Maati is shown seated in front of the offering table with a jar for the sacred oil in his left hand. The text on this masterpiece of early Middle Kingdom relief art contains references to other figures of the time-such as Maati's overseer, the treasurer Bebi, who later became a vizier, and an ancestor of the ruling family called Intef "the Great"-demonstrating the close ties that bound rulers and followers together in the Theban society of the time.
Htp Di nswt jnp.w tp.j-Dw=f jm.j-wt nb tA Dsr pr.t-xrw xA t' Hnq.t xA kA Apd xA Ss mnx(.t) xA (j)x.t-nb(.t) nfr(.t) t' wab n pr-mnT.w dbH-Htp m pr-Wsjr mrr.t Ax.w wnm jm n jm.j-r'-sbA.w mAa.t(i) Dd
jnk mr.y nb=f Hz.y=f jnk mr.y jm.j-r'=f Xr.j-tp-nswt jm.j-r'-xtm.tj bbj ntf gr.t rDi ssn TA.w m pr nb
pr.t-xrw n jn aA ms jkw Di=f n(=i) Htp.t m Xr.t-nTr m Xr.t-hrw n.t ra(w)-nb
Offering which the king gives (and) Anubis one who is upon his Hill, Imiut, Lord of the Sacred Land, invocation offerings: 1000 (of) bread and beer,1000 (of) cattle and fowl,1000 (of) alabaster and cloth, 1000 (of) every thing good and pure, (and) pure bread of the domain of Montu and a funerary meal from the domain of Osiris, of which the blessed spirits wish to eat, to the Gatekeeper Maati who says:
I am beloved of his lord, his favored I am beloved of his overseer, the royal chamberlain, the overseer of seal-bearers Bebi It is he who gives the breath of air in every domain
Invocation offering for Ini the Great born (of) Iku, so that he may give me offerings in the necropolis in the course of every day
In front of the seated figure:
mAa.tj Maati
Purchased from Mohammed Mohassib in Luxor, 1914.
Winlock, Herbert E. 1915. "The Theban Necropolis in the Middle Kingdom." In American Journal of Semitic Languages, Vol. 32, No. 1 (October), p. 15.
Hayes, William C. 1953. Scepter of Egypt I: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Part I: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Middle Kingdom. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 153, fig. 91.
Hibbard, Howard 1980. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harper & Row, 40, fig. 68.
Freed, Rita 2015. "Stela of the Gatekeeper Maaty." In Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, edited by Adela Oppenheim, Dorothea Arnold, Dieter Arnold, and Kei Yamamoto. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 43–44, no. 2.
Kamrin, Janice 2015. "The Decoration of Elite Tombs: Connecting the Living and the Dead." In Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, edited by Adela Oppenheim, Dorothea Arnold, Dieter Arnold, and Kei Yamamoto. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 28.
Yamamoto, Kei 2015. "The Art of the Stela." In Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, edited by Adela Oppenheim, Dorothea Arnold, Dieter Arnold, and Kei Yamamoto. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 34.
Arnold, Dieter and Dorothea Arnold 2015. "A New Start from the South: Thebes during the Eleventh Dynasty." In Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, edited by Adela Oppenheim, Dorothea Arnold, Dieter Arnold, and Kei Yamamoto. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 41.
#3280. Funerary Stela of the Gatekeeper Maati
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