Painted Linen Depicting the Priest Tjanefer and his Family before the Goddess Hathor

This painted linen, offered to the goddess Hathor by the priest Tjanefer, weaves together a family history with historical memory. The goddess, shown here in her guise as a cow, shelters in a shrine on the deck of a boat moving through a papyrus marsh. Tjanefer faces her, hands raised in reverence, while three generations of his family, including his wife, children, and mother-in-law, carry gifts for the goddess. Below Hathor’s head is a small figure, identified by a hieroglyphic inscription as the deified Nebhepetre Mentuhotep, founder of the centuries-older Middle Kingdom (ca. 2051–2000 BCE). Like Hathor, Nebhepetre Mentuhotep was honored with his own cult at Deir el-Bahri, and Tjanefer served as a priest in both.

The superb preservation of the textile allows us to see that it was cut from a larger piece of linen. The artist then stiffened and smoothed its surface with huntite (an intensely white mineral), sketched the scene in red and black, and used different colors to fill in the decorative scheme.