Stele of Minnakht
Unknown · Year 4 of Ay, c. 1320-1310 BC
Nearly one and a half metres high, this round topped limestone stele is almost entirely covered in hieroglyphs. In the lunette at the top two jackals of the god Wepwawet, the opener of the ways, lie facing each other on pedestals with cornices, each wearing a collar. Below them the text runs in long horizontal lines, cut into the stone and once filled with yellow paint that still shows in places. It opens with the full titulary of the king and a date, year four, then continues with an offering formula and an appeal to the living, asking everyone who passes to speak the prayer for the owner, a man named Minnakht.
The king is Ay, who reigned only briefly after Tutankhamun around thirteen twenty BC, so the stele is one of the rare monuments dated to his reign. The prayer asks the gods of south and north and Anubis on his mountain that Minnakht be blessed in the sky, powerful on earth and justified in the cemetery, the three worlds an Egyptian hoped to inhabit after death. The stele came to the Louvre in eighteen twenty seven with the collection of Bernardino Drovetti, the French consul in Egypt.
Did You Know? The text is dated to year four of King Ay, the elderly courtier who took the throne after Tutankhamun and ruled for barely four years.
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