Stela

This round-topped wooden stela, painted in hues of blue-green, terracotta red, pale yellow and white, exemplifies the tripartite compositional scheme commonly found in funerary stelae of the period. The lunette, symbolizing the cosmic realm, is decorated with the winged solar disk and two pendant uraei, flanked by the toponym Behedet, “Edfu.” Horizontal register markers, rendered in a colorful ladder-style design, frame the text: “An offering that the king gives (to) Osiris, the foremost of the West, the great god, lord of Abydos: may he give invocation offerings of beer and bread, oxen and fowl.”

The scene occupying the middle section of the stela depicts the deceased, Irtiertjai, wearing a long kilt and standing in an attitude of adoration before Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, Isis and the Four Sons of Horus. Two additional banded register markers frame the larger inscription in the lower section of the stela: “An offering that the king gives (to) Re-Horakhty, the great god, chief of the gods who emerged from the horizon and (to) Atum, lord of Heliopolis, may he give invocation offerings of beer and bread, oxen and fowl, incense, wine and milk for the ka of Osiris and (for) the god’s father of Amun, Irtiertjai, justified, son of the prophet and great stolist Nesnebnetjeru and (lit. born of) Djedhathormin.”