The Menu of Tepemankh
Unknown · Late Fifth to Sixth Dynasty, c. 2478-2250 BC
A man sits before a table piled with tall loaves of bread, his left arm bent across his chest, the other hand reaching for the food. Above and around him a grid of small compartments fills the wall, each holding a word and a number. Read it as what it is: a menu. Bread of many kinds, beer, wine, cuts of beef and poultry, fruit, sweets, oils, all listed with the number of portions, so that the dead man could never go hungry. At the bottom three servants at small scale kneel and hold up vases. The relief is raised, the figures standing proud of the background, and the slab is so thin, barely three centimetres, that it was sawn from the wall of the tomb.
Tepemankh's name and titles are carved above him; he was an official buried in the western cemetery at Giza, in the shadow of the pyramids, around 2300 BC. The offering list is the essential text of an Egyptian tomb chapel: by reading it aloud, a visitor gave the dead the meal it describes. The slab was once in the museum at Hanover, and the Louvre bought it in 1956.
Did You Know? The grid of little boxes above the table is a real menu: each cell names a dish and how many portions the dead man is to receive.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.