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Stela of Imeny
Unknown · Year 3 of Amenemhat II, c. 1900-1865 BC (Twelfth Dynasty)
A narrow stela with a rounded top, broken and mended, carved in two registers. In the upper scene a woman stands behind a seated man, her hand on his shoulder, the classic gesture of a wife accompanying her husband into eternity; she wears a long dress and a wig in three parts. Before the man stands a table of offerings, and a servant with a shaved head waits with his arms at his sides. The hieroglyphs give the date, year three of King Amenemhat II, whose throne name appears in a cartouche, and then the text turns to you. It is an appeal to the living: whoever passes is asked to say the offering prayer for Imeny.
The stela belongs to the Middle Kingdom, around 1900 BC, when private people set up such monuments in the cemeteries and at Abydos so that pilgrims would read their names aloud. Its own story has a twist. It was intact when the Louvre bought it at the Anastasi sale in June 1857, and it was almost certainly broken in the autumn of 1870, when the museum's collections were hurriedly moved for safety during the war.
Did You Know? The stela survived four thousand years in one piece and was then broken in Paris, probably during the war of 1870.
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