The Art of Ancient Egypt | Publications for Educators | Explore & Learn

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Tomb of Perneb
Saqqara, end of Dynasty 5, ca. 2465-2323 B.C.
Limestone (partially painted), h. 16 ft. 7/8 in.
Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1913
13.183.3

When the numbered stones arrived at the Museum, the staff rebuilt the tomb at the entrance to the Egyptian galleries. You can go inside the rooms and examine the carvings on the offering-chamber walls and the painted scenes in the antechamber and entrance passage.

The Egyptians thought of a tomb as the eternal dwelling place for the deceased. With its doors and window, Perneb's tomb imitated ancient mud-brick houses. (Such houses are still built in Egypt today.) Note the rectangular niche that frames the central door, which leads into the offering chamber. On both sides of the door low-relief carvings of Perneb face the entrance. The images retain faint traces of the original paint. Over the two figures' heads hieroglyphic inscriptions, their red pigment now barely visible, list Perneb's titles as chamberlain and courtier to the king.

The carvings within the offering chamber, which preserve much more of the original color, portray mortuary priests and men carrying offerings of food and drink toward Perneb, who sits before an offering table in a pose similar to that of the seated official in the stela of a Middle Kingdom official. On the far wall is a carving of a false door through which the Egyptians believed the spirit of the deceased could pass in order to receive the offerings. The hieroglyphs that surround it record Perneb's status among the blessed dead as a gift of the king and the gods.

The doorway on the right was the original entrance into the courtyard and tomb, since the walls projecting on the right and left sides originally abutted against the wall of another mastaba that blocked the courtyard on what is now the open front side. In the chamber on the left a small opening in the back wall provides a view into an inner chamber called a serdab. Here, originally, a wooden statue of Perneb was placed. Through the opening in the wall the statue could smell the aroma of incense that was burned in the front room. This arrangement reminds us that, in the Old Kingdom, statues of nonroyal persons were not made to be seen but to provide a place of materialization for the deceased's spirit. (See the plan of Perneb's tomb.)

Notice: doors, windows

Discuss: function of the chambers, how the stones were cut to fit together, what the shape was for both solids and voids (the rectangle), what the front of the tomb resembles and why, why Egyptians still build houses with thick walls and small windows