Stela of Irtysen
Unknown · Reign of Mentuhotep II, c. 2045-1994 BC (Eleventh Dynasty)
A limestone slab with a rounded top, cut in two registers. Above, a couple stand together, the wife's hand on her husband's shoulder, and receive a procession of relatives: men in kilts with triangular aprons and curled wigs, holding staffs and sceptres, one offering a duck, another the foreleg of an ox. Below, the couple sit at the funerary meal before a table of bread, the man breathing the scent from a vase, a mirror beside them. The images are conventional. The text is not.
Irtysen calls himself an overseer of craftsmen, and his inscription is the only surviving statement by an Egyptian artist about his art. He says he knows the secrets of the hieroglyphs and the ritual, and the recipes for colours that neither fire nor water will destroy. He can render the walk of a woman, the pose of a captive, the raised arm of a harpooner, the fear on a prisoner's face, and he has passed this knowledge to his eldest son. He wrote this under Mentuhotep II, who reunited Egypt around 2040 BC, and the stela probably stood at Abydos. The Louvre bought it at the Erard sale in 1838.
Did You Know? Irtysen boasts that he knows how to make colours that neither fire will consume nor water wash away, and that he told the secret only to his eldest son.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.