This stela, originally placed in a tomb or a memorial chapel, commemorates a man named Amenemhat and his mother Yatu.^[1] It is divided into three zones: a lunette with two wedjat eyes above four incised lines of hieroglyphic text on a yellow field; a scene depicting Amenemhat and Yatu on a white background; and an undecorated area at the bottom. The composition is bound on the top and sides by rectangular blocks of yellow, red, and blue, separated by bands of white.^[2] While the blue areas have now faded to nearly gray, visible-induced luminescence imaging reveals where Egyptian blue pigment was applied (fig. 1). The round holes at the top left and right of the stela appear to be modern.1

The lunette of this type of stela is usually decorated with symbols of divine protection, in this case, two wedjat eyes—eyes with the stylized markings of a falcon that convey health and wholeness.2

The overall composition is roughly symmetrical and balanced. Yatu and Amenemhat sit facing each other on yellow chairs with feet carved in the shape of feline paws raised on spools. The low backrests are draped with white fabric. Both chairs stand on a mat, indicated by the gray surface with banding.3

Mother and son are shown with long, thin arms. Yatu’s face has little contour. The flare of her nostrils and her mouth are indicated by lines of red pigment. The top of her oversized eye is traced in black. She wears a white gown with a deep V-neck. Although the straps of the gown would probably have covered her breast, according to the conventions of Egyptian art, her breast is shown as an essential signifier of her gender. She wears a collar represented in red paint, and wide, beaded bracelets and anklets that are carved and painted white. The tresses of her tripartite hairstyle fall to her midchest. Her flesh is yellow, the color traditionally associated with women to differentiate them from men, who, as in the image of her son, have dark reddish-brown flesh. These color differences are probably indications of their ideal relative realms inside and outside the house. She sniffs a lotus (lily), a symbol of rebirth. Her left hand is inverted with the thumb positioned downward, another convention of Egyptian art (see cat. 1).4

Amenemhat is shown with a sharp nose and a large eye; his mouth is indicated by a ridge suggesting a sharply protruding upper lip. He has a short, round coiffeur and wears a white double kilt: an opaque, knee-length underkilt and a longer overkilt of finer—and hence, more transparent—linen. His collar, with traces of blue pigment, and his beaded bracelets, are indicated in shallow carving. Amenemhat holds a flail, a sign of rank, against his chest with his right hand; in his left hand he grasps what is probably a folded cloth, a sign of his refinement.^[3] His hands are shown anatomically correctly, with both thumbs on the top.5

The symmetry of the scene is emphasized by jars that appear under each chair. A flat-topped ointment container with flaring sides (for an example of this type of vessel, see cat. 55) sits under her chair, and a rare representation of a high-shouldered jar for kohl (eye paint) (for an example of this type of jar, see cat. 56) with an applicator stick is under her son’s seat.^[4] The blue pigment used on the kohl jar was likely selected in order to suggest that it was made of anhydrate limestone, a material favored for cosmetic vessels at this time. The stack of offerings in the center of the scene also adds to the symmetry. Five burnished, red vessels of varying shapes are depicted on the surface of a table that is supported on a stout pedestal. Two additional horizontal ground lines appear above it. In Egyptian art, objects rarely overlap, in order to present each one in its clearest and most recognizable form. Distance from the viewer is indicted by its vertical position in the composition, and so the objects on the top of the stack are to be understood to be behind those below them, and thus farther away from the viewer (for another example of this convention, see cat. 10). The lines underneath these objects represent the table surface, indicating that they were clustered on the front, middle, and back of the single table. Offerings on the upper “levels” include pieces of meat on the bone, a leg of beef, oval yellow squashes, round loaves of bread, and red cups on stands topped with lily flowers.6

The stela can be dated to late Dynasty 12–early Dynasty 13 because of the shape of the flail held by Amenemhat.^[5]7

Texts

On this stela, the texts are confined to the section above the images of the stela owners (fig. 2), rather than being placed near and around their figures (compare to cats. 1 and 7). The text is a funerary prayer that calls upon the king and Osiris to grant offerings to Amenemhat and his mother Yatu: “An offering that the king gives and which Osiris, Lord of the Life of the Two Lands, gives that he may give a voice offering of bread and beer, oxen and fowl, alabaster, clothing, and every good and pure thing upon which [the god] lives for the ka of the Retainer Amenemhat, justified, born of Yatu, justified, [and for] his beloved mother, Yatu, justified, born of Tita, justified.” Osiris’s epithet, Lord of the Life of the Two Lands, is associated with Memphis, so there is a possibility that this stela is from that area.^[6]
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Women in Egyptian Art and Society

Women are prominently featured in Egyptian art, reflecting their position as full members of society with the same legal rights as men. The relative rank of Yatu over her son, a function of both her age and the reverence her son has for her, is expressed by showing her on the left side of the stela, facing right, the dominant position in such a composition. She is named twice in the text, initially as the mother of Amenemhat and again as the recipient of funerary offerings. Her husband, Amenemhat’s father, is not mentioned; in her own filiation, only her own mother’s name, Tita, is given. In the Middle Kingdom, particular emphasis was placed upon family groupings; this memorial stresses the relationship of a mother and her son, rather than a wife to her husband. In the text, both mother and son are described as justified—that is, deceased—and as recipients of funerary provisions.9

Middle Kingdom Stelae

This stela exhibits many characteristics of Middle Kingdom funerary reliefs. In that period, the round top began to supplant the flat tops of the rectangular stelae of the Old Kingdom. The protective wedjat eyes are also a feature of stelae beginning in the Middle Kingdom.^[7] The technique of shallow sunk relief, in which hieroglyphs are carved without interior modeling or painted detail, is commonly found on monuments of the Middle Kingdom.^[8] The use of a truncated hieroglyph—here, the usual sign of a seated man with his hand at his mouth 𓀁 is written in the third and fourth lines without a lower body in the writing of Yatu’s name—is also a feature of Middle Kingdom orthography.^[9] This abbreviation more commonly appears with animal hieroglyphs (especially snakes and quail chicks), for it was believed that “mutilating” those animals could prevent them from either harming the deceased or eating the funerary offerings. However, here, only the human sign in Yatu’s name is truncated, suggesting that the abbreviated form may be the result of converting the original text, which was probably written in cursive hieroglyphs, into the more detailed signs employed on stelae.^[10] In this case, the scribe may have carved the two hieroglyphs based on the simpler, cursive original.10

Provenance

The Art Institute of Chicago, acquired in Egypt, 1892.11

Publication History

Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 37, 38 (ill.), 39–40, 91n1.12

Emily Teeter, Karen B. Alexander, and Mary Greuel, Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World: Egypt, Greece, Italy, with contributions by Edmund Barry Gaither et al., teacher manual (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2001), 13, 17–20.13

Jaromír Málek, Elizabeth Fleming, Alison Hobby, and Diane Magee, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Statues, Reliefs and Paintings, vol. 8, Objects of Provenance Not Known, pt. 3, Stelae (Early Dynastic Period to Dynasty XVII) (Oxford: Griffith Institute 2007), 139, no. 803-028-560.14

Ashley F. Arico, “Reading Ancient Egyptian Art: A Curator Answers Common Questions,” Art Institute of Chicago ARTicle (blog), July 14, 2020.
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