Jar label fragment
New Kingdom
Not on view
Thousands of fragmentary storage jars were discovered during the Museum’s excavations at Malqata, a palace city built by Amenhotep III for the celebration of his 30-year festival (heb-sed). Many of the shoulder fragments have labels written in hieratic script, a cursive form of hieroglyphs. The texts frequently note the jar’s contents: wine, ale, fat, meat, etc. They also may provide the date, source, donor, and maker of the commodity as well as the occasion (the king’s heb-sed).
This label states that the original jar held wine bottled in year 37 of Amenhotep’s reign. The wine came from one of the king’s estates in the western Delta (in northern Egypt). The name of the vintner is broken off.
