Tjenti lintel W491

A lintel from the 5^th Dynasty tomb of Tjenti at Saqqara. You can see Tjenti clasped by his wife on the left. His wife’s name, Ni-ankh-Hathor is given to the far right.

The translation reads:

An offering which the king gives and which Anubis Lord of the sacred Land gives, so that he may be buried in the beautiful and great land of the west. Voice offerings of bread and beer, oxen and fowl on the festival of every day for the Overseer of the Craftsman, Tjenti.  

This is the classic offering formula used throughout Dynastic Egypt. It starts hetep-di-nesu, an 'offering which the king gives.' It first appears on the false door stelae of the Early Dynastic Period, where offerings were made to the deceased. It can be found on many other objects in the Egypt Centre including a stelae from Ptolemaic Edfu.

Hetep means to be satisfied. The king is called upon to make intersession on behalf of his people and thus it is the king who in theory makes the offering.

The Egyptians believed that an image of the deceased would be capable of receiving offerings on his behalf. Images could take the form of staues of stauettes or two dimensional images as here.

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