams, “Review: The Chicago Art Institute Egyptian Collection,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 41, 3 (April 1925), p. 204-05.
Bertha Porter and Rosalind L.B. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings. III: Memphis. Part 2: Saqqâra to Dahshûr, 2nd ed. (Griffith Institute/Ashmolean Museum, 1981), p. 563.
Nadine Cherpion, Mastabas et hypogées d’ancien empire: le problème de la datation (Connaissance de l’Égypte Ancienne, 1989), pp. 153, 164, 170, 175, 177, 230, 240.
Khaled Abdulla Daoud, Corpus of Inscriptions of the Herakleopolitan Period from the Memphite Necropolis: Translation, Commentary and Analyses (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2005), 164–65; 326, pl. XCIV.
Khaled Daoud, Necropoles Memphiticae: Inscriptions from the Herakleopolitan Period (Alexandria: Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 2011), 304-306, fig. 115.
Art Institute of Chicago, Life and Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, Feb. 11, 2022 - present.
The Art Institute of Chicago, acquired in 1910.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.
