Stele of Usersatet, Viceroy of Kush
Unknown · Reign of Amenhotep II, c. 1425-1398 BC
Under a winged sun disc and the sign of the sky, King Amenhotep the Second stands in a kilt and the tall atef crown, holding out two round nu vases of wine to three gods. Facing him are Khnum with his sceptre, and the goddesses Satis and Anukis in their distinctive crowns, the divine family of the first cataract of the Nile. The figures are carved in raised relief, while the columns of hieroglyphs above and below are cut into the stone. The text gives the king's names and an offering formula, and then the traditional biography of the man who set up the stele, Usersatet, viceroy of Kush.
The viceroy of Kush was the king's governor over Nubia, one of the most powerful posts in the empire, and Usersatet held it under Amenhotep the Second around fourteen hundred and twenty BC. The stele, over a metre high, stood in the first court of the temple at Amara West in Sudanese Nubia, where British excavations recovered it in the late nineteen thirties. It came to the Louvre in nineteen forty through the division of finds, one of the few large monuments in Paris from the Egyptian empire in the south.
Did You Know? The stele was set up not in Egypt but deep in Nubia, at Amara West in what is now Sudan, where the king's viceroy governed in his name.
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