Offering Table with Two Basins
Unknown · Reign of Senusret III, c. 1856-1838 BC
A flat limestone slab, about half a metre long, with a rectangular spout projecting from one edge. Carved into its surface in raised relief is the hetep sign, a loaf of bread set on a reed mat, the hieroglyph for offering itself. Around it are the foods a spirit would need: loaves of bread, a trussed bird, the foreleg of an ox and a vase. Two hollowed basins were cut to receive the water or wine poured in libation, which then ran off through the spout. Around the edge and between the images run lines of hieroglyphs in sunk relief: an offering formula and a menu of the goods being presented.
Tables of this type stood in the tomb chapel or before a stela, where family or priests placed real food and poured liquid, and where the carved images guaranteed the offerings would continue forever. The style dates the piece to the reign of Senusret the Third, around eighteen hundred and fifty BC, at the height of the Middle Kingdom. It appeared in a public sale in Paris in December eighteen twenty two and was formally entered in the Louvre inventory in nineteen hundred and seven.
Did You Know? The bread loaf on a mat carved at the centre is the hieroglyph hetep, which means both offering and peace.
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