Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
A Cycle of Hymns to Senwosret III
Middle Kingdom
Not on view
This object is not part of The Met collection. It was in the Museum for a special exhibition and has been returned to the lender.
The cycle of hymns found in an elite mansion testifies to the author’s—and the owner’s—loyalty to the king as guarantor of order, prosperity, and security.
The beginning of hymn 1, calling the king by his throne name and his name as incarnation of the god Horus:
Salutations to you Khakaure, our Horus Godlike of Transformations
Who has protected the land, and has extended the borders . . .
Lo, he is an overflowing shade,
cool in the summer! . . .
Lo, he is a warm corner,
dry in the wintertime!
(translations: William Kelly Simpson, in The Literature of Ancient Egypt [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003], p. 302, and Richard B. Parkinson, in Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom [New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015], p. 187)
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