The Date of Metjetji

Edward Brovarski
Brookline, Massachussets

D avid Silverman and I first became acquainted as students at the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago in 1966, where we experienced together the joys and tribulations
of graduate life. Subsequently, along with my wife, Del Nord, we traveled abroad together to
France, Italy, Poland, and Russia and shared numerous happy social occasions. As a colleague,
I have admired his contributions to all aspects of the field of Egyptology, in particular art and
philology, as well as his teaching skills which have produced such fine graduates in Egyptology
as the two editors of the present volume. The interests we have shared led us to serve as co-
directors of the Joint Bersheh Expedition of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the University
Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, and Leiden University (1990) (along with Rita E.
Freed, Réne van Walsem, and Harco Willems), as well as one field season (1992) of the Joint
Epigraphic Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston (together with Rita Freed). These experiences only honed our friendship. It is a
particular pleasure to be able to contribute an essay to a volume in honor of a fellow student,
esteemed colleague, and good friend of over 40 years.
In a recent article entitled ‘A Second Style in Egyptian Art of the Old Kingdom,’ Edna
R. Russmann examines in detail Egyptian sculpture made during the course of late Old
Kingdom.1 In the article, Russman dates the statues of Metjetji and the beginning of the
‘second style’ in sculpture to the reign of King Unas, or slightly later. The date is largely based
on the occurrence of the phrase imAxw xr Wnis on Metjetji’s false door.2 Earlier Baer thought
for the same reason that Metjetji was probably a contemporary of Unas, although he assigned
his tomb to the reign of Teti.3 On stylistic grounds, Harpur has provisionally dated Metjetji’s
tomb to the time of Pepy I.4 Lately, Peter Munro has down-dated the same statues to the late
Heracleopolitan Period or early Middle Kingdom. I find it difficult to believe that Metjetji
lived at so late a date, although Munro has marshaled an impressive host of arguments in sup-
port of his dating.5

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As the point of departure for of his article, Munro takes Altenmüller’s persuasive argumenta-
tion, in regard to seven other occurrences of the epithet imAxw xr Wnis from the Unas Pyramid
Cemetery at Saqqara, that King Unas in all these instances was represented as a deified ruler.6
Even so, in Munro’s opinion, Altenmüller’s date for the seven tomb owners, still within the Sixth
Dynasty, is too early. Munro thinks instead that the individuals concerned, as well as the propri-
etors of two other tombs subsequently excavated by him, who bore the same epithet, belong to
the First Intermediate Period, the Heracleopolitan Period, Dynasty Six or even Dynasty Twelve.
If these nine individuals can be shown to belong to these periods, then this would constitute
strong corroborative evidence that Metjetji was as late.
The names of the nine individuals and Munro’s reasons for dating them are as follows:

1. Hormeru: Mereri:7
In all likelihood late First Intermediate Period, if not the Eleventh Dynasty.
Munro bases his dating primarily on the form of a second false door found in a shaft of
Hormeru’s tomb complex and seemingly belonging to the latter.8 This false door is different
from the false door discovered by Hassan. A curious feature of the second false door is the form
of the ‘inverted T-shaped’ panel (see below).
Munro also notes two palaeographical criteria for dating the false door. The first of these
is the 45-degree-rotation of the city-sign in imy-wt.9 Citing Fischer, Munro observes that this
form of the sign is infrequently encountered, and then mostly in the First Intermediate Period
and the Eleventh Dynasty, although it probably goes back into the latest Sixth Dynasty.10
The second palaeographic criterion is the form of the tA-sign in nb tA-Dsr with only two
oval (‘hochovaler’) points.11 Munro references Junker12 who cites two examples of this feature
in the coffins of Meryib, 13 Irenakhty, 14 and Idu II15 from Giza as well as later examples from
the Heracleopolitan Period coffin of Gemni-em-hat: Gemni from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery
at Saqqara.16

2. Iyenhor:17
On grounds of the location near and the close structural relationship with Ny-anx-Ppy/
Mryra, the tomb is to be dated at earliest in the Heracleopolitan Period, if not the Eleventh
Dynasty.18

3. Ni-ankh-pepy/meryre: 19
Late First Intermediate Period, if not Eleventh Dynasty (see below).

4. Iy:
On the basis of the type of ‘true rock-cut tomb,’ fairly certainly First Intermediate Period.

5. Iarty: 20
First Intermediate Period. On his false door, Iarty is imAxw mAa-xrw xr nTr aA. Munro
observes that the designation mAa-xrw (once with the addition of xr nTr) is found in the Old
Kingdom only in connection with the ruler (Pyr. 354a, 356c, 357c, 361c, 929a, 935a), whereas
in the Middle Kingdom it is a common designation of the non-royal deceased, especially in the
Coffin Texts.21

6. Ankhi:22

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Date not absolutely certain. The overly slim figures of the deceased and his wife, the absence
of ground and register lines, as well as further typological peculiarities, and the location of the
grave near that of Iarty argue for a date after the Sixth Dynasty.

7. Khenu I: 23
Definitely Twelfth Dynasty (see below).

8. Ihy:
The false door of Ihy is typologically unremarkable and, over and above that, worked with no
quality. Its find spot directly east of the tomb of Ptahshepses: Impy along with the surrounding
structures argues for a date in the late First Intermediate Period.24

9. Khenu II:
On account of the architectural relationship of their tombs, that of Khenu II is probably only
a little later than that of Khenu I.

As may be seen from the footnotes, only three of the tombs (or in Iarty and Ankhi’s cases a
false door) are published in whole or in part. Otherwise, the monuments concerned are largely
unpublished.
Even the date of those tombs or false doors that have been published is difficult to assess, but
I find it hard to believe that the majority among them are as late as Munro suggests. It is possible
that certain of the tombs in the northwest section of the Unas Pyramid Cemetery postdate the
reign of Pepy II. One of them — that of Unas-ha-ishetef — may be as late as the end of the
Old Kingdom (Dynasty Eight) or even conceivably belong to the early Heracleopolitan Period
(Dynasty Nine) (see Excursus B).
Part of the difficulty in dating these tombs is the absence of closely dated comparative mate-
rial in the Memphite cemeteries between the reign of Pepy II at the end of the Sixth Dynasty and
that of King Merikare at the end of the Tenth. In the following paragraphs, we will review the
evidence regarding the dating of six of the tombs or false doors whose owners bear the epithet
imAxw xr Wnis and which have been published in whole or in part. These are the tombs or false
doors of Hermeru: Mereri, Iyenhor, Ni-ankh-pepy/meryrea, Iarty, Ankhi, and Khenu I. We will
then proceed to a discussion of the validity of Munro’s other criteria for assigning Metjetji to
the Heracleopolitan Period, and finally to a review of the material coming from Metjetji’s chapel
that may shed light on his date.

1. Hermeru: Mereri
According to Munro, the tomb of Hermeru dates in all likelihood to the late First
Intermediate Period, if not the Eleventh Dynasty.
In the Sixth Dynasty, the false door with cornice, torus moulding, and three pairs of jambs
of equal length, each with a similar disposition of texts and jamb figures of equal height, became
the standard type for all officials.25 This is certainly true of the viziers of Teti and Pepy I buried
in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara, 26 with a single exception.27 It is also true of the false
doors of the viziers Mehu and his son Meryre-ankh, who were entombed in the Unas Pyramid
Cemetery close-by.28 In all these cases the doorjambs bear six youthful figures of the deceased
carrying a staff and scepter. Mehu in all likelihood served in office in the early/middle part of
the reign of Pepy I, while Meryre-ankh was probably in office in the early reign of Pepy II.29 A

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number of false doors from the early reign of Pepy II exhibit the standard arrangement of jambs,
but thereafter there are extensive changes in the format of the false door.30
These changes include the depiction of persons other than the owner on the jambs of the
false door. A handful of false doors incorporate representations of the deceased’s wife or fam-
ily on the jambs.31 An even smaller number show thurifers or offering bearers on the jambs
in conjunction with the figures of the deceased. The false door of Hermeru found by Selim
Hassan belongs to the latter class of false doors, although the subordinate figures before the
deceased are damaged and it is unclear whether they burn incense before or make offering to
the deceased or possibly both. The only other example of this class of false doors is that of Sefget
from Saqqara that shows a figure offering a fowl to the deceased on one jamb of the false door.32
The latter false door clearly dates to the Sixth Dynasty, but it is no easy matter to narrow the
date.33 Nonetheless, this feature seems to indicate that Hermeru’s and Sefget’s false doors are at
least as late as the early reign of Pepy II.
Another iconographic feature supports this conclusion. The decorative scheme on Hermeru’s
false door panel consists of two tall storage vessels, one with basketwork flaps, placed at the level
of the half-loaves on the offering table, plus a lettuce set on top of the nested ewer and basin
below. Beginning seemingly in the early part of the reign of Pepy II, the content of table scenes
begins to be simplified and is commonly confined to the seated figure of the deceased, a table
of bread, and a single nested ewer and basin, the latter either resting on a small table or not.34
As in Hermeru’s case, an array of offerings may appear on the right side of the panel.35 Even
though a lettuce is placed on top of the ewer and basin, Hermeru’s false door panel is probably
representative of the simplified form of decoration just described.36 This supposition is in all
probability confirmed by the table scene on the panel of Hermeru’s wife, Wadjkaues, which is
indeed confined to the seated figure of the deceased, a table of bread, and a single nested ewer
and basin.37
A curious feature of the second false door found in a shaft of Hermeru’s mastaba is the form
of the ‘inverted T-shaped’ panel with the table scene on the crossbar rather than the bar of the
‘T.’ An inverted T-shaped panel appears as early as the first part of the reign of Pepy II in the
tomb of the overseer of priests Ni-ankh-pepy: Hepi the Black at Meir.38 Towards the end of
the Old Kingdom another example appears in the tomb of the nomarch Henqu: Kheteti at
Deir el-Gebrawi.39 Other examples also seem to date to the reign of Pepy II or the late Old
Kingdom.40 In all these instances, the crossbar of the ‘T’ is rather small. A closer parallel for
Hermeru’s false door derives from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara and belongs to a man
named Inenikai: Tjetji41, who again belongs to the reign of Pepy II or the late Old Kingdom.42
Although the proportions of the bar and cross bar of Inenikai: Tjetji’s false door are not the
same, like Hermeru’s second false door, that of Inenikai: Tjetji has a table scene on the crossbar
and an inscription on the bar of the ‘T.’43
As far as the two palaeographical criteria cited by Munro are concerned. The first of these is
the 45-degree-rotation of the city-sign in imy-wt. The 45-degree-rotation of the city-sign may
be more frequently encountered in the First Intermediate Period and the Eleventh Dynasty, but
Fischer also cites examples that go back into the latest Sixth Dynasty.44
The second palaeographic criterion is the form of the tA-sign in nb tA Dsr with only two oval
(‘hochovaler’) points. Munro references Junker who cites examples of this feature in the coffins of
Meryib, Irenakhty, and Idu II from Giza as well as later examples from the Heracleopolitan Period
coffin of Gemni-em-hat: Gemni from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara. In fact, according
to Günther Lapp, the coffins of Meryib and Idu belong to the Sixth Dynasty coffin type.45

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The Date of Metjetji

Thus, neither of the palaeographic criteria cited by Munro can be used with any certainty
to assign the second false door of Hermeru to the late First Intermediate Period or the Eleventh
Dynasty. Instead, the stylistic and iconographic parallels to the other monuments cited above
suggest that Hermeru lived at the end of the Sixth Dynasty or in the period immediately fol-
lowing.

2. Iyenhor
On grounds of the location near and the close structural relationship with the tomb of
Ni-ankh-pepy/meryre, Munro thinks the tomb of Iyenhor is to be dated at earliest in the
Heracleopolitan Period, if not the Eleventh Dynasty. Both Ni-ankh-pepy’s and Iyenhor’s burial
places fall into the category of what Munro calls the ‘genuine rock-cut tomb.’ 46 Munro thinks
rock-cut tombs of this type belong to the Heracleopolitan Period or Eleventh Dynasty. This
category includes not only the tombs of Ni-ankh-pepy and Hermeru but also those of Iyenhor
and Iy (No. 4 in the list above). Because he dates these tombs so late, it is an important part of
Munro’s argumentation to show that the tombs of Qar and Idu at Giza (G 7101 and 7102) —
which Munro also includes in the category of ‘genuine rock-cut tombs’ — and which are gener-
ally thought to belong to the reign of Pepy II — date to the Heracleopolitan Period as well.47
But this flies in the face of much evidence to the contrary, as will be seen in the ensuing pages.
Iyenhor’s false door has the type of arrangement standard in the Sixth Dynasty with cornice,
torus moulding, and three pairs of jambs of equal length, each with a similar disposition of texts
and six jamb figures of equal height, each a youthful figure of the deceased carrying a staff and
scepter (see page 87). We have already seen that this standard type of arrangement continued in
use down to the early part of the reign of Pepy II. On this basis alone, the false door of Iyenhor
is unlikely to be later than the early reign of Pepy II. The decorative scheme of the false door
panel which shows a nested ewer and basin (on a groundline) coupled with four hezet-jars in a
rack again argues that Iyenhor’s false door is unlikely to be later than the first half of the reign of
Pepy II. One or two nested ewers and basins resting on a service table (or not) and coupled with
a jar rack containing hezet- and/or qebeh-vessels are regular elements in the false door panels of
viziers and other officials from the middle of the reign of King Teti.48 They continue to appear
in table scenes on false door panels down to at least the first half of the reign of Pepy II.49
The palaeography of Iyenhor’s false door also provides clues to its date. For example, the
writing of five thousands of fowl in the ideographic offering list alongside the offering table is
attested in monuments from the reign of Pepy II and the late Old Kingdom.50

3. Ni-ankh-pepy/meryre
According to Munro, Ni-ankh-pepy/meryre in all likelihood belongs to the late
Heracleopolitan Period or to the Eleventh Dynasty.51 The statues of Ni-ankh-pepy exemplify
the ultimate degradation of Old Kingdom style.52 In my opinion, they bear no relationship
whatsoever, conceptual or otherwise, to the Middle Kingdom block statues of Ihy and Hetep53
(no matter what their derivation54) as Munro claims.55
On the basis of Barta’s scheme56 for the orientation of the inscriptions of wooden coffins
of Old to Middle Kingdom date, Munro assigns the coffin of Ni-ankh-pepy to the period
between Dynasty Nine/Ten and early Dynasty Eleven.57 On the other hand, Günter Lapp in
his comprehensive study of coffins and burial chambers from the Sixth to Thirteenth Dynasties,
dates Ni-ankh-pepy’s coffin to Dynasties Seven-Eight.58 Unlike Sixth Dynasty coffins, but
like two other coffins assigned by Lapp to the late Old Kingdom — those of Unas-akhi and

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Ptahemhat from Saqqara — the coffin of Ni-ankh-pepy has an object frieze on the west side.
As Lapp observes, the decoration of the inner west side of the three coffins is very likely taken
over from the corresponding wall of the burial chambers of the reign of Pepy II and later from
South Saqqara.59 Lapp further notes that the exterior decoration of the three coffins does not
otherwise deviate from the scheme of decoration of Sixth Dynasty coffins.60 All of this clearly
indicates that Ni-ankh-pepy’s coffin is not as late as Munro suggests.
In the bottom of the coffin, the body of Ni-ankh-pepy lay on a low wooden bedstead.61
Selim Hassan quotes E. A. Wallis Budge, who refers to ‘wooden grids’ of similar type found
in wooden coffins at Asyut.62 Munro is not correct, however, in asserting that no graves are
attested at Asyut before Heracleopolitan times.63 The graves excavated by the French mission
at that site do indeed belong to the Heracleopolitan Period or later.64 Nevertheless, there are a
number of coffins of Old Kingdom date in the British Museum from Hogarth’s excavations at
Asyut in 1907, and Budge may well have been referring to these burials.65 A funerary bed of
Twelfth Dynasty date is mentioned and illustrated by Chassinat and Palanque, but this is rather
different in form from Ni-ankh-pepy’s ‘bedstead.’66 In his preliminary report on Hogarth’s
excavations at Asyut, Donald Ryan actually refers to a ‘grille for the body to rest on’ from a
tomb containing two Sixth Dynasty coffins.67 The tomb also contained ‘XIIth Dynasty’ coffin
fragments, so it is impossible to be absolutely certain whether the grille derived from the later
or the original burial. Nevertheless, the word ‘grille’ would seem to correspond more closely to
the bedstead of Ni-ankh-pepy, which is composed of two long beams to which are fixed twenty-
four wooden slats set at right angles to the beams68, than the Twelfth Dynasty bed which looks
more like a low bed with six plain legs.
Fischer in his review of Selim Hassan’s Excavations at Saqqara notes that the beams of
Ni-ankh-pepy’s bedstead are inscribed with a brief series of funerary texts otherwise unknown
in non-royal tombs of the Old Kingdom.69 Lapp remarks that the funerary texts on the bed-
stead are in fact attested on another coffin and are thus to be added with certainty to the Coffin
Texts.70 In the present context, it is important to note that the presence of Coffin Texts on
Ni-ankh-pepy’s bedstead does not preclude a late Old Kingdom date for his burial, since Coffin
Texts, albeit extremely fragmentary, are now known to appear on a coffin of a private individual
of probable late Sixth Dynasty date from Dakhla Oasis (see Excursus A).71
Fischer has observed that the first person singular suffix pronoun in Ni-ankh-pepy’s texts is

written and the independent pronoun is . Both of these features (like the use

of for the first person singular suffix pronoun after dative in the tomb of Khenu
I) are first attested in the Eighth Dynasty Pyramid Texts of King Ibi.72 They thus seemingly
provide a terminus ante quem non for Ni-ankh-pepy’s burial at the end of the Old Kingdom (but
see Excursus A). Nevertheless, they do not, in and of themselves, date Ni-ankh-pepy’s tomb to
either the Heracleopolitan Period or the Eleventh Dynasty.
In passing, it may be noted that Munro’s statement the effect that , the name of a son of
Ni-ankh-pepy, is not known before the First Intermediate Period is incorrect.73 The name is
attested for men74 and women75 alike already in the Old Kingdom.

5. Iarty
On his false door, Iarty is twice clearly imAxw mAa-xrw xr nTr aA. Munro observes the desig-
nation mAa-xrw (once with the addition xr nTr is used in the Old Kingdom only in connection

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The Date of Metjetji

with the ruler (Pyr. 354a, 356c, 357c, 361c, 929a, 935a).76 On the other hand, as a common
addition to the name of the non-royal dead mAa-xrw is first used in the Coffin Texts of Middle
Kingdom date.
In fact, as an epithet after the name of the deceased mAa-xrw is already utilized in the tomb
of Ankhtify of Moalla in Dynasty IX.77 Regardless, the later use of mAa-xrw as an epithet after
the name of the deceased, has nothing to do with the date of Iarty‘s false door. Some years ago
Anthes pointed out the limited occurrences of mAa-xrw known to him in private contexts in the
Old Kingdom.78 These include [Link] tp(w)-awy, a salute given to the dead by the Overseer
of Scribes Khuu-wer79 and the inscription on an architrave of the like entitled Werirenptah80,
in which the dead are called imAxwy mAa-xrw . . . xr nTr aA. The latter phrase parallels that on
Iarty‘s false door quite closely. In addition to these, there is the occurrence of the wish mAa xrw.f
xr nTr aA on a relief of Bia: Ireri.81
The tombs of both Khuu-wer and Werirenptah belong to the Fifth Dynasty.82 A Bia with
the title Sps nswt appears in the tomb of the vizier Mehu and again in the chapel of Mehu’s
son, Meryre-ankh. As Fischer observes, Sps nswt is the first of the pair of titles that regularly
accompany Bia‘s name in his own inscriptions and, given the rarity of the name, there can be
no doubt about the identity of the two individuals.83 In the father’s tomb, the name Bia and
the titles Sps nswt, imy-xt Hmw-kA are carved over an earlier erased name84, and Bia may have
acquired this title after the demise of Mehu. The title and the name Bia in Meryre-ankh’s tomb
appears to be part of the original decoration85, which implies that Bia was a contemporary of
the later. Thus, the occurrence of the epithet mAa xrw xr nTr aA on Iarty’s false door is not an
indication of First Intermediate Period date.
There is nothing in particular in the decoration of Iarty‘s false door that would point to a
date later than the Sixth Dynasty. The door is surmounted by a cavetto cornice and framed by
a torus moulding. It has three pairs of jambs of equal length, each with a similar disposition of
texts and figures of the deceased of equal height and each holding a staff and scepter. According
to Nigel Strudwick, this type of door had gradually been introduced for high officials in the
later Fifth Dynasty and became the standard type for all officials in the Sixth Dynasty. A similar
pattern was followed down to the early part of the reign of Pepy II. On the panel, a rack with
hezet-jars on the side of the table of bread closest to the deceased is balanced by a nested ewer
and basin, set on a baseline opposite. This decorative scheme was common from about the
middle of the reign of King Teti and continued in use until at least the end of the Sixth Dynasty
(see page 89).

6. Ankhi
As is the case with Iarty, on his false door Ankhi is imAxw mAa- xrw (xr PtH).
Ankhi’s false door is essentially identical in form with Iarty’s and has three pairs of jambs of
equal length, each with a similar disposition of texts and figures of the deceased of equal height
and each holding a staff and scepter. The scene on the panel of Ankhi’s false door is different
from Iarty’s, however. Ankhi sits at a table of bread, but instead of a nested ewer and basin and
hezet-jars in a rack on opposite of the offering table in the latter false door panel, in Ankhi’s panel
there are two nested ewers and basins set on a low rectangular service table, the latter centered
on the table of bread.
In three false doors in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara, two nested ewers and basins
are similarly set on either end of a service table that is centered on the offering table.86 The first
of these belongs to the Khentika: Ikhekhi87, who served Pepy I as vizier,88 while the other two

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false doors belong to Wernu89 and Semdemti. 90 Kanawati has argued on stylistic grounds that
the tomb of Wernu belongs to the middle to late reign of King Teti, whereas Harpur thinks the
tomb may be as late as Merenre or early Pepy II.91 Taking the asymmetrical arrangement of the
jambs of his false door into account, Semdenti may well belong to the early reign of Pepy II.92
It is also worth noting that two nested ewers and basins are set on either end of a service table
which is centered on the offering table in the mastaba of Princess Idut, daughter of King Unas,
who presumably died in the reign of that ruler’s successor, King Teti.93 The tomb was usurped,
however, and the original decoration, including the nested ewers and basins on either end of a
service table, probably executed in the reign of Unas.94 The majority of the parallels to Ankhi’s
table scene on false doors belong to the Sixth Dynasty, and there is no reason to think his false
door is any later in date.

7. Khenu I
In addition to stylistic criteria, which he himself admits are subjective, Munro95 assigns
Khenu I to Dynasty Eleven or more probably Dynasty Twelve because an inscription of his

shows the use of for the first person singular suffix pronoun after dative . Taking
the same feature into account, Fischer dated the tomb of Khenu ‘later than the Sixth Dynasty,’
noting at the same time, however, the overall conformity of its reliefs to Old Kingdom style.96
Fischer also observed that Edel cites Eighth Dynasty examples from the Pyramid Texts of King
Ibi for this phenomenon.97 Thus, on the basis of this criterion alone the tomb of Khenu I could
be as late as the Eighth Dynasty. But it need not necessarily be later in date.
An iconographic detail worth examining is the attitude adopted by the figure of Khenu
(and also his son, Zenunas) with arms outstretched in praise or adoration, as in the hiero-

glyph .98 The earliest dated occurrences of the tomb owner in this attitude known to
me are on the door thicknesses of the tomb of Djau: Shemai and his son Djau at Deir el-
Gebrawi99 and of Mery at Hagarsa.100 The nomarch Djau seemingly held office towards
the end of the reign of Pepy II.101 The tomb of Mery probably belongs to the second half
of the same reign.102 The gesture continued in popularity through the late Old Kingdom,
the Heracleopolitan Period (Dynasties IX-X), and into the Middle Kingdom. 103 Given the
temporal range of the gesture, this feature cannot be used to assign Khenu I to the later
period, although it certainly indicates that his tomb is no earlier in date than the end of the
reign of Pepy II.
To all appearances Khenu’s false door is a monument of the Sixth Dynasty. The door is
surmounted by a cavetto cornice and framed by a torus moulding. It has three pairs of jambs
of equal length, each with a similar disposition of texts and youthful figures of the deceased of

equal height and each holding a staff and scepter. Yet, the use of for the first person singular
suffix pronoun after the dative seems to suggest that Khenu’s tomb is at least as late as the Eighth
Dynasty. Still, there is no evidence from either the style of his monuments or from his inscrip-
tions that would argue that the tomb was as late as the Heracleopolitan Period, never mind the
Eleventh or Twelfth Dynasties. Khenu I’s inscriptions contain none of the palaeographic criteria
that are indicative of the Heracleopolitan Period elsewhere. The latter include the orthography

of Htp-di-nswt as , the writing of Anubis on a stand , imy-wt determined

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(or the like), the arrangement of , abbreviated writings of imAxw such as ,

the arrangement of Hathor .104 In Khenu’s case, since Munro thinks he could date to the
Twelfth Dynasty, it is also important to recognize that his monuments show none of the most
important epigraphic innovations of the early Twelfth Dynasty, that is, the interpolation of the
prospective di.f before prt-xrw, the commodities incense and oil immediately thereafter, and the
phrase xt nbt nfrt wabt (or wnmt) nTr im.105
If Khenu’s tomb indeed dates to the end of the Dynasties Six-Eight, it would mean — at
North Saqqara at least — that the style of the Sixth Dynasty, including the form of the false door
and the appearance of an ewer and basin and a rack with hezet-jars on the panel, survived the fall
of the Old Kingdom.106 Alternatively, after all the changes in false door design and decoration
evident in the second half of the reign of Pepy II, there was a renaissance in false door design at
the end of the Old Kingdom.
There is yet a third option though: that the tomb of Khenu I is earlier in date than the late

Old Kingdom (Sixth-Eighth Dynasties) and that the use of for the first person singular suffix
pronoun after dative occurred already in the Sixth Dynasty, before its first dated occurrence
in the pyramid of King Ibi. The possibility that Khenu’s false door indeed belongs to the Sixth
Dynasty is based on the design of the table scene on the panels of Khenu and his son Zenunas.
As customary, the latter sits at a table of bread. Opposite, on the far side of the offering table is
a low rectangular table bearing service vessels. The vessels are a hezet-vessel, a nested ewer and
basin, and a shoulder jar.107 Elsewhere I have noted that — possibly as early as the beginning
of the reign of Pepy II — a decorative scheme is found on false door panels and tomb walls in
which the nested ewers and basins customary in such scenes do not appear on the opposite side
of the pedestal leg of the offering table from a service table or jar rack, but instead are depicted
alongside other vessels on one and the same table or one and the same jar rack.108 Above we
have seen that Khenu on his false door utilizes an earlier scheme of decoration that is a regular
element in the false door panels of viziers and other officials from the middle of the reign of
King Teti down to at least the first half of the reign of Pepy II.109 This scheme features one or
two nested ewers and basins resting on a service table (or not) coupled with a jar rack containing
hezet- and/or qebeh-vessels placed on the opposite side of the pedestal of the offering table (see
page 93). It is possible, of course, that the draftsman who designed the two panels drew on two
designs current at the Memphite cemeteries in the late Old Kingdom. Still, the fact that the
decoration of the false door panels of Khenu and his son fits very neatly into the Sixth Dynasty
developmental sequence of false door panels, with the earlier scheme appearing on Khenu’s
monument and the later scheme on Zenunas’, is very suggestive. It could mean that the two
monuments indeed belonged to the late Sixth Dynasty.
If the Gardiner papyri indeed belong to the Sixth Dynasty (Excursus A), this would remove

the one obstacle to dating Khenu’s and Zenunas’ to the same dynasty, that is, the use of for
the first person singular suffix pronoun after dative .
All this may seem a rather roundabout way to show that none of the occurrences — Metjetji’s
included — of the epithet imAxw xr Wnis need be as late as the Heracleopolitan Period or the
Middle Kingdom. But, to repeat, this is the limited nature of the evidence with which we have
to work in the period extending from the reign of Pepy II to the reign of King Merikare of the

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Tenth Dynasty in the Memphite cemeteries.

Dating of Metjetji
Munro’s other reasons for assigning Metjetji to the Heracleopolitan Period are as follows.
(1) At the beginning of Metjetji’s facade inscription in Toronto110 appear the words: [ . .
. ] imAxy Hzy n mwt.f. Citing Schenkel, Munro notes that that the sound change w > y first
appears in imAxy at Asyut in Dynasty Ten.111 As he also admits, Schenkel subsequently revised
his earlier opinion and came to the conclusion that the sound change w > y occurs as early as
the Sixth Dynasty.112 Munro may or may not be correct in questioning the Sixth Dynasty date
proposed by Schenkel for two El Kab graffiti with the aforementioned sound change.113 Even
so, Fischer, citing Edel, earlier remarked that the replacement of final w by y is well attested in
the Old Kingdom.114
Schenkel takes imAxy at the beginning of Metjetji’s inscription to be an early example of
the expression imAxy, ‘der Ehrwürdige.’115 Kaplony restores the passage from Metjetji’s auto-
biographical inscription to read: [ink] imAxy Hzy n mwt.f, ‘[I was] an honored one, beloved
of his mother.’116 James Allen, with whom I discussed Metjetji ‘s Toronto inscription, would
restore [ink zA it] imAxy , ‘[I was the son] of an honored [father].’ He understands [it] imAxy
here to be an undefined noun modified by the Stative. In this case imAxy would not be a pas-
sive participle at all, and the date of the first appearance of the sound change w > y would be
irrelevant to the present context, and imAxy in Metjetji‘s inscription would not represent an
occurrence of the participial expression imAxy before the name of the deceased, as it is at Asyut
in Heracleopolitan times.117 As Munro himself observes, elsewhere in Metjetji’s inscriptions the
normal Old Kingdom form of the passive participle is imAxw (xr Wsir, Wnis, nswt).
(2) Munro notes that the use of the formula n kA n(i) as an introduction to titles and names
within the Htp-di-nswt-prayer is attested for the first time at Asyut in the time of Merikare.118
Since the formula n kA plus title and name appears in the prayer on Metjetji’s false door, Munro
sees this as one more reason for down-dating the latter’s tomb to the turning point of the third
to the second century B. C. In support of this contention, Munro notes that the formula Htp-
di-nswt n kA n(i) likewise appears on the false door of Hermeru: Mereri and in a table scene
of Khenu I. As we have already seen, the first tomb is dated by Munro119 to the late First
Intermediate Period, if not the Eleventh Dynasty, and the second to the Eleventh, if not the
Twelfth Dynasty.120
In an Addendum, however, Munro cites Lapp’s observation that the formula n kA n(i) as
an introduction to titles and names within the Htp-di-nswt-prayer appears already in the burial
chamber of the vizier Mereruka.121 Since Mereruka probably served as vizier at the end of the
reign of Teti122, this criterion can hardly be used to date Metjetji to the Heracleopolitan Period.
Munro attempts to avoid this conclusion by asserting that the occurrence in Mereruka is an
early and isolated example. Lapp’s only other Old Kingdom reference to n kA n(i) in the prayer
is to the burial chamber of the vizier Kha-bau-khnum: Biu in the cemetery around the pyramid
of Pepy II at South Saqqara.123 The vizier probably belongs to the late Old Kingdom, if he did
not serve King Pepy II himself in the latter part of his reign.124 However, it should be noted that
Htp-<di>- nswt n kA @zzi also occurs on a false door from Saqqara (CG 1413) which probably
belongs to the second half of the Sixth Dynasty (see page 96).
(3) In discussing the typology of Metjetji’s false door (Plate 1), Munro points to one ele-
ment of the door that he thinks characteristic of the First Intermediate Period: the crossbar,
or lintel, beneath the panel with the table scene extends across the entire breadth of the false

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The Date of Metjetji

Plate 1. False door of Metjetji, MMA 64.100. Courtesy of the Metropolitan

Museum of Art, New York.

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door.125 In addition, the decorated area above extends over the entire breadth of the false door
(between the torus moulding), even though it is interrupted by the decorated recesses to either
side of the table scene.
Fischer provides one example of the extension of the lintel across the entire breadth of the
false door that probably belongs to the end of the Sixth Dynasty -- the false door of Pepyankh
the Middle at Meir.126 However, in two of the three Heracleopolitan Period (Dynasty IX)
false doors referred to by Fischer, those of the triple-nomarch of the Thinite, Denderite, and
Aphroditopolite nomes, Abihu, and his contemporary, the official Neferiu, not only does the
crossbar extend above all the jambs and niches, but the table scene completely fills the space
between the torus moulding, eliminating the customary recesses on either side.127 This is not
the case with Metjetji’s false for, as Munro observes, there are decorated recesses to either side of
the table scene. In the case of the third Heracleopolitan Period false door, that of the Denderite
official Men-ankh-pepy: Meni, the lintel extends across the entire breadth of the false door, and
the table scene is broad, but there are narrow recesses on either side.127a
A trait shared by all three Heracleopolitan Period false doors is the absence of an architrave
above the table scene. In Metjetji’s false door, like Pepyankh the Middle’s, there is an archi-
trave above the table scene inscribed with a funerary prayer and a seated figure of the owner.
Moreover, in neither false door does the panel with the table scene fill the space between the
torus moulding. In Pepyankh the Middle’s false door, the panel with the table scene is very
broad, but there are recesses at either side of the scene.
In Metjetji’s false door, the space between the architrave and lintel is treated in a rather
unusual manner. The recesses alongside the table scene are quite broad and decorated with jars
containing (presumably) the seven sacred oils. In place of the continuation of the outer jambs
that is normal, standing figures of the deceased are found. The arrangement is altogether dif-
ferent from the Heracleopolitan Period (Dynasty IX) false doors, and for this reason I find it
difficult to believe that Metjetji’s false door could be this late. Something like this appears else-
where in the Sixth Dynasty, however. The first example, already cited, belongs to the Overseer
of All the King’s Works, Hezezi, and was found north of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara.128 The
second false door is located in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara and belongs to Teti-seneb/
Meryre-seneb/Pepy-seneb: Meru.129 Strudwick dates the first false door to the late Fifth or early
Sixth Dynasty, but the elaborate table scene with a ewer and basin to one side of the pedestal
of the offering table and the different kinds of vessels on or in a jar rack to the other side sug-
gest a date between the later part of the reign of Pepy I and the early reign of Pepy II.130 As
Strudwick notes of Meru, the likeliest explanation of the alteration in his basilophoric names is
that he lived both in the reigns of Teti and Pepy I, completing his tomb in the latter reign.131 In
the latter two false doors, the apertures are narrower than Metjetji’s, but on the panels to either
side, the son of the tomb owner respectively burns incense and offers a goose to his father on
Hezezi’s false door, while on Meru’s false door a list of the seven sacred oils is twice repeated. In
both these false doors, too, the lintel extends across all of the jambs.
Another possible parallel to Metjetji’s false door appears in tomb M 8 at Akhmim.132
According to his autobiography, the owner of the tomb, the nomarch Tjeti: Kahep, appears to
have entered royal service under King Pepy I, the same ruler who subsequently appointed him
overseer of priests. Pepy’s son and successor, King Merenre, promoted Tjeti to the office of smA
Mnw. At this point, the autobiography breaks off, and it is not clear whether the same sovereign
conferred the office of nomarch (Hry-tp aA n #nmt-Mnw ) on Tjeti or whether the latter survived
Merenre’s brief reign to be appointed to that position by Pepy II.133 The false door was cut in

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The Date of Metjetji

the rock and then plastered and painted. Only a few traces of its painted decoration remain.
The door lacks an architrave, but the lintel extends across all four jambs, as also in Metjetji ’s
false door. The space between the architrave and the lintel appears to be treated in a fashion
quite similar to Metjetji’s false door with what look to be apertures adjacent to the central panel
and broader panels to either side. Like Metjetji’s false door it too is surrounded by a torus
moulding and surmounted by a cavetto cornice.134 Regrettably, no photograph is provided of
Tjeti’s false door, which is only published in line drawing, so a certain degree of uncertainty
enters into this description of its elements. Nevertheless, the three parallels just cited suggest
that Metjetji’s false door might belong to a similar time frame, that is, the reign of Pepy I to the
first half of the reign of Pepi II.
(5) In discussing the two statues of Metjetji as an older man, both of which exhibit the
hand-on-skirt-edge (HaSS) gesture, Munro observes that the earliest known example in three
dimensions of this gesture is the statue of Mereruka in the niche,135 although Mereruka, unlike
Metjetji, wears a knee-length, not an ankle-length skirt.136 Munro points out that this same
gesture is attested in relief throughout the entire Sixth Dynasty, but further remarks that, up to
the end of that dynasty, there are no absolutely certain examples of HaSS-statues or alternatively
of statues in which the hand clutches a corner of the skirt (HmSZ-statues). Thus, according to
Munro, the aforementioned statue of Mereruka remains without assured parallel, and the stat-
ues of Metjetji and a number of other well-known statues — including those of Ni-ankh-pepy
the Black from Meir and of Meryre/Pepy-iam from South Saqqara (see page 102) — cannot be
earlier than the latter part or end of the Sixth Dynasty.
Before proceeding, it is important to recognize that there is at least one example of a statue
in which the hand clutches a corner of the skirt that in all likelihood belongs to the middle of
the Sixth Dynasty. This is the statue of Iti excavated by Farina at Gebelein in 1933 and now in
Turin, suppl. 13720.137 The coffin found together with the statue is inscribed imAxw xr nb.f
Mryra.138 The unusual form of the epithet as well the interior decoration of the coffin139, which
appears to correspond in type to other coffins of Dynasty Six140, suggests that Iti was indeed a
contemporary of King Pepy I.
Even though it is of HmSZ-type, the Turin statue helps close the time gap between the statue
of Mereruka and the other well-known statues of HaSS type from the end of the Sixth Dynasty.
Even if it did not, the time gap only results from Munro’s assignment of Metjetji’s statues to the
Heracleopolitan Period.141 Otherwise, the HaSS-statues of Metjetji — assuming they date to
the reign of Pepy I, as we have tried to demonstrate herein, would follow naturally on the first
appearance of the HaSS-gesture in Mereruka’s tomb in the middle to late part of Teti’s reign.
Munro sees an especially close stylistic resemblance between the two statues which represent
Metjetji as an old man — Brooklyn 51.1 (Plate 2) and Kansas City 51-1142 — and a statue of
Meryre-nefer: Qar in tomb G 7101 at Giza (Plate 3).143 Qar, like Metjetji, is depicted wigless,
wears a calf-length kilt, and makes the hand-on-skirt-edge (HaSS) gesture.144
The accepted date for Qar’s tomb is the middle to late Sixth Dynasty,145 but Munro thinks
this ignores two important dating criteria. The first of these relates to the fact that the tombs of
Qar and his father, Idu (G 7102), belong to the category of ‘true rock-cut tombs,’ a type which
Munro believes evolved after the Old Kingdom or even at the beginning of the Heracleopolitan
Period.146 As we have already seen, in order to prove his point Munro must date the tombs of
Qar and Idu in the time after the Old Kingdom.147

Critical to Munro is the appearance of the later form of the imy-wt determinative ( ,

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Plate 2. Statue of Metjetji, Bkln 51.1. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

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The Date of Metjetji

Plate 3. Rock-cut statues of Qar. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

) in Qar’s burial chamber and in the neighboring burial chamber of his brother, Nakhti.148

He observes149, that the later form of the determinative first occurs in in the tomb of

Djau at Deir el-Gebrawi in the last decade of the reign of Pepy II,150 while the writing
becomes more common with the onset of the Heracleopolitan Period. As a result of all this,
Munro assigns the tomb of Qar after that of Men-ankh-pepy: Meni of Dendera, who also utilizes
the writing of imy-wt with the pustule, in the Ninth Dynasty (see page 96). However, this
does not take into account the occurrence of imy-wt with the pustule in the tomb of Shepses-
pu-min: Kheni at Akhmim, which Kanawati dates to the end of the reign of Pepy II151 or of
the existence of other examples of Anubis’s epithet with the pustule which more vaguely date to
the later Old Kingdom.152 The evidence presented by Munro, in my opinion, hardly warrants
the extreme down-dating of Meryre-nefer: Qar and, in addition, ignores considerable stylistic
evidence to the contrary.153
Qar’s reliefs are among the best examples of the second Old Kingdom style of relief, espe-
cially of relief executed in the second half of the Sixth Dynasty.154 Particularly characteristic of
the style in this period is the intricately carved drawing of the accessories to the costume.
A specific iconographic feature also points to the second half of the Sixth Dynasty for Qar’s

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Fig. 1. Kilts with wide pleating: (a) Khentika: Ikhekhi; (b) Idu; (c) Pepyankh the Middle.

tomb. Two figures of Qar hold a staff diagonally across the breast.155 So too does the Vizier Idu
I: Nefer on a relief from his Giza tomb.156 Idu I, however, holds a scepter in his hanging hand,
whereas one of the figures of Qar (the other is incomplete) grasps one end of his panther skin.
Pepyankh: Heni the Black at Meir similarly holds a staff diagonally across his breast157, but,
like Idu I, he grips a scepter in the same hand. Harpur assigns Idu I to the reign of Teti,158 but
Strudwick’s dating to the period from the end of the reign of Pepy I to early Pepy II is more con-
vincing.159 According to Harpur, Pepyankh dates between years 1-54 of Pepy II.160 Kanawati
prefers a date for Pepyankh at the end of the same reign.161 The similar attitudes, which are
otherwise rare, underline the near contemporaneity of all three tombs, and might argue for the
earlier date for Pepyankh. At any rate, to my knowledge, the attitude is confined to these three
individuals, and does not appear at a later date.
To return to Qar’s rock-cut statue and the close relationship Munro sees between it and
the statues of Metjetji in a long kilt, Brooklyn 51.1 and Kansas City 51-1. Munro notes that
Qar’s kilt is distinguished from Metjetji’s by the absence of selvedge (‘rahmenden Leisten’) and
through the somewhat more closely set plastic folds. 162 In fact, the pleats are treated quite
differently in the statues of Metjetji and Qar. In the latter the peaks of the horizontal pleats
appear to be separated by deep concave gouges (Plate 3). In contrast Metjetji’s pleats (Plate 2)
are triangular in section, the individual pleats separated only by an incised line at the bottom
of the depression between the pleats. As a result one side of each pleat appears to be cast into
shadow. The treatment of the calf-length kilt of the Vizier Kagemni in two-dimensions on a
pillar in his tomb is very similar, if not identical, to the pleating in the two statues of Metjetji.163
Kagemni, of course, served as vizier in the early part of the reign of King Teti.164 The similarity
could suggest that Kagemni and Metjetji were not far removed in date from one another.
On his facade reliefs and false door Metjetji also wears horizontally pleated kilts (Plate 1).165
In all four cases, the garment worn is the short kilt, and vertical lines presumably represent folds
in the cloth. Harpur notes that wide or narrow pleats date back to Dynasty IV.166 After a period
of popularity in the Fifth Dynasty,167 short or long kilts with horizontal pleating appear to have
gone out of style and to have come back into fashion in the early Sixth Dynasty. At the later
time, the pleats may either be broad or narrow. Early in the reign of Pepy I, for example, the
Vizier Khentika: Ikhekhi wears a short kilt with rather wide pleating on the right entrance jamb
of his tomb (Figure 1 a).168 Idu has a similar kilt in G 7102, although in his case the pleating
is diagonal (Figure 1 b). The same is also true of a kilt worn by Pepyankh the Middle at Meir
(Figure 1 c) in the late Sixth Dynasty.

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The Date of Metjetji

Fig. 2. Kilts with narrow pleating: (a) Sabu: Tjety; (b) Anonymous; (c) Khenu I.

Narrow pleating appears to have been somewhat more common, and appears on kilts worn
by Meryre-ankh, son of the Vizier Mehu, in his chapel in his father’s tomb in the Unas Pyramid
Cemetery, and by the High Priest of Memphis Sabu: Tjety on his false door from Mariette mas-
taba E13/C 17 (Figure 2 a). 169 The same kilt is also worn by an attendant of Ipi in his reliefs
found by Maspero at South Saqqara.170 It is found as well on the false door of Nefer-seshem-
ptah: Seankh-ptah-meryre: Sheshi from the Kom es-Sultan at Abydos.171 Then too, it is worn
by two attendants of the anonymous individual whose offering chamber was inserted into the
‘Trepprenhaus’ of the tomb of Queen Nebet in the Unas Pyramid Cemetery (Figure 2 b).
We agree with Nigel Strudwick that Meryre-ankh belongs to the period extending from
the end of the reign of Pepy I to early Pepy II.172 Our reasons for thinking so are set out else-
where.173
Dietrich Wildung has noted that Sabu: Tjety is represented in the mortuary temple of Pepy
II, which was probably finished at some point in the second quarter of Pepy II’s reign.174 He
presumably passed away before the end of that king’s reign.
Considering that both of Ipi’s daughters are named Ankhnespepy, his tomb has to be at least
as late as Pepy I. Furthermore, as Harpur observes, the presence of a mirror and boxes under
the chair of the deceased are good indications that the reliefs date to the reign of Pepy II, and
probably to the second half of the reign.175 With the exception of a parallel in the tomb of Ibi
at Deir el-Gebrawi176, which probably belongs to the first third of Pepy II’s long reign,177 other
instances of a box178 or a box and a mirror179 under the owner’s chair are not well dated. Even
so, none are demonstrably earlier than the example in Ibi’s tomb and some may well postdate
the Sixth Dynasty.
On account of the owner’s name and the fact that he held office at the pyramid of Pepy I,
the false door of Nefer-seshem-ptah: Seankh-ptah-meryre: Sheshi is at least as late as the reign of
that sovereign. In actual fact, the design of the table scene on the false door panel suggests that
Nefer-seshem-ptah died in the reign of Pepy II. Beginning seemingly in the early part of the
reign of Pepy II, the content of table scenes on tomb walls and false doors begins to be simpli-
fied and is commonly confined to the seated figure of the deceased, a table of bread, and a single
nested ewer and basin. The ewer and basin are generally placed on the ground on the far side of
the table scene.180 Nefer-seshem-ptah’s false door panel exhibits this type of scene.
The wall of the offering chamber of the anonymous man who inserted his offering chamber
into the ‘Trepprenhaus’ of the tomb of Queen Nebet is badly damaged. Nevertheless, inasmuch
as the file of offering bearers includes birds flopping at the feet of the bearers who had twisted

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Fig. 3. Kilts with narrow pleats and vertical folds: (a) Metjetji; (b) Ni-kau-Izezi; (c) Nefer-seshem-pepy: Seneni.

their necks, the chamber is unlikely to be earlier than Pepy I (see pages 105-106).
Thus, the earliest occurrence of the short kilt with close horizontal pleating that we have at
present probably belongs to the end of the reign of Pepy I or to early Pepy II. The kilt definitely
continued in fashion into the reign of Pepy II, for it appears on the false door of Sabu: Tjety.
It is notable that the same garment is worn by Khenu I (Figure 2 c).
The specific type of garment worn by Metjetji with narrow horizontal pleats and vertical
folds (Figure 3 a) is not so common, but is also worn by the Overseer of Upper Egypt Ni-kau-
izezi (and his like-named son) on the façade of his tomb in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at
Saqqara (Figure 3 b).181 A graffito in the tomb assigns Ni-kau-izezi ‘s burial to HAt/rnpt-zp 11
of an unnamed king. Kanawati argues persuasively that the year date belongs to King Teti.182
The same type of kilt also occurs on the false door of Meryre-ankh: Heqaib found by Firth
and Gunn in the same cemetery.183 Taking the owner’s name into account, the latter monument
is clearly as late as Pepy I, while the T-shaped panel indicates it is not likely to be earlier than the
reign of Merenre.184 The design of the table scene on the panel, with a ewer and basin alone
rather than a ewer and basin balanced by a jar rack with hezet- or qebeh-jars on the other side of
the table leg suggests that the false door actually belongs to the reign of Pepy II.185
There is no reason to think that any of the above parallels to Metjetji’s kilt postdate Dynasty
Six. However, the short kilt with horizontal pleating and vertical folds is also known from several
stelae of the high official Nefer-seshem-pepy: Seneni at Dendera in the late Old Kingdom (Figure
3 c).186 The occurrences of this kilt on Nefer-seshem-pepy’s stelae may represent an isolated occur-
rence or a revival, since I am unable to cite any other examples in the intervening time. I am not
aware of any examples of this type of kilt that postdates the late Old Kingdom, however.
Munro observes that the statue commonly identified as the vizier Meryre/Pepy-iam, in
fact, lacks an (inscribed) base.187 Strictly speaking the statue is therefore anonymous. Munro
points to the existence of several modest offering stones found with the statue that indicate that
Meryre-iam’s tomb (M. XIII) was repeatedly re-employed. For Munro, this in turn implies the
statue does not represent the vizier at all. As a result, it need not belong to the Sixth Dynasty,
and by stylistic analogy with the statues of Metjetji as an old man, it could belong to the
Heracleopolitan Period. I agree there is a stylistic resemblance between Metjetji’s statue and the
statue from M. XIII, but I find it hard to believe that such a masterwork as the Saqqara statue
could have belonged to the owner of one of the modest offering stones.
The statue of Meryre-iam, Cairo JE 59631, is of the HaSS-type and wears a long kilt with
a trapezoidal front panel.188 In contrast to the statues of Metjetji and Qar, however, the kilt

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The Date of Metjetji

Fig. 4. Statues with patterned kilts: (a) Meryre-iam; (b) Ni-ankh-pepy the Black; (c) Hagi; (d)
Meru: Iy the Tall.

(Figure 4 a)189 bears a sequence of alternating single and double lines that become slightly
diagonal in front and which divide the skirt into wide bands.190 Schäfer suggested these lines
are crease marks showing the way the garment was folded when not in use.191
The earliest closely dated example of the long kilt with a pattern of alternating single and
double lines in three-dimensions known to me is the HmSZ statue of the nomarch Ni-ankh-
pepy: Hepi the Black from Meir.192 Like Meryre-iam, Ni-ankh-pepy’s kilt bears a pattern of
single and double lines that are aligned on either side of the diagonal line across the front panel,
creating an uninterrupted diagonal line (Figure 4 b).193
Ni-ankh-pepy has generally been assigned to the second half of the Sixth Dynasty.194 More
specifically, Baer195 assigned him to the period extending from Merenre to year 15 of Pepy II,
and Harpur196 between years 1-34 of Pepy II, while Kanawati thinks he passed away in the third
quarter of the reign of Pepy II.197 Nevertheless, Munro argues of the Meir tombs that there are
no really conclusive philological-palaeographic indications for dating and no absolutely reliable
mention of a king.198
Munro also thinks that the form of the false door in Pepyankh the Middle’s tomb (D 2), with
the extension of the lintel across the entire breadth of the false door, constitutes an argument for
a date in the Sixth-Eighth/Ninth Dynasties.199 However, we have already noted an occurrence of
the extension of the lintel across the entire breadth of the false door at Akhmim under Merenre
or in the early part of the reign of Pepy II (see page 96-97), so this feature does not demonstrate
beyond doubt that Pepyankh the Middle’s tomb is as late as the Ninth Dynasty, although it
could conceivably belong to the late Old Kingdom (Sixth-Eighth Dynasties).200
Munro admits that the orthography and phraseology of the tomb of Ni-ankh-pepy: Hepi
the Black stand in the tradition of the Old Kingdom.201 Nevertheless, he compares the carrying
chair scene in Ni-ankh-pepy’s tomb202 with the same scene in the tomb of Shepses-pu-menu:
Kheni-ankhu at el-Hawawish.203 He believes the latter tomb belongs to the period after the
Sixth Dynasty because of the writing of imy-wt with the pustule determinative (see above, p.
97-98),204 the characteristic placement of the wedjat-eye on the lintel of a false door205, and the

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form of the west-sign with the falcon suppressed.206 Utilizing the same features and others,
Kanawati dates Kheni-ankhu to the end of Pepy II’s reign.207 On stylistic grounds, Harpur
assigned Kheni-ankhu’s tomb to Dynasties Six-Eight.208 Some years ago I dated the tombs
of Shepses-pu-menu and his father to the Heracleopolitan Period, noting in particular that
the father, Kahep: Tjeti occasionally adds the epithet -ior to his name, a phenomenon of the
Heracleopolitan Period in Upper Egypt.209 Kanawati has taking exception to this reasoning,
and I am no longer as sure about the date of the tomb myself.210 It seems fair to say that there
is considerable disagreement about the date of Kheni-ankhu’s tomb.
There are similarities between the carrying chair scenes in the tombs of Ni-ankh-pepy and
Kheni-ankhu, but the differences outweigh the similarities. Thus monkeys clamber over the
framework of the palanquin in both tombs.211 On the other hand, the sunshades that shield
Ni-ankh-pepy’s face from the sun are absent in Kheni-ankhu’s case. Moreover, the way the entab-
lature of the two palanquins are represented differs. In Ny-ankh-pepy’s case, the artist has shown
one view of the baldachin, whereas in Kheni-ankhu’s tomb both vaulted ends of the baldachin are
shown together with the broad main surface. In addition, the song of the bearers which accom-
panies such scenes is generally arrayed in vertical columns. This is the case with Ni-ankh-pepy’s
scene, but in Kheni-ankhu’s the song is both abbreviated and presented in two horizontal lines
in front of the bearers. Ni-ankh-pepy carries a fly whisk composed of a handle and a fox’s skin.
Kheni-ankhu strangely carries only the fox skin. Other differences might be cited, but I think
these are sufficient to show that the scenes in question are not all that similar.
Any resemblance between the carrying chair scenes in the tombs of Ni-ankh-pepy and
Kheni-ankhu is, in my opinion, a generic one.212 The similarities between Ni-ankh-pepy’s and
Kheni-ankhu’s carrying chair scenes are thus insufficient to date the former’s tomb to the period
after the Old Kingdom. We are therefore probably better off relying on Baer’s, Harpur’s, and
Kanawati’s date for Ni-ankh-pepy’s tomb, still in the reign of Pepy II.
The same type of kilt worn by Ni-ankh-pepy that features alternating single and double lines
that become slightly diagonal in front and which divide the skirt into wide bands has a long
history. It is worn by a Thinite official named Hagi (Figure 4 c), who almost certainly dates
to the end of the Old Kingdom.213 A variant of the same type of kilt, which shows alternating
single and double diagonal lines aligned on either side of a diagonal line across the front panel,
creating an uninterrupted horizontal line, is worn by the Thinite Overseer of Priests, Meru/Iy
the Tall (Figure 4 d), who is likewise dated by the present writer to late Dynasty Ten.214 The
pattern of alternating single and double diagonal lines survives in three dimensions into the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasty, but at the later time it appears on a new type of garment,
namely, a high-waisted skirt that wraps around the body.215
It is interesting to note that the pattern of alternating single and double diagonal lines
seen on the kilts of Meryre-iam and Ni-ankh-pepy: Hepi the Black does not appear on any of
Metjetji‘s statues. Although it is an argument from silence, it is likely that his statues were made
before this type of patterned kilt came into fashion in the late Sixth Dynasty. Nor is this type of
kilt attested in the tomb of Qar. However, a number of examples of this type of patterned kilt
do appear in two dimensions in the tomb of Unas-ha-ishetef in the Unas Cemetery Northwest
(see Excursus B).

The Tomb of Metjetji

The Louvre Museum possesses 43 fragments of paintings from the tomb of Metjetji.216 In
addition, a number of reliefs belonging to Metjetji are to be found in museums and collections

104
The Date of Metjetji

in Bern, Richmond, Virginia, Toronto, Paris, and Kansas City. These have been assembled and
published by Peter Kaplony.217 The tomb itself was evidently located in the Unas Pyramid
Cemetery and, in Munro’s opinion, probably southeast of the Unas enclosure.218
The precise form of Metjetji’s tomb is in question, since the exact find spot has never been
located. Munro thinks that the pieces of the façade and the entrance thickness are without much
doubt to be combined with the three fragments of raised relief in the image of an approximately
‘classical’ mastaba.219 He does not believe with Kaplony that the paintings could have been
found in an additional above ground chamber whether stone-lined or brick built.220 Instead,
he feels that the type and thickness of the plaster that bears the paintings point to a very rough,
easily crumbled away rock wall surface, such as that of a room cut from the gebel. I do not
understand this argument, since mud brick tombs exist at Giza and Saqqara which have paint-
ings on mud plaster, similar in technique to Metjetji’s paintings.221
Nevertheless, Munro believes that the special form of the ‘genuine rock-cut tomb’ of Meryre-
nefer: Qar at Giza (G 7101) forms an appropriate model for Metjetji’s tomb. The Giza tomb
is sunk in the gebel and has a court accessible by a staircase from above. The upper part of
the staircase was lined with reliefs whose contents (fowling with a boomerang, agriculture, and
inspection) are closely related to the reliefs of Metjetji. Through the court, the internal cult area,
likewise cut from the rock, is reached by means of two entrances. On the walls of the latter, the
themes of the reliefs of the open court continue.222
What seems to me a better model for Metjetji’s tomb complex was discovered recently by
Zahi Hawass on the Giza plateau.223 It belongs to a man named Kai who was a priest of Sneferu,
Khufu, and Djedefre, an overseer of scribes, and an overseer of ka-priests.224 Based on the pub-
lished photographs, it probably dates to the early Fifth Dynasty. The main offering chamber
is L-shaped with two false doors in the west wall. It is finely carved with raised reliefs featur-
ing mostly offering bearers but also a table scene and a presentation scene, as well as a boating
scene.225 North of this stone-built chamber was a second chamber built of mud brick with two
mud brick false doors in the west wall. The top part of the walls have weathered away, but the
scenes of the chapel, painted on lime plaster over mud plaster, include the lower portions of sev-
eral large-scale images of a man and woman, figures of two daughters of Kai, and activities such
as plowing, boat building, and traveling in the marshes.226 Here we have the same combination
of reliefs and paintings as in Metjetji’s case.
Metjetji’s paintings show a curious combination of scenes appropriate to an offering room
(see below) combined with scenes of daily life including scenes of bird trapping, animal hus-
bandry, and an (incomplete) marsh sequence. Because of the former scenes, there seems little
question that it derives from an offering room. From a scene of men bearing unguent jars in
their hands (see below), it is clear that Metjetji’s false door also stood in this room. Something
very like this arrangement occurs in the tomb of Shepsi-pu-ptah in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery
at Saqqara.227 The chapel consists of four rooms but the only room retaining decoration is the
offering room.228 The mud brick walls of the offering room were plastered and decorated with
scenes and inscriptions executed in painting. A thick layer of plaster formed of mud and straw
was covered with a thin layer of yellowish clay mixed with sand and fine vegetable fibre. This
was coated with a creamy wash on which the scenes were painted.229 The technique is similar
to that of Metjetji’s paintings. The false door, on the other hand, like Metjetji’s false door is a
limestone monolith with inscribed and painted signs. 230
A number of details evident in Metjetji’s paintings in the Louvre are of interest from the
point of view of dating. One relates to the dying bird flopping around at the feet of the

105
Brovarski

offering bearer who twists, or is about to twist, the necks of several other birds proffered to
the deceased at table. Harpur observes of the table scene on the long walls of the east-west
offering rooms of the Fifth Dynasty and Sixth Dynasty that there is sometimes an extra reg-
ister filled with bearers relating directly to the false door.231 In Dynasty Six these figures are
occasionally divided into two groups, the first carrying haunches and the second strangling
geese as they hold them forward as an offering. A number of further refinements affect the
extra register at the beginning of Dynasty Six.232 First, the number of birds presented by the
second group of bearers is multiplied, each offering bearer holding up as many as five birds
by the neck and wings.233 Second, cages with other birds appear at the feet of the figures who
strangle the birds.234
A slightly later development shows dying birds flopping around at the feet of the offer-
ing bearer, as in the tomb of Metjetji. The earliest datable instance of the flopping bird in
this context known to me is in the chapel of Meryteti in the tomb of his father Mereruka
at Saqqara.235 Meryteti presumably belonged to middle to late Pepy I.236 The same feature
occurs in the chapel of Meryre-ankh in the tomb of his father, the Vizier Mehu, at Saqqara in
the period extending from the end of the reign of Pepy I to early Pepy II.237 It recurs in the
chapel of Meryre-ankh’s son Hetepkai in the middle of the reign of Pepy II.238 Flopping birds
also appear in the tomb of Ibi at Deir el-Gebrawi in the first thirty years or so of Pepy II’s long
reign239 and in the tomb of Pepy-ankh: Heni the Black at Meir in the second half of the same
sovereign’s reign.240 A further example from the same period occurs in the portico chapel of
Tjetju: Nikainesut at Giza (G 2001).241 Flopping birds also appear on a side-piece of Ishtji:
Tjetji in the Unas Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara.242 The tomb of the latter individual is dated
by Harpur between the beginning of the reign of Pepy II and the end of the Eighth Dynasty.243
Finally, flopping birds appear in the side-pieces of Biu and Pepi in the tomb they share at South
Saqqara.244 The nature of the decoration of Biu’s burial chamber suggests that he and Pepi were
buried late in Dynasty Six or in Dynasty Seven.245 On the basis of this feature, it seems that
Metjetji is no earlier in date than the middle reign of Pepy I.246
The theme of another fragmentary painting from the tomb of Metjetji also definitely points
to the Sixth Dynasty. The fragment shows two complete figures of offering bearers standing
and holding up unguent jars in their extended hands and the lower torso and legs of two other
figures above the first. The border of colored rectangles on both sides of the scene indicates that
the fragment is complete in terms of width though it was taller originally. According to the label
in front of each of the men the jars held by the lower pair contained ‘the best of Libyan oil,’
while the jars held by the upper individuals contained ‘the best cedar oil.’ In offering rooms of
the Sixth Dynasty, it is not at all uncommon to find representations of the jars that contain the
Seven Sacred Oils in narrow, superimposed registers to either side of the false door.247 More
rare are representations in which the unguent jars are held up in the in the hands of standing
or kneeling men.248 The earliest example that I know of standing men holding up unguent
jars is to the north of the false door of Princess Idut, the original decoration of whose tomb, as
we have already seen, probably belonged to the reign of King Unas (see page 92).249 Another
instance occurs in the tomb of Sneferu-in-ishetef at Dahshur250, which is dated by Harpur to
the reign of King Teti.251 A third instance (largely destroyed) is from the tomb of the vizier
Inumin, who probably served in office in the middle of the reign of Pepy I.252 Finally, on the
southern side of the false door of Ni-ankh-Nefertem: Temi at Saqqara is a vertical sequence of
narrow registers containing two or three unguent jars each, set on tables, while every register in
the parallel scene on the other side contains a representation of an offering bearer holding one

106
The Date of Metjetji

unguent jar.253 The tomb of Temi is dated by its excavator to the mid-Sixth Dynasty 254, but
the simple nature of the table scenes on the west wall of the chapel and in its three false doors
suggests the tomb may be as late as the early part of the reign of Pepy II. Beginning seemingly
early in the reign of Pepy II, the content of table scenes is commonly confined to the seated
figure of the deceased, a table of bread, and a single nested ewer, the latter either resting on a
small table or not.255 This is the case with one of the false doors of Temi cut in the southern
part of the west wall of his tomb.256 The decorative scheme on the other two false doors cut in
the west wall and of the table scene on the same wall is limited to a figure of the tomb owner
at table unaccompanied by any cult utensils whatsoever.257 Other examples of this decorative
scheme date to the second half of the reign of Pepy II or to Dynasties Six through Eight.258
Thus, Temi’s tomb may be as late as the second half of King Pepy II’s reign.259 The relatively
extensive nature of the relief decoration on its walls suggests that it is probably not later in date
than the end of Pepy II’s reign, however.260
Above, we have discussed the physical features of Metjetji’s false door. But an iconographic
feature also helps to narrow the date of Metjetji. This involves the nature of the table scene on
the false door panel. On the panel Metjetji sits on a chair with a low back and extends his right
hand to the table of bread before him.261 To the right of the table leg two nested ewers and
basins rest on a low rectangular service table. The same low table with paired ewers and basins
appears in the same position on the false door panels of the viziers Kagemni and Mereruka.262
Kagemni probably belongs to the early to middle reign of King Teti263 and Mereruka to the
middle or end of the same reign.264 These are the closest parallels to Metjeti’s panel decoration,
but the low table with paired ewers and basins also appears on the false door panel of the vizier
Hezi, this time resting to the left of the table pedestal.265 Kanawati dates the construction of
Hezi’s tomb to the late reign of Teti, but thinks Hezi’s promotion to the vizierate took place at
the end of Teti’s reign or early in the reign of Pepy I.266 The parallels thus indicate a date for
Metjetji’s false door in the period stretching from the early reign of Teti to the end of the same
reign or the early reign of Pepy I.
The two nested ewers and basins set on a low table to one side of Metjeti’s offering table
indicate a date for his false door in the period from early Teti to early Pepy I. The dying birds
flopping around the feet of the offering bearers suggest that Metjetji is no earlier in date than
Pepy I. The theme of the offering bearers holding up unguent jars is not so date specific, but
parallels nonetheless seem to belong to the Sixth Dynasty. It is important to emphasize that the
extensive nature of the decoration of Metjetji’s chapel (carved and painted) is not to be found
again in the Memphite necropolis before the Twelfth Dynasty, when vestiges of relief indicate
that the chapels of Ihy and Hetep in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery once had extensive decoration
on their walls.267

Excursus A
The debate over the date of the first appearance of the Coffin Texts has received a new
impetus from the discovery of early Coffin Texts at Balat in Dakhla Oasis. A French expe-
dition excavating at Balat recently uncovered fragmentary hieratic inscriptions in the burial
chamber of the governor of the oasis (HoA wHAt), Medunefer, which appear to represent Coffin
Texts originally inscribed in ink on a winding-sheet or shroud that enveloped the body of the
deceased.268 If Medunefer indeed belongs to the reign of Pepy II, as three vessels269 inscribed
with that sovereign’s throne name (including one referring to the king’s sed-festival), coupled
with the archaeological evidence, would seem to imply,270 then the earliest use of Coffin Texts

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Brovarski

by private individuals would date to the end of the Sixth Dynasty. In this context, it should
also be recalled that pGardiner II-IV, inscribed in hieratic with Pyramid and Coffin Texts, may
date as early as Dynasty Six.
The Gardiner papyri are published in transcript by De Buck.271 Roccati thinks the papyri
do indeed belong to the Sixth Dynasty.272 Gardiner assigned the papyri to the First Intermediate
Period ‘between the Sixth and Eleventh Dynasties,’ but noted that the writing recalled that of
the earlier of these two limits.273 On the other hand, Bidoli expressed reservations about an Old
Kingdom date.274 Goedicke seemingly dates the Gardiner papyri to Dynasties Seven through
Ten.275
Palaeographically the Coffin Texts of Medu-nefer are closely related to the Gardiner papyri,
especially pGardiner IV.276 Indeed, possible parallels to Medu-nefer’s texts are to be found
in pGardiner II.277 Moreover, both the Gardiner papyri and the Coffin Texts of Medu-nefer

employ the writing of the pronouns and .278 We have already seen that the

first person singular suffix pronoun in Ni-ankh-pepy’s texts is written and the independent

pronoun is , while Khenu I also employs the latter writing of the suffix pronoun.
In addition, we have observed that the first dated occurrence for both these features is in the
Eighth Dynasty Pyramid Texts of King Ibi (see page 90).
The date of pGardiner II-IV is thus very relevant to the present study. The palaeography
of the Gardiner papyri is illustrated in the accompanying chart (Figure 5) where it is compared
with the palaeography of a number of other documents of Dynasties V-VI or the late Old
Kingdom.279 These include the Abusir papyri of Dynasties V-VI,280 pBoulaq 8, which con-
tains the early form of the prenomen of Pepy I,281 and the Sharuna papyri which, according
to Goedicke, are clearly late Sixth Dynasty in date.282 In addition, there are the Elephantine
papyri of late Dynasty Six283 or later284 and the inscriptions on pots from Qubbet el-Hawa, also
of late Sixth Dynasty date.285 The Hatnub graffiti are included for contrast.
A glance at the chart will show that palaeographically the Gardiner papyri are more closely
related to pBoulaq 8 (except A1 and D2) and the Sharuna papyri or even the Abusir papyri
(especially A6, W 17) than the Elephantine papyri (except A50) and the inscriptions on pots
from Qubbet el-Hawa. Unless further in depth analysis shows otherwise, it seems fair to
conclude that Roccati is correct in his surmise that the Gardiner papyri date to the late Sixth
Dynasty.

Excursus B. The Date of Unas-ha-ishetef

In a different context, Munro has down-dated yet another tomb in the Unas Pyramid
Cemetery — that of Unas-ha-ishetef: Ha-ishetef (Wnis-HA-iSt.f: ¡A-iSt.f).286 Munro, origi-
nally proposed a date in Dynasty Twelve for Unas-ha-ishetef .287 He subsequently changed
his mind and put forward a date for the tomb in the Heracleopolitan Period.288 Fischer has
assigned Unas-ha-ishetef‘s tomb to the very late Old Kingdom (Dynasty Eight?).289 For him,
the style of drawing and carving is very like the bold relief of the late Sixth Dynasty in the
treatment of the flat surfaces with carefully drawn inner detail.290 If Fischer’s date is correct
and Unas-ha-ishetef ’s tomb is any indication, this style must have been maintained at Memphis
throughout the course of the Old Kingdom.
The relative chronology of the building phases in the area is fairly straightforward291, but I

108
Fig. 5. Palaeography chart.
Plate 4. Relief of Sabni I, Aswan.
The Date of Metjetji

Plate 5. Architrave of Unas-ha-ishetef (Saad, ASAE 40 [1940], fig. 74).

would take exception with the criteria for absolute dating.292 In 1982 Munro argued that the
correspondence between the relief style of the tomb of Ihy293 in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery and
that of the tomb of Unas-ha-ishetef led to the conclusion that the latter tomb belonged to the
Twelfth Dynasty as well.294 However, in its architecture and decoration the tomb of Ihy itself
was heavily influenced by the nearby Old Kingdom tombs.295 It would be more accurate to say
that both Unas-ha-ishetef ’s and Ihy’s tombs were influenced by Old Kingdom models than that
Unas-ha-ishetef ’s tomb was influenced by Ihy’s.
As far as the iconography of Unas-ha-ishetef ’s tomb is concerned, Munro also observed
that an overall conformity to Old Kingdom patterns is modified by new elements that include
costume, hairdos, and individual objects.296 This is a productive line of reasoning, but Munro
is not specific concerning the new elements involved.
As regards the later date for Unas-ha-ishetef in Heracleopolitan times, Munro has yet to elab-
orate on his reasons. Moreover, he does not state whether he means the early Heracleopolitan
Period (Dynasty Nine) or the late Heracleopolitan Period (Dynasty Ten).
Having criticized Munro’s dating criteria, it is necessary to put forward some alternative indi-
cations for dating the tomb of Unas-ha-ishetef, and this is not easy to do. One such indication
is provided by the wigs in the tomb which present a number of hybrid types that do not appear
until the end of the Sixth Dynasty or later.297 Several of the offering bearers in this tomb,298 for
example, wear shoulder-length wigs whose lower parts are covered with an overlapping pattern

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Brovarski

Fig. 6. Late Old Kingdom wig types: (a) Der-senedj; (b) Pepy II; (c) Nefer I: Idu; (d) Unas-ha-
ishetef.

of locks, leaving straight lines of longer locks on the crown of the head.299 The pattern (Figure
6 a) appears in monuments of late Old Kingdom date both at the Memphite cemeteries and in
the Upper Egyptian provinces.300 It is also found in contemporary statues.301
At South Saqqara the wig pattern is attested in a number of displaced or reused reliefs found
by Jéquier in the Pepy II cemetery.302 It also appears in four small-scale models of contemporary
brick mastaba-tombs, what Jéquier referred to as ‘stèles-maison.’ Three of these were found at
South Saqqara by Jéquier303 and a fourth more recently by Naguib Kanawati and Ali Hassan
in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery.304 One of the tomb models belongs to the Thinite nomarch
Khubau, one of two nomarchs who appears to have governed U.E. nome 8 after the death of
Djau, the last of the family of provincial governors to rule that nome from Deir el-Gebrawi.305
Khubau thus probably belongs to the Seventh Dynasty.306
At North Saqqara, in addition to the model tomb just referred to, the wig pattern appears on
one of a pair of reliefs belonging to an official named User, found ‘südlich v. Hause,’ according
to Borchardt.307 The owner of the two reliefs wears patterned kilts of two different late Old
Kingdom types.308 Perhaps from the same site comes a segmented architrave with the same wig
pattern that belongs to a priest of Ptah and steward named Ptahshepses: Impy.309
At Abydos the wig pattern under discussion occurs on a side panel of the vizier Pepynakht
discovered by the Penn-Yale Expedition in fill to the local west of the Ramesside Portal temple
area.310 A false door of the same individual found by Mariette at Abydos is of the same height as
the side-panel. Together with a missing left-hand side panel, the two elements probably formed
a small niche-chapel.311 Pepynakht is variously assigned to the period between Merenre and
year 15 of Pepy II312, or to the middle313 or latter parts314 of Pepy II’s reign. But several features
of the vizier’s false door serve to date him to the end of the reign of Pepy II or later.315
At Abydos the wig pattern is likewise attested on a stele and false door that are probably no
earlier than the last years of the Sixth Dynasty in date and that may well be somewhat later.
Fischer thinks the stele no earlier than the last years of the Sixth Dynasty, but possibly as late as
Dynasty Eight.316 The false door has been dated by the present writer to the end of the reign
of Pepy II or to the succeeding period of the Sixth-Eighth Dynasties. 317
The tombs cut in the cliff of Qubbet el-Hawa at Aswan provide a number of other examples of
the shoulder-length wig with straight lines of longer locks on the crown of the head. The earliest
of these is worn by a figure of Sabni I on a relief set into the wall at the top of one side of the ramp
leading to the tomb of Sabni and his father Mekhu (Plate 4).318 Assuming the relief is contemporary
with the tomb, the occurrence is important, because it would then provide an example of this wig
type securely dated to the reign of Pepy II. At least most scholars appear to be of the opinion that

112
The Date of Metjetji

Plate 6. Stele of Men-ankh-pepy: Meni, MFA 98.1034. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Sabni I lived in the latter part of that king’s reign.319 A second example of this type of wig at Aswan
appears on a door jamb of the entrance to the tomb of the nomarch Sabni II, son of Pepynakht:
Heqaib.320 Both of these latter individuals probably belong to Dynasties Six through Eight.321
In our present state of knowledge, it therefore seems that the shoulder-length wig with straight
lines of longer locks on the crown of the head came into fashion towards the end of the reign
of Pepy II. This wig type then continued in popularity thereafter to at least the end of the Old
Kingdom. Its appearance in the tomb of Unas-ha-ishetef probably indicates that the tomb was
decorated no earlier than the end of the reign of Pepy II. On the other hand, I am aware of no
occurrence of this type of wig in relief that can definitely be dated to the Heracleopolitan Period.
There are two possible exceptions to the last statement known to me. The first appears on
the false door of the chief physician Khuy, from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara.322 The
false door was found by Quibell behind a later false door whose owner held office at the pyra-
mid of King Merikare.323 It is thus in all probability earlier than Merikare’s reign, but it is not
entirely clear how much earlier, that is, whether it belongs to the late Old Kingdom or to the
Heracleopolitan Period prior to the end of Dynasty X.324 A possible argument for a date in the
later Old Kingdom is the T-shape of the false door panel. T-shaped panels in which the joint of
the vertical and horizontal sides of the ‘T’ form a right angle325 appear to come into use as early
as the reign of Merenre and to continue in use into the Sixth through Eighth Dynasties. The

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Brovarski

Fig. 7. Patterned kilt types I: (a) Unas-ha-ishetef; (b) Men-ankh-pepy: Meni; (c) Unas-ha-ishetef;
(d) Men-ankh-pepy: Meni.

earliest example known to me is in the false door of Uni the Elder from Abydos326, whose career
extended into the reign of Merenre.327 The false door of the vizier Tjetu328 exhibits this feature,
as does that of the vizier Pepynakht.329 Tjetu probably served as vizier in the first half of the reign
of Pepy II330, while Pepynakht either served that monarch or one of his successors in Dynasties
Six through Eight (see above, p. 112). The same feature is evident in the false door of the Thinite
nomarch Gegi who, like his near contemporary Khubau, was also buried at Saqqara.331 It also
occurs in the false door of Queen Ankhnespepy III, wife of Pepy II and mother of his successor
Neferkare II Pepy III.332 All this argues that Khuy’s false door probably belongs to the end of
the Old Kingdom rather than the early Heracleopolitan Period, when the T-shaped panel largely
passes out of use.333
A phraseological and two epigraphic features of Khuy’s false door are relevant in terms
of dating. Pr n.f xrw in the false door is followed by nfr m Xrt-nTr, a shorter variant of an
adverbial phrase, nfr m iz.f n Xrt-nTr, common in Saqqara false doors and coffins of the late
Tenth Dynasty and which occurs again at Thebes in the time of Mentuhotep II in the coffin of
Mentuhotep/Buau, as well as in the Twelfth Dynasty coffin of Wah found in a tomb in the court
of the chancellor Meketre.334 This feature might thus point to a date in the Heracleopolitan
Period for Khuy’s false door. On the other hand, pr n.f xrw nfr m Xrt-nTr occurs already on
the false door335 and architrave336 of Sebekemkhent: Sebeky, who is at least as late as Pepy II,
since he was an official at the latter’s pyramid.337 In fact, the formula is written identically on
the monuments of Khuy and Sebekemkhent.

The first of the epigraphic feature relates to the arrangement of , which occurs
not only on the false door of Khuy, but on that of Sebekemkhent as well. The arrangement is
known from the reign of Pepy II and the period immediately following.338 This would seem
to point to a later Old Kingdom date for Khuy’s false door, except that the same arrangement
appears at Dendera in the early Dynasty IX burial chamber of Men-ankh-pepy/Meni.339

The second epigraphical feature is the (vertical) orthography of on Khuy’s false

door. The filler stroke in imAxw is not uncommon in inscriptions of late Dynasties X/XI from
Upper and Middle Egypt and Saqqara.340 It is also met with in the Hekanakht papers and
other hieratic documents of the early Middle Kingdom.341 Again this would seem to argue for

the later date for Khuy’s false door. On the other hand, the epithet imAxw is abbreviated
in a graffito of the Eighth Dynasty king WAD-kA-ra at Khor Dehmit in Nubia.342 So, strictly

114
The Date of Metjetji

Fig. 8. Patterned kilt types II: (a) Pepyseneb: Irnes; (b) Pepyseneb: Irnes; (c) User; (d) Shenay.

speaking, Khuy’s false door need not be as late as the end of the First Intermediate Period or
early Middle Kingdom.
The wig with straight lines of longer locks on the crown of the head is also worn by the
owner of a limestone doorway discovered originally near the pyramid of Teti by Firth and
Gunn.343 Abdul-Fattah El-Sabbahy thinks the owner of the doorway, Shedabed, possibly lived
in the Seventh or Eighth Dynasty. He may be correct. Nevertheless, the epithet imAxw on the

doorway is written . Although the epithet is abbreviated in a graffito of the Eighth

Dynasty king WAD-kA-ra at Khot Dehmit in Nubia, as we have just seen, the abbreviation
is not otherwise known before the Heracleopolitan Period.

In addition to the abbreviation of imAxw, there is also the writing of Hathor on a

second fragmentary doorway from the tomb of Shedabed.344 In his discussion of the Dendera
material of the First Intermediate Period, Fischer notes several palaeographic or epigraphic fea-
tures at Dendera and other sites which appear rarely before the Heracleopolitan Period (Dynasty
IX).345 These features include the particular writing of Hathor just noted. On the other hand,
the writing of Hathor appears in a vertical column on the false door of the Princess Nebet,
daughter of King Neferkauhor, the penultimate ruler of Dynasty Eight, and wife of the vizier
Shemai.346 Although it seems that Shemai expired before the end of the Eighth Dynasty,347 it is
not entirely certain whether Nebet survived him. If she did, the writing of Hathor on her false
door could belong to the early Heracleopolitan Period (Dynasty Nine).
If the doorway of Shedabed indeed belongs to the Ninth Dynasty, thus providing an example
of the shoulder-length wig with straight lines of longer locks on the crown of the head from
the Heracleopolitan Period, the tomb of Unas-ha-ishetef could also be as late. However, in the
absence of later occurrences of this wig pattern, it is unlikely that Unas-ha-ishetef ’s tomb can
be much later than the beginning of the Heracleopolitan Period. It is no guarantee, of course,
that the tomb is that late.
Unas-ha-ishetef wears another type of late Old Kingdom shoulder-length wig, composed of
vertical strands of curls en échelon which radiate from the crown of the head and with longer
locks of hair over the forehead (Figure 6 d).
The echeloned-wig in relief evidently first appears in the reign of Pepy II. The king wears a
short echeloned-wig in his pyramid temple at South Saqqara (Figure 6 b).348 The most clearly

115
Brovarski

dated example of the shoulder-length echeloned-wig known to me occurs on the false door of
the High Priest of Ptah Sabu-ptah: Tjety who, as we have already seen, appears in the reliefs of
the pyramid temple of Pepy II (see page 101). The same wig type also appears on a relief in the
Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago which seemingly derives from the tomb of the
Vizier Nefer I: Idu (Figure 6 c).349 Harpur dates Idu ’s tomb (G 5550) to the reign of Teti.350
Nevertheless, as Strudwick points out, it would seem that most of the viziers of Teti and the later
reign of Pepy II were buried near their respective pyramids. Since this was not the case with
Idu, whose tomb is located at the eastern edge of the Cemetery en Échelon at Giza, Strudwick
suggests a date for him in the mid-Sixth Dynasty, perhaps the later reign of Pepy I to early Pepy
II.351 A rather specific parallel to the tomb of Pepy-ankh: Heni the Black at Meir suggests that
the latter date is the more accurate (see pages 99-100). Two door jambs from the entrance of
the tomb of Ptahemhat: Ptahi provide the only other examples I know of the echeloned-wig.352
There is nothing in the inscriptions of Ptahi’s door jambs or architrave to suggest a date for his
tomb later than the Sixth Dynasty.353
The shoulder-length wig composed of vertical strands of curls en échelon which radiate
from the crown of the head then appears at Naqada and Dendera in Dynasties Six through
Eight, in the Ninth Dynasty at Naga-ed-Deir, Moalla, Thebes, and Gebelein.354 The shoulder-
length wig with strands of echeloned curls remained popular at Dendera until Dynasty Eleven,
when it also appears at Thebes.355 At the later period the echeloned curls appear once again on
the short wig.356 In the Twelfth Dynasty the same wig pattern occurs sporadically on both the
shoulder-length and short wigs.357
Unas-ha-ishetef‘s shoulder-length echeloned-wig, however, has longer locks of hair over the
forehead (Figure 6 d). This wig type is relatively rare, but Ipi, for example, wears this wig in
his reliefs from South Saqqara.358 Another example occurs on an anonymous relief of the end
of the Sixth Dynasty or the succeeding period in Princeton.359 A third example appears in the
stele of Semen’s son Kha from Abydos in Cairo, which Fischer thinks is probably later than the
Sixth Dynasty.360 I know of only one example of this variant of the echeloned-wig type from
the Heracleopolitan Period. This occurs on the stela of Seni from Naga-ed-Deir, which has been
dated by the present author to early Dynasty X/XI.361 I am unaware of any examples of this
specific wig type from the Middle Kingdom.
In terms of date, it is of interest, and possibly of significance, that the architrave of Unas-
ha-ishetef (Plate 5) published in a photograph by Zaki Saad362 bears a marked resemblance to
the reliefs of Men-ankh-pepy: Meni at Dendera (Plate 6), whom Henry Fischer has dated with
considerable likelihood to early Dynasty IX.363 The resemblance to a stele of Meni now in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is especially marked (Plate 6).364 Both architrave and stele are
executed in a high, bold relief with flat surfaces, but with the hair, necklaces, and kilts intricately
carved. An elderly figure of Unas-ha-ishetef ’s grandfather on the Saqqara architrave (Figure 7
a)365 wears the same long patterned kilt as Meni on a second stele (Figure 7 b).366 Both Unas-
ha-ishetef and Meni also wear a shorter version of the same type of kilt (Figure 7 c, d).
Meni’s are the latest examples of kilts in two dimensions which bear a sequence of alternat-
ing single and double lines that become slightly diagonal on the front panel known to me.367
The pattern was popular towards the end of the Sixth Dynasty and in the immediately suc-
ceeding period of Dynasties Six through Eight.368 Alternatively, the single and doubles lines on
the front panel may be vertical (Figure 8a, b)369 or horizontal (Figure 8 c).370 A more curious
variant also occurs (Figure 8d)371 and, in one case, only double lines appear.372 We have investi-
gated three-dimensional examples of patterned kilts which bear a sequence of alternating single

116
The Date of Metjetji

and double lines that become slightly diagonal on the front above (see p. 102-104), where it is
pointed out that kilts like this continue to appear on statues into Dynasty Ten. We have also
seen that the sequence of alternating single and double lines appears on a different type of kilt
in the Twelfth Dynasty. This does not appear to be the case with two-dimensional representa-
tions of such patterned kilts, which do not occur after the beginning of Dynasty Nine, as elicited
in Meni’s case. They do not appear, for instance, in the false doors of the late Heracleopolitan
Period (Dynasty Ten) from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara.373
Both Unas-ha-ishetef ’s architrave and Meni’s Dendera reliefs have strong affinities with the
high, bold relief style of Pepy II.374 It is possible that Meni employed an artist from the capital
or that the artist responsible for his reliefs emigrated to Dendera. Given his other name, Men-
ankh-pepy, which incorporates the name of the pyramid of Pepy II, Meni himself may even
have been a native of Memphis. The similarity between the reliefs of the two officials might
constitute an argument for assigning Unas-ha-ishetef to the early Ninth Dynasty. On the other
hand, Meni’s sculptor may have simply have been familiar with the style prevalent at Saqqara at
the very end of the Old Kingdom.
Finally, in any effort to date Unas-ha-ishetef, it should be noted that the monuments of Ihy
and Hetep375, whose relief style Munro compares to the decoration of Unas-ha-ishetef‘s mastaba,
would betray their Middle Kingdom origin on epigraphic grounds even without the fortuitous
occurrence of the cartouches of Amenemhat I.376 Both individuals, for example, write di.f prt-
xrw in Twelfth Dynasty fashion377, while the aA-column in nTr aA nb AbDw is set horizontally378,
and both oxen and fowl are found after pri xrw.379 This is not the case with Unas-ha-ishetef.
Nor is it, for that matter, true of the other tombs in the Unas cemetery to which I have had
access.
If the reliefs of Ihy bear a resemblance to the reliefs of Unas-ha-ishetef, it is because Ihy’s
sculptor copied the relief style of the late Old Kingdom (see p. 108), not because the two tombs
are themselves contemporary. An important example of the style of the late Old Kingdom was,
in fact, to hand. This is the chapel of the vizier Tjetu, immediately in front of which Ihy and
Hetep built their tombs.380

Notes
1 E. Russmann, ‘A Second Style in Egyptian Art of the Old Kingdom’, MDAIK 51 (1995), 269-279.
2 P. Kaplony, Studien zum Grab des Methethi (Bern, 1976), 51.
3 K. Baer, Rank and Title in the Old Kingdom: the Structure of the Egyptian Administration in the Fifth and Sixth Dynas-
ties (Chicago, 1960), 83, 291 [203 B].
4 Y. Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom (London and New York, 1987), 274.
5 P. Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, zu seinen Statuen Brooklyn 51.1/Kansas City 51-1 und zu verwand-
ten Rundbildern’, in Catherine Berger, Gisèle Clerc, and Nicolas Grimal (eds.), Hommages à Jean Leclant 1, BdÉ
106/1 (Cairo, 1994), 254, 266.
6 H. Altenmüller, ‘Zur Vergöttlichung des Königs Unas im Alten Reich’, SAK 1 (1974), 1-18.
7 The tomb is published in S. Hassan, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 3: Mastabas of Princess Hemet-Ra and Others, re-
edited by Zaki Iskander (Cairo, 1978), 69-81, figs. 36-43.
8 P. Munro, ‘Unas-Friedhof Nord-West: 6. Vorbericht über die Arbeiten der Gruppe Berlin/Hannover in Saqqara (Teil
1)’, GM 74 (1984),69-70, fig. 1.
9 Ibid., 70.
10 H. G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millennium B .C. Down to the Theban Domination of Upper Egypt (Locust Valley,
NY, 1968), 78-79 with fig. 15.

117
Brovarski

11 Munro, GM 74, 70, n. 21.

12 H. Junker, Giza VIII (Vienna, 1947), 148.
13 Ibid., fig. 70.
14 Ibid., fig. 74.
15 Ibid., fig. 43.
16 C. Firth and B. Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries. 2 vols. Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 7 (Cairo, 1926), pls. 23-26. For
the date of Gemni-em-hat’s coffin, see E. Brovarski, ‘False Doors and History: The First Intermediate Period and
Middle Kingdom,’ in D. P. Silverman, W. K. Simpson, and J. Wegner (eds.), Archaism and Innovation: Studies in the
Culture of Middle Kingdom Egypt (New Haven and Philadelphia, 2009), 365-379, 384-387, 410-411.
17 The rock-cut tomb of Iyenhor is published in Hassan, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 3, 59-67, and figs. 32-35.
18 P. Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s’, 250.
19 For the rock-cut tomb of Niankh-pepy/meryre, see S. Hassan, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 2: Mastabas of Ny-ankh-
Pepy and Others, re-edited by Zaky Iskander (Cairo, 1975), 1-23, figs. 3-9.
20 The false door of Iarty is published by Z. Saad, ‘A Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Saqqara, 1939-1940,’
ASAE 40 (1940), 682, fig. 73.
21 For citations, see Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 251.
22 The false door of Ankhi appears in H. G. Fischer, Egyptian Studies, vol. 3: Varia Nova. (New York, 1996) pl. 44.
23 For a drawing and photograph of a pillar and the false door from the tomb of Khenu I, see R. Caminos and H.G.
Fischer, Ancient Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography (New York, 1976), 39, fig. 3; J.F. Romano, In the Fullness of
Time: Masterpieces of Egyptian Art from American Collections (Salem, Oregon, 2002), fig. 50.
24 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 252. For the tomb of Ptahshepses: Impy, see Munro, GM 74, 77-88.
25 N. Strudwick, The Administration of Egypt in the Old Kingdom (London, 1985), 16-17.
26 Sakkarah Expedition, The Mastaba of Mereruka. 2 vols. OIP, vols. 31, 39 (Chicago, 1938), pl. 62 (Mereruka); T.
G. H. James, The Mastaba of Khentika called Ikhekhi, ASE 30 (London, 1953), pl. 19 (Khentika); N. Kanawati,
Conspiracies in the Egyptian Palace: Unis to Pepy I (London and New York, 2003), pl. 51 (Mery-teti); N. Kanawati
and M. Abder-Raziq, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara, vol. 5: The Tomb of Hesi, The Australia Centre for Egyptology:
Reports 13 (Warminster, 1999), pl. 63 (Hezi); N. Kanawati, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqarah, vol. 8: The Tomb of
Inumin, The Australia Centre for Egyptology: Reports 24 (Oxford, 2006), pl. 50 (Inu-min).
27 The exception to the rule just referred to is represented by the false door of the vizier Nefer-seshem-re: Sheshi; see N.
Kanawati and M. Abder-Raziq, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara, vol. 3: The Tombs of Neferseshemre and Seankhuiptah,
The Australia Centre for Egyptology: Reports 11 (Warminster, 1998), pls. 18, 58. The false door has three pairs of
jambs with two figures of the vizier holding a staff and scepter at the bottom of each outer jamb but only one at the
bottom of the middle jambs. The bottom of the right inner jamb is destroyed, but enough of the left inner jamb
survives to show that here the vizier was carried in a palanquin on the shoulders of his attendants. The same motif
was earlier represented on three false doors of the reign of Unis, those of Ptahhotep: Tjefi (R.F.E. Paget and A.A.
Pirie, The Tomb of Ptah-hetep, with comments by F. Ll. Griffith, ERA 2. (London, 1896), pl. 39, and Ptahhotep: Tjefu
(Hassan, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 2, fig. 58) at Saqqara and that of Seshemnofer at Dahshur (J. De Morgan,
Fouilles à Dahchour 1894-1895 (Vienna, 1903), fig. 3), but apparently not later.
28 Harpur (Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 274) dates the first two individuals to middle/late Unis. Ibid., p. 279, she as-
signs Seshemnofer to her periods V.6-VI.1, that is, Neuserre-Teti. Given the close parallels in the designs of the four
false doors, it seems that Seshemnofer’s date can be narrowed down to the reigns of Unis and Teti. This particular
feature is another argument that Nefer-seshem-re is the earliest of Teti’s vizier’s; see also E. Brovarski, ‘False doors &
history: the Sixth Dynasty’, in Miroslav Bárta (ed.), The Old Kingdom Art and Archaeology: Proceedings of the Confer-
ence held in Prague, May 31-June 4, 2004 (Prague, 2006), 72.
29 Ibid., 82-83.
30 Ibid., 99ff.

118
The Date of Metjetji

31 Ibid., 105.
32 H. G. Fischer, ‘Some Early Monuments from Busiris, in the Egyptian Delta’, MMJ 11 (1976), 21, fig. 12.
33 See Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 105-106, where a date as late as Pepy II is suggested for Sefget’s false door on
the basis of the design of the table scene on the panel.
34 Ibid., 89ff.
35 Ibid., 97-98.
36 A lettuce is also placed on top of a ewer and basin on a side-panel of Khesufui-khnum: Khnumenti, which probably
belongs to the end of the Sixth Dynasty or shortly thereafter, see W.K. Simpson, ‘Two Egyptian Bas Reliefs of the
Late Old Kingdom,’ North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 11, no. 3 (1972), figs. 2, 3.
37 Hassan, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 3, fig. 38 b.
38 A. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir 5, ASE 28 (London, 1953), pl. 10. For the date, see Baer, Rank and Title, 84,
291 [212]; Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 280, and further below.
39 N. Kanawati, Deir el-Gebrawi, vol. 1: The Northern Cliff, The Australia Centre for Egyptology: Reports 23 (Oxford,
2005), pls. 6b, 38. On the date, see Baer, Rank and Title, 102, 292 [323]; Fischer, Dendera, 130, n. 572; Harpur,
Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 280.
40 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 118.
41 A. El-Khouli and N. Kanawati, Excavations at Saqqara northwest of Teti’s Pyramid, vol. 2 (Sydney, 1988). pl. 22.
42 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 106-107.
43 Munro, GM 74, 72, n. 24, sees a welcome confirmation for his dating of the second false door in a false door from
Busiris which Fischer (MMJ 11, 9-13, figs, 3, 4) ascribes to the Eleventh Dynasty. In actuality, the design of the panel
of the false door from Busiris is the reverse of Hermeru’s panel, with the table scene on its proper place on the panel
above, but with the apertures and the bar of the ‘T’ arranged at the bottom.
44 Fischer, Dendera , 78 (1), fig. 15.
45 G. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern von der 6. Bis 13. Dynastie, SAGA 7 (Heidelberg, 1993), 32-33. Lapp
does not include the coffin of Irenakhti in his discussion of the Sixth Dynasty type of coffin, presumably because the
coffin is fragmentary. He nevertheless dates it to the Old Kingdom; see ibid., 282.
46 P. Munro, ‘Die Inschriften auf dem Architrave des Jdw (G 7102) ein Standard-Text in ungewöhnlicher Gliederung’,
in H. Altenmüller und R. Germer (eds.), Miscellanea Aegyptologica; Wolfgang Helck zum 75. Geburtstag (Hamburg,
1989), 131-132.
47 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 257.
48 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 77.
49 Ibid., 77 and n. 45.
50 N. Kanawati, Akhmim in the Old Kingdom, Part 1: Chronology and Administration, The Australia Centre for Egyptol-
ogy: Studies 2 (Sydney, 1992), 85 and n. 457, dates the same feature to the period extending from the end of Pepy
I’s reign to the earlier part of that of Pepy II. This is because he assigns the tomb of Khuenukh at Quseir el-Amarna
to the reign of Pepy I (A. El-Khouli and N. Kanawati, Quseir el-Amarna: The Tombs of Pepy-ankh and Khuwen-wekh,
ACER 1 (Warminster, 1989) 16). I have argued elsewhere that Khuenukh’s tomb belongs to the (second half of )
the reign of Pepy II; Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 115. To the examples of this feature cited by Kanawati, the
following references may be added: N. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, pt. I: Tomb of Aba and Smaller
Tombs of the Southern Group, ASE 11 (London, 1902), pl. 23 (Ibi); N. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi,
pt. II: Tomb of Zau and Tombs of the Northern Group, ASE 12 (London, 1902), pls. 7, 11, 12 (Djau); Firth and
Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries, pl. 73 (2); G. Jéquier, La Pyramide d’Oudjebten. Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 10
(Cairo, 1928), fig. 34 (Khubau; see below, p. 111); G. Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II,
Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 11 (Cairo,1929), fig. 116; G. Jéquier, La Pyramide d’Aba, Excavations at Saqqarah, vol.
14 (Cairo, 1935), 23; James, The Mastaba of Khentika, pl. 41; E. Drioton and J.-P. Lauer, ‘Un groupe des tombes
à Saqqarah: Icheti, Nefer-khouou-ptah, Sebek-em-khent, et Ânkhi’, ASAE 55 (1958), pls. 4-5 (Ishtji; see below, n.

119
Brovarski

243); S. Bosticco, Museo Archeologico di Firenze: Le stele egiziane dall’Antico al Nuovo Regno 1 (Rome, 1959), pl. 1; T.
G. H. James, Hieroglyphic Texts from Egyptian Stelae etc., vol. 1. 2d ed. ( London, 1961), pl. 34 (3); Simpson, North
Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 11, figs. 1, 2; C. Ziegler, Catalogue des stèles, peintures et reliefs égyptien de l’Ancien
Empire et de la Première Période Intermédiaire vers 2686-2040 avant J.-C. (Paris, 1990), cat. No. 12; MFA 13.3085,
coffin of Mer-ptah-ankh-pepy: Ptahshepses: Impy (see Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 96 [62]).
51 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 251.
52 Hassan, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 2, 17-19, pls. 6-11; H. G. Fischer, ‘Review of Excavations at Saqqara, 1937-
1938, 3 vols., by Selim Hassan’, JEA 65 (1979), 179.
53 B. Porter and R. L. B. Moss, assisted by E. Burney, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic
Texts, Reliefs and Paintings, vol. 3, pts. 1 and 2, 2nd ed. rev. and augmented by Jaromir Málek (Oxford, 1974-
1981).
54 See C. Aldred, Egyptian Art in the Days of the Pharaohs, 3100-320 BC. (New York and Toronto, 1980), 133; H.
Müller, ‘Ein Kopf von einem frühen Würfelhocker in der Münchener Ägyptischen Sammlung’, in S. Lauffer and F.
Cornelius (eds.), Festgabe für Dr. Walter Will ( Munich, 1996), 121-141; A. Eggebrecht, ‘Zur Bedeutung des Würfel-
hockers’, in S. Lauffer and F. Cornelius (eds.), Festgabe für Dr. Walter Will (Munich, 1996), 143-163; E. R. Russmann
and D. Finn, Egyptian Sculpture: Cairo and Luxor (Cairo, 1989), 52; R. Schulz, Die Entwicklung und Bedeutung des
kuboiden Statuentypus. Eine Untersuchung zu den sogenannten „Würfelhockern.‘ Band I-II, (Hildesheim, 1992),
694-699. I agree with Russmann and Schulz that the block statues were inspired by numerous Old Kingdom por-
trayals of the tomb owner in a carrying chair.
55 P. Munro, ‘Einige Bermerkungen zum Unas-Friedhof in Saqqara: 3. Vorbericht über die Arbeiten der Gruppe Han-
nover im Herbst 1978 und im Frühjahr 1980,’ SAK 10 (1983), 287.
56 W. Barta, Aufbau und Bedeutung der altägyptischen Opferformel, AF 24 (Glückstadt, 1968).
57 Munro, SAK 10, 293.
58 Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern, 34-35.
59 Ibid., § 100.
60 Ibid., §§ 100-101.
61 Hassan, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 2, 19, 21-22, figs. 10 and 11, pls., 15 B, 19 and 20.
62 Ibid., 19, n. 1; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Mummy: Chapters on Egyptian Funeral Archaeology, 2d ed. (Cambridge,
1925), 219.
63 Munro, SAK 10, 293, n. 42.
64 E. Chassinat and C. Palanque, Une campagne de fouilles dans la nécropole d’Assiout. MIFAO 14 (Cairo, 1911).
65 E.g., BM 46629 (Nebhetep), see H.G. Fischer, ‘Review of Tell Basta, by Labib Habachi’, AJA 62 (1958), 331; BM
46634 (Khuit); cf. Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern, 294, 296. Lapp (ibid., 296 (S56) ) dates a third
coffin, BM 46633 (Henenu), to the First Intermediate Period. For a list of the late Old Kingdom and First Inter-
mediate Period coffins from Asyut in London, see W. V. Davies, ‘Ancient Egyptian Timber Imports and Analysis of
Wooden Coffins in the British Museum’, in W. V. Davies and L. Schofield (eds.), Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant
(London, 1995), 146-147. See also D. Magee, Asyut to the end of the Middle Kingdom, 3 vols. (Ph. D. dissertation,
Oxford University, 1989) .
66 Chassinat and Palanque, Une campagne de fouilles, 110, pl. 21 (2-3). For the date of the burial, see Lapp, Typologie
der Särge und Sargkammern, 294 (S46a, b).
67 D. P. Ryan, The Archaeological Excavations of David George Hogarth at Asyut, Egypt; A Preliminary Report of the
Excavations of David George Hogarth at Asyut, Egypt 1906-1907 (Ph.D. dissertation, The Union for Experimenting
Colleges and Universities, 1988).
68 Hassan, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 2, 19, pls. 13 and 15 B.
69 Fischer, JEA 65, 179. Subsequently, the spells have been treated with translation and commentary by J. Osing,
‘Sprüche gegen die jbhAtj-Schlange’, MDAIK 43 (1986), 205-210. Osing accepts Fischer’s late Old Kingdom date

120
The Date of Metjetji

for the texts.

70 Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern, 35.
71 M. Valloggia, Balat I: le mastaba de Modou-nefer, FIFAO 31 (Cairo, 1986), 74-77, 167-170, fig. 10, pls. 72-73.
72 In Caminos and Fischer, Ancient Egyptian Epigraphy, 39; Fischer, JEA 65, 179. See also E. Edel, Altägyptische Gram-
matik, 2 vols. AnOr 34 and 39 (Rome, 1955), 71, 79-80; W. Schenkel, Frühmittelägyptische Studien, Bonner Orien-
talistische Studien n.s. 13 (Bonn, 1962), 42.
73 Munro, SAK 10, 293.
74 S. Hassan, Excavations at Giza 1929-1930 (Oxford, 1932), fig. 172, 173, pl. 66; H.G. Fischer, ‘Five Inscriptions of
the Old Kingdom’, ZÄS 105 (1978), 58-59, fig. 5.
75 H. F. Lutz, Egyptian tomb steles and offering Stones of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology of the University of
California (Leipzig,1927), no. 17.
76 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 251.
77 J. Vandier, Moalla: la tombe de Ankhtifi et la tombe de Sebek-hotep, BdÉ 18 (Cairo, 1950), VII, 2; XVI,15; Fischer,
Dendera, 65.
78 R. Anthes, ‘The Original Meaning of mAa-xrw,’ JNES 13 (1954), 21-51.
79 S. Hassan, Excavations at Giza, vol. 5: 1933-1934 (Cairo, 1944), fig. 101a, b.
80 James, Hieroglyphic Texts, pl. 29 [1].
81 J. A. Wilson, ‘A Group of Sixth Dynasty Inscriptions’, JNES 13 (1954), pl. 18A.
82 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 268, 273.
83 H. G. Fischer, ‘BiA and the Deified Vizier MHw’, JARCE 4 (1965), 51.
84 H. Altenmüller, Die Wanddarstellungen im Grab des Mehu in Saqqara. AV 42. (Mainz, 1998), pl. 9, p. 46 [32].
85 Ibid., 66, pl. 85.
86 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 81.
87 James, The Mastaba of Khentika, pl. 19.
88 Baer, Rank and Title, 116, 293 [393]; Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 125 (109); Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian
Tombs, 275.
89 W. V. Davies et al., Saqqâra Tombs, vol. 1: The Mastabas of Mereri and Wernu, ASE 36 (London, 1984), pl. 26.
90 A. Lloyd et al., Saqqâra Tombs 2: The Mastabas of Meru, Semdenti, Khui and Others, ASE 40 (London, 1990), pl.
16.
91 Kanawati, Conspiracies, 131; Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 273.
92 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 81.
93 R. Macramallah, Le Mastaba d’Idout (Cairo, 1935), pl. 6. For the date, see Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 76, n.
38.
94 N. Kanawati and M. Abder-Raziq, The Unas Cemetery at Saqqara, The Australia Centre for Egyptology: Reports 19
(Oxford, 2003), 36-37, pl. 23.
95 Munro, GM 63, 87.
96 Caminos and Fischer, Ancient Egyptian Epigraphy, 39.
97 Edel, Altägyptische Grammatik, 71.
98 The dating import of this gesture is also discussed in E. Brovarski, ‘A Second Style in Egyptian Relief of the Old
Kingdom’, in S. E. Thompson and P. Der Manuelian (eds.), Egypt and Beyond: Essays Presented to Leonard H. Lesko
upon his Retirement from the Wilbour Chair of Egyptology at Brown University June 2005 (Providence, RI, 2008), 79.
99 Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, pt. II, 3. The figure is not illustrated, but Davies says that the deceased
on the west entrance thickness is ‘figured with upraised arms.’
100 N. Kanawati, The Rock Tombs of El-Hawawish: the Cemetery of Akhmim 1 (Sydney, 1980), pl. 42b.
101 See Fischer, Dendera, 78-85; Schenkel, Frühmittelägyptische Studien, passim; Kanawati, Cemetery of Akhmim 1, 57.
102 N. Kanawati, The Tombs of El-Hagarsa 1. The Australia Centre for Egyptology: Reports 4 ( Sydney, 1993), 57.

121
Brovarski

103 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 115, n. 434.

104 See Fischer, Dendera, 78-85, fig. 15; E. Brovarski, The Inscribed Material of the First Intermediate Period from Naga-
ed-Dêr (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1989), 209-215.
105 D. Spanel, ‘Palaeographic and Epigraphic Distinctions between Texts of the So-called First Intermediate Period
and the Early Twelfth Dynasty’, in P. der Manuelian (ed.), Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson, vol. 2 (Boston
1996), 768.
106 Cf. Caminos and Fischer, Ancient Egyptian Epigraphy, 39.
107 I have a transparency of the false door in my possession taken in 1978.
108 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 87-89.
109 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’ , 77.
110 P. Kaplony, Grab des Methethi, fig. on p. 33.
111 W. Schenkel, Frühmittelägyptische Studien, §§ 16 a, b and 18 d; Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s’, 252-
253.
112 In W. Schenkel, ‘Kritische Anmerkungen zur Methode der Bestimmung von Lautgesetzen für die Rekonstruktion
ägyptischer Nachtonvokale’, in M. Görg and E. Pusch (eds.), Festschrift Elmar Edel. Ägypten und Altes Testament 1
(Bamberg, 1979), 369-389, especially p. 385 and n. 39.
113 J. Janssen, ‘Mijn verblif in el-Kâb en het verdere Nijldal (December 1949-April 1950’), JEOL 12 (1951-1952), pl.
32 [bottom]; 33 [left]. Munro (‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s’, 253) does not present any specific arguments
for doing so.
114 Fischer, MMJ 11, 20 [h]; Edel, Altägyptische Grammatik, §146. Fischer also refers to two unpublished texts, from
Giza and Saqqara respectively, with the composite ending -wy. Neither inscription can be dated with any accuracy,
but he sees no reason to think that they are later than the Sixth Dynasty. The inscription from G 7753 A, Obj. Reg.
29-12-84 and 29-12-124 is photographed in HU-BMFA Exp. Ph. A 6549. It includes the phrase ink imAxwy, ‘I am
one who is revered.’ Fischer notes that the writing imAxwy is also attested for the plural in James, Hieroglyphic Texts,
pl. 29 [top].
115 Schenkel, ‘Kritische Anmerkungen’, 385 and n. 39.
116 Kaplony, Grab des Methethi, 32.
117 H. Brunner, Die Texte aus den Gräbern der Herakleopolitenzeit von Siut. ÄF 5. (Glückstadt, 1937) 58. The example
is actually feminine, imAxyt, and appears before the name of Khety II’s wife.
118 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 253-254; Brunner, Herakleopolitenzeit, 62.
119 Munro, SAK 10, 287.
120 Munro, GM 63, 85ff.; Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 251.
121 See Lapp, Die Opferformel des Alten Reiches, Sonderschrift des Deutschen Archälogisches Institut, Abt. Kairo, 21
(Mainz am Rhein,1986), §355.
122 See e.g., Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 100 [68].
123 G. Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de Pepi II, vol. 3: les approches du temple (Cairo, 1940) pl. 52.
124 E. Brovarski, ‘The Late Old Kingdom at South Saqqara’, in L. Pantalacci and C. Berger-El-Naggar (eds.), Des
Néferkarê aux Montouhotep: Travaux archéologiques en cours sur la fin de la VI e dynastie at la Première Période Inter-
médiaire, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 40 ( Lyon, 2005), 43-47. Munro, ‘Bemerkungen
zur Datierung MTTj’s, 277, appears to think that Kha-bau-khnum: Biu postdates Pepy II, but it is not entirely clear
how late he thinks the vizier is.
125 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 253, n. 24, referencing Fischer, Dendera, 86 [1] and Appendix B. I
would like to express my appreciation to Dr. Dorothea Arnold, Lila Acheson Wallace Chairman of Egyptian Art,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for the photograph of Metjetji’s false door reproduced here.
126 A. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir 4, ASE 25 (London, 1924), pls. 11, 26 [1]. Pepyankh the Middle is dated
by Baer, Rank and Title, 70, 289 [133] between years 35-55 Pepy II. Harpur (Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 280)

122
The Date of Metjetji

assigns him to the period between year 55 of Pepy II and the end of the Eighth Dynasty. El-Khouli and Kanawati,
Quseir el-Amarna, 26, consider him to belong to middle Pepy II.
127 Fischer, Dendera, 196. For an example of a late Old Kingdom false door in which the offering scene completely fills
the space between the torus moulding and the lintel extends across all the jambs, see the second face of the false door
of Bia: Ireri from the Unis Pyramid Cemetery (Wilson, JNES 13, fig. 4.) On this individual, see above, p. 91.
127aW. M. Flinders Petrie, Dendereh, EEF 17 (London, 1900), pl. 1. Fischer, Dendera, 85-91, dates Meni to the Ninth
Dynasty.
128 CG 1413: L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen) im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1298-1808, pt.
1. Catalogues Général des Antiquités Égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, vol. 97 (Berlin, 1937), pl. 19. On Hezezi‘s false
door, see also above, p. 96.
129 Lloyd et al., Saqqâra Tombs 2, pl. 10.
130 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 118 [98]); Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 82-85.
131 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 97 [64].
132 N. Kanawati, The Rock Tombs of El-Hawawish: the Cemetery of Akhmim 3 (Sydney, Australia, 1982), fig. 10.
133 A. McFarlane, ‘The First Nomarch at Akhmim: The Identification of a Sixth Dynasty Biographical Inscription,’ GM
100 (1987), 68-69.
134 Kanawati, The Rock Tombs of El-Hawawish, 16.
135 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 225.
136 Sakkarah Expedition, The Mastaba of Mereruka, pls. 147, 148.
137 J. Harvey, Wooden Statues of the Old Kingdom (Leiden, 2001), 67-68, cat. no. A50, photograph on page 212.
138 A. M. Donadoni Roveri et al., Gebelein: il villagio e la necropolis (Turin, 1994), fig. 46.
139 Ibid., figs. 44-45.
140 Lapp, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern, 32-33.
141 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 263-264, also assigns the statue group of the Overseer of the Double
Granaries Tjeteti, consisting of seventeen wooden statues and seven servant statues found by Cecil Firth in the Teti
Pyramid Cemetery in the 1920’s (B. Peterson, ‘Finds from the Theteti Tomb at Saqqara’, Bulletin of the Museum of
Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities 20 (1985), 3-24), a date in the neighborhood of the Twelfth Dynasty.
One of Tjeteti’s statues, Cairo JE 49371 (ibid.,10 [4]), wears a long kilt with a pattern very similar to the vizier
Meryre-iam’s (see below). In both statues the horizontal bands are still large and the folds relatively limited in
number. The form of Tjeteti‘s false door with a supplemental frame is first known from the false door of the vizier
Meryre-iam in the later first half of the reign of Pepy II (Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 109-110). The false door
and statues probably belong to the same time or a little later (cf. Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 160 [159]).
There is nothing in Tjeteti’s inscriptions (Peterson, ‘Finds from the Theteti Tomb at Saqqara’, figs. on pp. 4, 5) that
would suggest a date for them later than the end of the Old Kingdom; cf. above, pp. 92.
142 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 256-258. Ibid., 257 (d), also sees a close relationship between the
youthful statues of Metjetji (Kaplony, Grab des Methethi, figs. on pp. 60 and 66) and the rock-cut statues of Idu in
G 7102 (W. K. Simpson, The Mastabas of Qar and Idu G 7101 AND 7102, Giza Mastabas 2 (Boston, 1976), pls.
32b-d, 33a-b. There is a certain resemblance between the two groups of statues, but this is in large part due to the
fact that they wear the same short wig, short kilt, and beaded apron. The proportions of Metjetji’s statues are quite
different from those of Idu.
143 Thanks are due to Dr. Edward L. Bleiberg, Curator of Egyptian Art, The Brooklyn Museum, and Dr. Rita E. Freed,
John F. Cogan, Jr. and Mary L. Cornille Chair of the Department of Art of the Ancient World, Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, for photographs of the statues of Metjetji and Qar and permission to reproduce them here.
144 Simpson, Qar and Idu, pl. 21.
145 Ibid., 1-2; Baer, Rank and Title, 288 [77]. The Baer citation (as Munro notes) is actually to Idu, the father of Qar,
whom Baer assigns to the period extending from Merenre to year 15 of Pepy II. Baer (Rank and Title, 136, 294

123
Brovarski

[495]) assigns Qar himself to years 15-35 Pepy II. Munro does not cite Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 267,
who dates the tomb on stylistic grounds to years 1-34 of Pepy II. For a refutation of Kanawati’s dating of Idu and
Qar to the early reign of Unis and late Unis respectively (N. Kanawati, The Egyptian Administration in The Old
Kingdom (Warminster, 1977), 155-6), see Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 69 (23).
146 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 257; Munro, ‘Die Inschriften auf dem Architrave des Jdw’, 131-32.
147 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 257 [a].
148 Simpson, Qar and Idu, figs. 7 and 9 b.
149 Referring to Schenkel, Frühmittelägyptische Studien, 40, 107f.
150 Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, pt. II, pl. 8. Munro also cites a stele from Naga-ed-Deir (D. Dunham,
Naga-ed-Dêr Stelae of the First Intermediate Period (London, 1937), no. 72) and the burial chamber of anw at South
Saqqara, both of which he thinks belongs to the Sixth Dynasty. The stele has been assigned to the early years of
Dynasty IX in Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 535-7, 579. The tomb of anw has been dated to the Heracleopolitan Period
by Fischer (‘Quelques particuliers’, p. 184, n. 54) as it is by E. Brovarski, ‘Abydos in the Old Kingdom and First
Intermediate Period, Part II,’ in D.P. Silverman (ed.), For His Ka: Essays Offered in Memory of Klaus Baer, SAOC 55
(Chicago, 1994), 32, n. 56.
151 N. Kanawati, The Rock Tombs of El-Hawawish: the Cemetery of Akhmim 2 ( Sydney, Australia, 1981), pl. 23. For
the date, see Kanawati, Akhmim, 127-39. Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 281, actually assigns the nomarch
in question to the Sixth-Eighth Dynasties. Fischer (‘Quelques particuliers’, 181, n. 42 ) refers to another example
of imy-wt with the pustule on the false door of Meryteti, which he saw in a facsimile made by the late Alexander
Badawy. It is clear from the modern facsimile drawing of Meryteti’s false door (N. Kanawati and M. Abder-Raziq,
Mereruka and His Family, Part 1: The Tomb of Meryteti, The Australia Centre for Egyptology: Reports 21 (Oxford,
2004), pl. 51) that Badawy was mistaken in this regard.
152 See H. G. Fischer, ‘The Cult and Nome of the Goddess Bat’, JARCE 1 (1962), pl. 2, fig. 3, pp. 10-11, 17-18; E.
Brovarski, ‘An Unpublished Stele of the First Intermediate Period in the Oriental Institute Museum’, JNES 32 (1973),
fig, 6, pp. 459-465; Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, fig. 28, pp. 176 (3), 264-266, 352-362; Brovarski, ‘Abydos in the Old
Kingdom’, figs. 2.6, 2.7, pp. 34-39. Cf. Fischer, Dendera, 84 (15).
153 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 258, also thinks that the omission of a ground line beneath the funer-
ary priests in the tomb of Qar (Simpson, Qar and Idu, fig. 25) was intentional on the part of the artist with the
result that the figures seem to float and results in a kind of ‘cavalier perspective.’ He thinks this reminiscent of many
representations of the First intermediate Period, for example, Vandier, Moaalla, pls. 40, 41, etc. and as evidence for
a date after the Old Kingdom for Qar’s tomb. I find it difficult to believe that what appears to me as the accidental
omission of a ground line constitutes evidence of a late date.
154 Brovarski, ‘A Second Style in Egyptian Relief ’, 62-65.
155 Simpson, Qar and Idu, figs. 21, 42. For this iconographical feature, see Brovarski, ‘A Second Style in Egyptian
Relief ’, 62-64.
156 Ibid., 63 and n. 77, fig. 4b.
157 Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir 4, pl. 26 [1].
158 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 267.
159 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 68 [2].
160 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 280.
161 El-Khouli and Kanawati, Quseir el-Amarna, 26.
162 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 257 [c].
163 F. von Bissing, Die Mastaba des Gem-ni-kai 1 (Berlin, 1905) pl. 3 [1].
164 Baer, Rank and Title, 149, 295 [548]; Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 276.
165 Kaplony, Grab des Methethi , figs. on pp. 63 [Brooklyn 51.1] and 68 [Kansas City 51-1].
166 Ibid., 132.

124
The Date of Metjetji

167 See, e.g., A. Moussa and H. Altenmüller, The Tomb of Nefer and Ka-hay, AV 5, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut,
Abteilung Kairo, 5 (Mainz am Rhein, 1971), pl. 26; L. Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen)
im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1298-1808, pt. 2, Catalogues Général des Antiquités Égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, vol.
97 (Cairo, 1964), pl. 68, and Ziegler, Catalogue, cat. 44; A. Moussa and H. Altenmüller, Das Grab des Nianchchnum
and Chnumhotep, AV 21 (Mainz am Rhein, 1977), pl. 87.
168 The sources for Figure 1 are the following: (a) James, The Mastaba of Khentika, pl. 7, with the kind permission of the
author; (b) Simpson, Qar and Idu, fig. 33, with the generous consent of the author; (c) Blackman, The Rock Tombs
of Meir IV, pl. 16. Broader pleating also appears on long kilts, e.g., Junker, Giza VIII, fig. 82 (Menhebu); G. Goyon,
‘Le tombeau d’Ankhou à Saqqarah’, Kêmi 15 (1969), pl. 7 (Intji/Ankhu). The latter individual is dated by Harpur,
Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 273, to the Sixth-Eighth Dynasties.
169 The following are the sources for Figure 2: (a) D. Wildung, Staatlichen Sammlung Ägyptische Kunst (Munich, 1976),
Gl. 13, fig. on p. 44; (b) P. Munro, Der Unas-Friedhof Nord-West I (Mainz am Rhein, 1993), pl. 31; (c) Caminos and
Fischer, Ancient Egyptian Epigraphy, fig. 3 (with the kind permission of Dr. Dorothea Arnold, Lila Acheson Wallace
Chairman of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). For Meryre-ankh, see Altenmüller, Grab des Mehu,
pl. 95.
170 CG 1536-1537: Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches, pl. 50.
171 CG 1404: ibid., pl. 17.
172 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 77 [33].
173 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 81-83.
174 D. Wildung, ‘Hoherpriester von Memphis’, LÄ 2 (1977: 1258 [12] ; (G. Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de Pepi II, vol.
2: le temple (Cairo, 1938), pl. 74); Baer, Rank and Title, 61 [73A]; Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 63 [16].
175 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 218-219.
176 Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, pt. II, pl. 17.
177 Baer, Rank and Title, 56, 288 [32]; Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 280.
178 Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, pt. II, pls. 9 (Djau), 17 (Hemre: Izi); H.G. Fischer, Inscriptions from the
Coptite Nome, Dyns. VI-XI, AnOr 40 (Rome, 1964), pls. 11, 12; Fischer, Dendera, pl. 8; M. Saleh, Three Old-
Kingdom Tombs at Thebes (Mainz am Rhein, 1977), pls. 6 (1) (TT 413, Unis-ankh), 8 (TT 405, Khenty); W.K.
Simpson, Mastabas of the Western Cemetery, Part 1 (Boston, 1980), fig. 17 (G 2001, Tjetju); Kanawati, Cemetery of
Akhmim 2, fig. 24 (Shepses-pu-min/Kheni-ankhu).
179 Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen) im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1298-1808, pt. 2, pl. 83 (CG
1618, Abydos, Semen’s son Kha); Simpson, Mastabas, fig. 21 (G 2001, Tjetu).
180 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 89-92.
181 The sources for Figure 3 follow: (a) P. Kaplony, ‘Eine neue Weisheitslehre aus dem Alten Reiche (Die Lehre des MTTj
in der altägyptischen Weisheitsliteratur)’, Orientalia 37 (1968), pl. 3 (3), with the generous permission of the author;
(b) N. Kanawati and M. Abder-Raziq, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara, vol. 6: The Tomb of Nikauisesi, The Australia
Centre for Egyptology: Reports 14 (Warminster, 2000), pls. 4-5, 43-44, with the kind consent of the author; (c)
W.M.F. Petrie, Dendereh (with extra plates), EEF 17 (London, 1900), pls. 7-7A.
182 Kanawati and Abder-Raziq, The Tomb of Nikauisesi, 17-23.
183 Firth and Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries, pl. 64.
184 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 111-112.
185 Ibid., 89-93.
186 For the date, see Fischer, Dendera, 119-128.
187 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 264.
188 Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de Pepi II, vol. 3, pl. 54. I take the front panel to represent the end of the linen sheet
which forms the kilt, folded back and tucked in. It is possible that the panel was starched, but I do not think it
formed a separate ‘apron.’

125
Brovarski

189 The sources for Figure 4 are as follows: (a) Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de Pepi II, vol. 3, pl. 54; (b) Borchardt,
Statuen und Statuetten von Königen und Privatleuten im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1-1294, Part 1, pl. 49 (CG 236]) (c)
Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, fig. 114 (MFA 98.1034); (d) Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 486-506, fig. 120.
190 See P. Bochi, ‘Of Lines, Linen, and Language: A Study of a Patterned Textile and Its Interweaving with Egyptian
Beliefs’, CdÉ 71(1996), 223-224.
191 H. Schäfer, Principles of Egyptian Art, Ed. by Emma Brunner-Traut; trans. and ed. by John Baines (Oxford 1974),
72.
192 Borchardt, Statuen und Statuetten von Königen und Privatleuten im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1-1294, Part 1, pl. 49
[CG 236].
193 See Bochi, CdÉ 71, 229.
194 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 176, 253, 279.
195 Baer, Rank and Title, 84, 291 [212, 213].
196 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 280.
197 El-Khouli and Kanawati, Quseir el-Amarna, 26.
198 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s,259
199 Ibid.
200 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 280.
201 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 1994: 260, n. 6.
202 Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir 5, pl. 31.
203 Kanawati, Cemetery of Akhmim 2, fig. 21.
204 Ibid., fig. 23.
205 Ibid., figs. 4, 23.
206 Ibid., fig. 9. The earliest occurrence of the omission of the falcon in the emblem of the west in the superstructure of a
tomb is probably in the offering niche of Meryre-nefer: Qar at Edfu in the first part of Pepy II’s reign; see Brovarski,
‘Abydos in the Old Kingdom’, 37-38. The niche in question is now published by M. El-Khadragy, ‘The Edfu Offering
Niche of Qar in the Cairo Museum,’ SAK 30 (2002), 203-228.
207 Kanawati, Cemetery of Akhmim 2, 11-14; Cf. Kanawati, Akhmim, 127ff.
208 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 281.
209 E. Brovarski, ‘Akhmim in the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period’, in Mélanges Gamal Eddin Mokhtar, vol.
1 (Cairo, 1985), 134-135.
210 Kanawati, Akhmim, 132-133. Note that Harpur (Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 29) draws attention to a number of
features shared between the tombs of Ibi and Djau at Deir el-Gebrawi, on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
the tombs of Kahep: Tjeti and Kheni-ankhu. It is uncertain without further analysis if these similarities are sufficient
to establish the contemporaneity of the four tombs.
211 Ibid., 30.
212 For a discussion of carrying chair scenes in the Old Kingdom, see J. Vandier, Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, 4:
Bas-reliefs et peintures; scènes de la vie quotidienne (Paris, 1964), 328-351.
213 Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 366, 399-408.
214 Ibid., 486-506. The kilts of the HmSZ-statues of the Twelfth Dynasty Overseer of Seal-bearers Nakhti from Asyut
illustrated in Chassinat and Palanque, Une campagne de fouilles, pls. 6-7, 11 (1, 2), 12 (3) do not appear to bear the
pattern of alternating single and double lines.
215 Bochi, CdÉ 71, 232-238.
216 Ziegler, Catalogue, cat. no. 20.
217 Kaplony, Grab des Methethi.
218 Ibid., 7 and n. 2; Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 248.
219 Ibid., 228.

126
The Date of Metjetji

220 Ibid., 249.

221 For the technique of Metjetji’s paintings, see Ziegler, Catalogue, 123.
222 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s’, 249.
223 Z. Hawass, Secrets from the Sand: My Search for Egypt’s Past (New York, 2003), 69-76.
224 Ibid., 69.
225 Ibid., photographs on pp. 70-72. I would like to express my appreciation to Prof.-Dr. Hawass for allowing me to
visit the tomb and to refer to the unpublished scenes.
226 Hawass, Secrets from the Sand, 76 and photographs on pp. 74-75.
227 N. Kanawati and M. Abder-Raziq, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara, vol. 7, 11-29, pls. 1-2a, 35-41.
228 Ibid., pl. 35. However, Quibell and Hayter report the remains of paintings on the north wall of the first room show-
ing a large figure of the owner holding staff and scepter with a smaller figure of his wife before him; see N. Kanawati
and M. Abder-Raziq, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara, vol. 7: The Tombs of Shepsipuptah, Mereri (Merinebti), Hefi and
Others, The Australia Centre for Egyptology: Reports 17 (Warminster, 2001), 20. It is thus possible that all four
rooms bore paintings on their walls originally.
229 Ibid., 20.
230 Ibid., 21-22, pls. 4, 5a, and 38-39. For other tombs with painted walls and limestone false doors, see, e.g., A. Mari-
ette, Les mastabas de l’Ancien Empire. Edited by G. Maspero (Paris, 1882-1889), 405; Firth and Gunn, Teti Pyramid
Cemeteries, 157-164, pls. 62-63; S. Hassan, Excavations at Giza, vol. 6, pt. 3: 1934-1935 (Cairo, 1950), 201-206,
figs. 201-203; N. Kanawati et al., Excavations at Saqqara North-west of Teti’s Pyramid, vol. I (Sydney, 1984), 30-31,
pls. 16-19.
231 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 107.
232 E. Brovarski, The Senedjemib Complex, Part 1: The Mastabas of Senedjemib Inti (G 2370), Khnumenti (G 2374), and
Senedjemib Mehi (G 2378) (Boston, 2001), 18.
233 E. Brunner-Traut, ‘Zur Tübinger Mastaba Seschemnofers III’, MDAIK 15 (1957), 18-32.
234 E.g. F. von Bissing, Die Mastaba des Gem-ni-kai 2 (Leipzig, 1911), pls. 20-21, 27, 32; Sakkarah Expedition, The
Mastaba of Mereruka, pl. 57. See also Lloyd et al., Saqqâra Tombs 2, pl. 9, probably from the first half of the reign of
Pepy I, and Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir 5, pls. 34, 36, from the first half of the reign of Pepy II; for the dates,
see Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 274, 280.
235 N. Kanawati and M. Abder-Raziq, Mereuka and his Family, Part 1: The Tomb of Meriteti, The Australian Centre for
Egyptology: Reports 21 (Oxford, 2004), pls. 49, 50.
236 C.F. Nims, ‘Some Notes on the Family of Mereruka’, JAOS 58 (1938), 638-647; Baer, Rank and Title, 80-81 [189];
Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 97 (63); Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 274.
237 Altenmüller, Die Wanddarstellungen, pls. 82, 88, 91; Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 77 (33); Harpur, Decoration
in Egyptian Tombs, 274; Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 82.
238 Altenmüller, Die Wanddarstellungen, pl. 97; Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 153 (149); Brovarski, ‘False doors &
history’, 84.
239 Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi, pt. I, pl. 19.
240 A. Blackman and M. Apted, The Rock Tombs of Meir 5, ASE 28 (London, 1953), pl. 34.
241 Simpson, Mastabas, figs. 23, 24; Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 91.
242 Drioton and Lauer, ASAE 55, pl. 4.
243 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 273. Ishtji: Tjetji has an HaSS-statue with a pattern of alternating single and
double diagonal lines (Drioton and Lauer, ASAE 55, pl. 14) similar to that worn by Ni-ankh-pepy: Hepi the Black
and Tjeteti in statuary (see above) or Unis-ha-ishetef and Men-ankh-pepy: Meni in relief (see Excursus B). Ishtji’s
false door has the supplemental frame discussed in note 141 above. Again, there is nothing in his inscriptions (Dri-
oton and Lauer, ASAE 55, 207-214, pls. 4-6a) that would suggest a date later than the end of the Old Kingdom; cf.
p. 92 above. The ideographic offering list in one of his reliefs includes five birds’ heads, a feature discussed on p. 89

127
Brovarski

above.
244 G. Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II. Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 11 (Cairo, 1929), figs.
115, 116.
245 E. Brovarski, ‘The Late Old Kingdom at South Saqqara’, in L. Pantalacci and C. Berger-El-Naggar (eds.), Des
Néferkarê aux Montouhotep: Travaux archéologiques en cours sur la fin de la VI e dynastie at la Première Période Inter-
médiaire, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 40 (Lyon, 2005),13-17.
246 It should be noted that the flopping birds also appear in Dynasty XII (A. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir 1, ASE
22 (London, 1914), pl. 9; idem, The Rock Tombs of Meir 2, ASE 23 (London, 1915), pls. 2, 6; idem, The Rock Tombs
of Meir 3, ASE 24 ( London, 1915), pl. 27). At this time it is a question of a single offering bearer involved in a rite,
not a file of offering bearers. I know of no examples in the intervening period, however.
247 E.g., Sakkarah Expedition, The Mastaba of Mereruka, pl. 62; James, The Mastaba of Khentika, pl. 29; Kanawati and
Abder-Raziq, The Unas Cemetery, pl. 52 a; S.A. El-Fikey, The Tomb of the Vizier RĒ-wer at Saqqara. Egyptology
Today 4 (Warminster,1980), pl. 4.
248 Kneeling men appear to either side of the false doors in the tombs of Neferseshemre: Sheshi and Wernu, Kanawati
and Abder-Raziq, Neferseshemre and Seankhuiptah, pl. 58; Davies et al., Saqqâra Tombs, vol. 1, pl. 26. For the date of
Neferseshemre, early in the reign of Teti, see recently, Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 72. On Wernu, see above.
249 Macramallah, Le Mastaba d’Idout, pl. 16. The superposed registers to the other side of the false door contain boxes
of cloth and two offering bearers in the lowest register.
250 Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen) im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1298-1808, pt. 2, pl. 109.
251 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 279.
252 Kanawati, The Tomb of Inumin, pl. 51. For the date, see Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 79-80.
253 K. Mysliwiec, ‘Fefi and Temi: Posthumous Neighbors (Sixth Dynasty, Saqqara)’, in K. Daoud, S. Bedier, and S.
Abd el-Fattah (eds.), Studies in Honor of Ali Radwan, vol. 2, Supplément aux Annales du Service des Antiquités de
l’Égypte, Cahier No. 34 (Cairo, 2005), 201, fig. 5.
254 Ibid., 197.
255 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 89-92.
256 Mysliwiec, ‘Fefi and Temi’, fig. 4.
257 Ibid., figs. 4-5.
258 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 114-116.
259 Other features which suggest a date in the later Sixth Dynasty are the inclusion of family members on the jambs
of one false door (Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 105) and figures of the deceased on another false door with a
scepter over one shoulder (ibid., 101-104). For these features, see Mysliwiec, ‘Fefi and Temi’, fig. 4.
260 Ibid., 198-202, figs. 4-5, 7-9.
261 Kaplony, Grab des Methethi, no. 9.
262 von Bissing, Gem-ni-kai 2, pl. 35; Sakkarah Expedition, The Mastaba of Mereruka, pl. 62.
263 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 154 (151); Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 276.
264 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 100 (68); Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 274.
265 Kanawati and Abder-Raziq, The Tomb of Hesi, pl. 57.
266 Kanawati, Conspiracies, 15-16.
267 Firth and Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries, 274-277, 282-285; R.E. Freed, ‘Observations on the Dating and Decora-
tions of the Tombs of Ihy and Hetep at Saqqara,’ in M. Bárta and J. Krejcí (eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year
2000 (Prague, 2001), 207-214; D. P. Silverman, ‘ Middle Kingdom Tombs in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery,’ in Bárta
and J. Krejcí (eds.), ibid., 259-282.
268 M. Valoggia, Balat I: le mastaba de Modou-nefer, FIFAO 31 ( Cairo, 1986), 74-78, pls. 62-63.
269 Ibid., 78, 80, 81.
270 Ibid., 167-170. H. Goedicke, ‘The Pepi II Decree from Dakhleh’, BIFAO 89 (1989), 204, 210-211, has restored the

128
The Date of Metjetji

name of the recipient of the Pepy II decree, found by a French expedition at Dakhleh Oasis, as Medunefer. Given
the limited space available, it is difficult to see how the longer names of the other known governors of Dakhla Oasis
could fit into the lacuna. On the other hand, Pantalacci, in G. Soukiassian et al., Balat VI: Le palais des gouverneurs
de l’époque de Pépy II: Les sanctuaires de ka et leurs dépendances, FIFAO 46 (Cairo, 2002), 313, notes that the left
edge of the stone, where the name of the addressee would have appeared, had been cut down to fit the stone into a
new emplacement. By implication, the addressee could have had a longer name.
271 A. De Buck, The Egyptian Coffin Texts, vol. 6, OIP 87 ( Chicago,1956), 37-45, 134, 137-141, and 208-209, 228-229;
The Egyptian Coffin Texts, vol. 7, OIP 81 (Chicago, 1961), 144-251.
272 A. Roccati, La literature historique sous l’Ancien Empire égyptien, Littératures anciennes du Proche Orient (Paris, 1982),
18; A. Roccati, ‘Magia e Litteratura nell’Egitto del II Millenio A.C.,’ in, Mélanges Adolphe Gutbub, (Montpellier,
1984), 208, n. 3.
273 A. H. Gardiner, ‘A Hieratic Papyrus’, BMQ 8, no. 2 (1933), 73-74.
274 D. Bidoli, Die Sprüche der Fangnetzen in den altägyptischen Sargtexten, Deutchen Archäologischen Instituts Kairo,
Ägyptologische Reihe, vol. 9 (Glückstadt, 1976), 25.
275 H. Goedicke, Old Hieratic Paleography (Baltimore, 1988), xxi.
276 Valloggia, Balat I, 75, fig. 10.
277 Ibid., 75-76.
278 Ibid., 75.
279 With the exception of the first compartment of Sign List A 1, which is from ibid., fig. 10, all the signs in the chart are
after Goedicke, Old Hieratic Paleography. I would like to thank both authors for graciously allowing me to mechani-
cally reproduce the signs from their volumes. I would also like to express my appreciation to Dr. Jennifer Houser
Wegner for formatting the figure on my behalf.
280 Goedicke, Old Hieratic Paleography, xvi, xviii.
281 Ibid., xviii.
282 Ibid., xviii-xi.
283 Ibid., xix.
284 It should be noted that E. Edel (Die Felsengräber der Qubbet el Hawa bei Assuan, Abteilung II, Band I, Teil 2 (Wies-
baden, 1970), 117) dated pBerlin 8869, a letter from the Elephantine archive to the Eighth Dynasty.
285 Goedicke, Old Hieratic Paleography, xix-xx.
286 P. Munro, ‘Der Unas-Friedhof Nord-West: 4. Vorbericht über die Arbeiten der Gruppe Berlin/ Hannover in Saqqara’, GM
59 (1982), 77-110. The architrave and entrance to the inner chapel are drawn in ibid., 100, and in Fischer, MMJ
11, 82, fig. 1.
287 U. Hölscher and P. Munro, ‘Das Unas-Friedhof in Saqqara: 2. Vorbericht über die Arbeiten der Gruppe Hannover
im Frühjahr 1974’, SAK 3 (1975), 121-123, and again by Munro, SAK 10, 283-295, and Munro, GM 59, 77-93.
288 Munro, ‘Bemerkungen zur Datierung MTTj’s, 257, n. 41.
289 H. G. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I: Varia ( New York, 1976), 81.
290 See W.S. Smith, A History of Egyptian Sculpture and Painting in the Old Kingdom, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1949), 208, for
this type of relief. See the photograph of a section of the architrave in Saad, ASAE 40, 686, fig. 74.
291 Hölscher and Munro, SAK 3, 115-120.
292 See especially Munro, SAK 10, 283-295.
293 For the chapel, see above note 267 as well as Freed, ‘Observations on the dating and decoration of the tombs of Ihy
and Hetep’, pls. 25, 31, 33, 35, 36; J. Malek, ‘Old-Kingdom rulers as ‘local saints’ in the Memphite area during the
Middle Kingdom’, in M. Bárta and J. Krejcí (eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2000 (Prague, 2000), pl. 39; D.
P. Silverman, ‘Middle Kingdom Tombs in the Teti pyramid cemetery’, pl. 40c, 42a-e.
294 Munro, GM 59, 91.
295 Freed, ‘Freed, ‘Observations on the dating and decoration’, 212; Silverman, ‘Middle Kingdom Tombs’, 268; E. Bro-

129
Brovarski

varski, ‘False Doors and History’, 400-403.

296 Munro, GM 59, 92.
297 See Fischer, JARCE 1, 17, no. 80, and H. G. Fischer, ‘A Scribe of the Army in a Saqqara Mastaba of the early Fifth
Dynasty’, JNES 18 (1959), 239, n. 16.
298 See J. Champollion, The World of the Egyptians, trans., Joel Rosenthal (Geneva, 1971), 103; Munro, GM 59, fig. on
p. 100.
299 See Fischer, JARCE 1, 17 and n. 80.
300 The sources for Figure 6 are the following; (a) Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II, fig. 124
(Dersenedj); (b) G. Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de Pepi II, vol. 2: le temple (Cairo, 1938), pl. 108 (Pepy II); (c)
relief of Unis-ha-ishetef, after a photograph taken in 1978 ; (d) Brovarski, ‘A Second Style in Egyptian Relief ’, fig.
4b (Nefer I; Idu).
301 To the examples cited by Fischer, JNES 18, 239, n. 16 (De Morgan, Fouilles à Dahchour, 20-21 [9, 10] [CG 511-
512], pl. 3; p. 21 [17-19] [CG 505, 514, 516], pl. 4, statues of Shepy; cf. Porter and Moss, Topographical Bibli-
ography, vol. 3: 893; CG 221 [see E. Brovarski, ‘Akhmim in the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period’,
in Mélanges Gamal Eddin Mokhtar, vol. 1 (Cairo, 1985), 127-128], 224, 226, 232), the following may be added:
G. Steindorff, Catalogue of the Egyptian Sculpture in the Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, MD, 1946), 33-34 (WAG
22.22, 22.25), pl. 16 (nos. 71, 73); Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II, 105, pl. 13 (upper
left) p. 109, pl. 13 [lower left] (Musée d’Ethnographie, Neuchatel, Eg. 402, 403); statues of Tjeteti, B. Peterson,
‘Finds from the Theteti Tomb at Saqqara’, Bulletin of the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities 20
(1985), 3-24, nos. 2 (MFA 24.607), 3 (MFA 24.608), 5 (Neuchatel Eg. 328), 7 (MMA 26.2.8), 8 (MMA 26.2.9),
15-16 (location unknown). Several such statues from Naga-ed-Deir (Harvey, Wooden Statues, cat. nos. A 108-114,
116) are now in Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley, from N 43). There is also
an unpublished occurrence from Giza (MFA 35-11-13, from G 2347A). These statues are stylistically very similar,
although variations are apparent. On Tjeteti’s monuments and date, see above, n. 141.
302 Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II, figs. 97 (Bau), 108 (Iti), 124 (Dersenedj); pl. 15 (Khred-
ni).
303 Ibid., figs. 128 (Hebai), 129 (Weneni, father of Khredni); G. Jéquier, La Pyramide d’Oudjebten, Excavations at
Saqqara, vol. 10 ( Cairo, 1928), fig. 34 (Khubau). On the model mastaba of Weneni, both the owner and his son,
Khredni, who is presumably identical with the owner of the relief mentioned in the previous note, raise their arms
in the gesture of praise or adoration discussed above, p. 92. This suggests that all the model mastabas are at least as
late as the second half of the reign of Pepy II, including Khubau’s
304 N. Kanawati and A. Hassan, The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara, vol. 1: The Tombs of Nedjet-em-pet, Ka-aper and Others,
The Australia Centre for Egyptology: Reports 8 (Sydney, 1996), pl. 56 a-c.
305 See H. G. Fischer, ‘Four Provincial Administrators at the Memphite Cemeteries,’ JAOS 74 (1954), 32-33; Brovar-
ski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 137-138.
306 See ibid., 125-134, and below, for Khubau’s predecessor Gegi. Kanawati, Akhmim, 84-86, assigns Gegi and Khu-
bau to the late reign of Pepy I. However, Gegi’s false door (CG 1455: Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches, pl.
35) has the supplementary frame discussed in n. 141. Not only was Khubau’s ‘stèle-maison’ found in the cemetery
surrounding the pyramid of Pepy II at South Saqqara, but stylistically his burial chamber belongs to the last years
of the Sixth or to the Seventh Dynasty; see Brovarski, ‘The Late Old Kingdom’, 43-47.
307 CG 1550, 1551: Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen) im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1298-1808,
pt. 2, 8-9, pls. 56-57.
308 In CG 1551, an elderly figure of the owner wears the patterned kilt illustrated in Figure7c. A younger figure of the
owner in CG 1550 wears a kilt of a pattern similar to that worn by a figure in a stela of late Old Kingdom date from
Abydos; see Brovarski, JNES 32, fig. 6.
309 Published in Sotheby’s, The Breitbart Collection (Sale Catalogue, New York, Sotheby, June 20, 1990), no. 11. The

130
The Date of Metjetji

owner is wab aA PtH, a title discussed by H. G. Fischer, ‘ A Group of Sixth Dynasty Titles relating to Ptah and Sokar,’
JARCE 3 (1964), 128 (6).
310 W. K. Simpson, Inscribed Material from the Pennsylvania Excavations at Abydos, PPYE 6 (New Haven and Philadel-
phia, 1995), 5-7, fig. 4, pl. 3 A, B.
311 See ibid., 7. The false door is CG 1573 and is published in Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches, 51-52, pl. 75.
Pepynakht makes the gesture of praise or adoration on both the false door and side panel; see above, p. 92.
312 Baer, Rank and Title, 71, 289 [135])
313 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 303.
314 N. Kanawati, Governmental Reforms in Old Kingdom Egypt ( Warminster, 1980), 89-90.
315 Brovarski, ‘False doors & history’, 115-116.
316 CG 1615: Fischer, JARCE 1, fig. 3, pl. 2, pp. 10, 17-18.
317 Louvre C 161: Brovarski, ‘Abydos in the Old Kingdom’, 34-39, fig. 2.7= Ziegler, Catalogue, cat. no. 5.
318 See F. von Bissing, ‘Les tombeaux d’Assouan’, ASAE 15 (1915), 3. As far as I know, no photograph or drawing of
the relief has been published. The photograph of the relief illustrated here was taken in 1992.
319 Baer, Rank and Title, 57, 288 [39]; Kanawati, Governmental Reforms, 88; Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 282.
Fischer, Dendera, 82, and F. Gomaa, Ägypten während der Ersten Zwischenzeit, TAVO 27 (Weisbaden, 1980) 11, are
less specific about the point in Pepy II’s reign when Sabni I lived.
320 Again I know of no published photograph of the relief. The one I have was taken at the same time as that mentioned
in n. 107.
321 Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 984, n. 71, and Chart 1.
322 J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1905-1906) (Cairo, 1907), 20-22, pl. 14.
323 Ibid., pl. 13.
324 For the date of the false doors from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara, see K. A. Daoud, Corpus of Inscriptions
of the Herakleopolitan Period from the Memphite Necropolis, BAR International Series 1459 (Oxford, 2005) and
Brovarski, ‘False Doors and History’.
325 See Kanawati, Akhmim, 85-86.
326 Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, pl. 20.
327 Baer, Rank and Title, 66.
328 Firth and Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries, pl. 61.
329 CG 1573: Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen) im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1298-1808, pt. 2,
pl. 75.
330 Brovarski, ‘A Second Style in Egyptian Relief ’, 70-75.
331 For Gegi and Khubau, see note 306. So also the false door of Sebekemkhent/Sebeky (J.-P. Lauer, ‘Fouilles et travaux
divers effectués à Saqqarah de Novembre 1951 à Juin 1952’, ASAE 53 (1956), pl. 3), who was sHD Hmw-nTr Mn-
anx-NfrkAra (Drioton and Lauer, ASAE 55, 241).
332 G. Jéquier, Les pyramides des reines Neit et Apouit. Excavations at Saqqarah, vol. 12 (Cairo,1933), fig. 31, p. 53.
333 See Brovarski, ‘False Doors and History’. It should be mentioned that a single example of a T-shaped panel in which
the joint between the vertical and horizontal sides of the T form a right angle appears among the false doors of Dy-
nasty X date from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery at Saqqara; see Firth and Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries, pl. 71 [1].
334 See Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 255, n. 314. For the date of Meketre, see Do. Arnold, ‘Amenemhat I and the Early
Twelfth Dynasty at Thebes’, MMJ 26 (1991), 21-32; J.P. Allen, ‘The Coffin Fragments of Meketra’, MMJ 26 (1991),
39-40; idem, ‘Some Theban Officials of the Early Middle Kingdom’, in Peter der Manuelian (ed.), Studies in Honor
of William Kelly Simpson, vol. 1. ( Boston, 1996), 1-26.
335 Lauer, ASAE 53, pl. 3.
336 Drioton and Lauer, ASAE 55, pl. 24a.
337 Ibid., 238, 240, 241.

131
Brovarski

338 Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen) im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1298-1808, pt. 2, 45, pl.
72; T. Säve-Söderberg, The Old Kingdom Cemetery at Hamra Dom (El-Qasr was Es-Saiyad) (Stockholm, 1994), pl.
41 (Tjauti); Blackman and Apted, Meir 5, pl. 7 (Niankhpepy: Hepi the Black); Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el
Gebrâwi, pt. II, pl. 7 (Djau); G. Jéquier, ‘Tombeaux de particuliers de l’époch de Pepi II,’ ASAE 35 (1935), 156;
CG 1572; G. Maspero, Trois années de fouille dans les tombeaux de Thèbes et de Memphis. MIFAO 2 ( Paris, 1885),
196, pl. 6; Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II, fig. 41; G. Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de
Pepi II, vol. 3: les approches du temple ( Cairo, 1940), fig. 60 (Nihebsed-neferkare).
339 Petrie, Dendereh, pl. 3; for the date, see below. The same writing occurs again in early Dynasty XI at Thebes; see J.J.
Clère and J. Textes de la Première Période Intermédiaire et de la Xième Dynastie (Brussels, 1948), § 19, 20.
340 Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 257-259 and nn. 319, 320; E. Brovarski, ‘A Coffin from Farshût in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston,’ in L. Lesko (ed.), Ancient Egyptian and Mediterranean Studies in Memory of William A. Ward (Provi-
dence, R.I., 1998), 47-49.
341 Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 259-260 and n. 321.
342 G. Roeder, Les temples submergés de la Nubie, vol. 1: Debod bis Bab Kalabsche (Cairo, 1911), pl. 109a; see Brovarski,
Naga-ed-Dêr, 20, n. 19.
343 A.-F. El-Sabbahy, ‘Blocks from the Tomb of Shed-abed at Saqqara’, JEA 79 (1993), 243-8, fig. 1 [2, 3].
344 Ibid., fig. 2.
345 Fischer, Dendera, 78ff.
346 Brovarski, ‘False Doors and History’, pl. 1, fig. 1.
347 M. Mostafa (‘The Autobiography ‘A’ and a Related Text (Block 52) from the Tomb of Shemai at Kom el-Koffar/
Qift’, in K. Daoud, S. Bedier, S. el-Fatah (eds.), Studies in Honor of Ali Radwan, vol. 2 Supplément aux Annales
du Service des antiquités de l’Égypte, Cahier 34 (Cairo, 2005), 173-174 suggests that a damaged cartouche in au-
tobiographical text A from the tomb of Shemai at Kom el-Kuffar is to be restored as Nfr-[ir]-kA-ra. If the suggested
restoration is correct, as seems probable from the arrangement of the signs in the cartouche, it is likely that Shemai
was dead by the reign of that ruler.
348 Jéquier, Le monument funéraire de Pepi II, vol. 2, pl. 108.
349 See Brovarski, ‘A Second Style in Egyptian Relief ’, fig. 4b. The drawing from which this detail was taken was made
by Dr. Peter Der Manuelian.
350 Harpur, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs, 267.
351 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 68 [22].
352 A. Moussa and H. Altenmüller, ‘Bericht über die Grabungen des ägyptische Antikendienstes im Osten der Ptahho-
tepgruppe in Saqqara im Jahre 1975’, MDAIK 36 (1980), pl. 83 b, c.
353 Ibid., pl. 83 a. A statue from the northern shaft of Ptahi’s tomb exhibits the HmSZ-gesture; see ibid., pl. 85. The
kilt lacks the pattern of Unis-ha-ishet’s and Meni’s garments (Figure 4).
354 Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 197-198.
355 Ibid., 198.
356 Ibid., 198, n. 131.
357 H.O. Lange and H. Schäfer, Grab und Denksteine des Mittleren Reiches, Part 4 (Berlin, 1902), pls. 60 [9], 61 [23],
62 (56).
358 Brovarski, ‘A Second Style in Egyptian Relief ’, 79, pl. 4e. See above, p. 101.
359 Ibid., 79, pls. 4f, 8d.
360 Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, 16.
361 W. Kaiser, Ägyptisches Museum (Berlin, 1967), cat. no. 296. For the date, see Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 706-710.
362 Saad, ASAE 40, 686, fig. 74.
363 Fischer, Dendera, 85-91.
364 MFA 98.1034: Petrie, Dendereh, pl. 2 A, br; R. Leprohon, Stelae I: The Early Dynastic Period to the Late Middle

132
The Date of Metjetji

Kingdom. Corpus Antiquitatem Aegyptiarcarum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fasc. 2 (Mainz am Rhein, 1985),
18-20. I would like to thank Dr. Rita E. Freed, John F. Cogan, Jr. and Mary L. Cornille Chair of the Department
of Art of the Ancient World, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for a photograph of the stele of Meni and permission to
include it herein.
365 Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, 82, fig. 1.
366 CG 1600: Petrie, Dendereh, pl. 2, r2t3.
367 A contemporary of Meni’s wears a long kilt with a pattern of single and double horizontal lines that divide his kilt
into much broader bands than is customary; see Fischer, Dendera, 206-209, pl. 25.
368 Jéquier, Tombeaux de particuliers de contemporains Pepi II, fig. 108; Simpson, Western Cemetery, fig. 52, pl. 61b;
Ziegler, Catalogue, cat. no. 5; R. Leprohon, ‘The Sixth Dynasty False Door of the Princess of Hathor Irti’, JARCE
31 (1994), fig. 3; Kanawati and Abder-Raziq, The Tomb of Hesi, pl. 56; A. Bolshakov, Studies on Old Kingdom Reliefs
and Sculpture in the Hermitage, ÄA 67 (Wiesbaden, 2005), fig. 10.1, pl. 30. I would like to thank Dr. Bolshakov for
permission to reproduce two details (Figure 7 a, b) from the architrave of Pepyseneb: Irnes, Hermitage 18125, and
for providing a digital file with the original drawing.
369 Ibid., fig. 10.1, pl. 30.
370 Borchardt, Denkmäler des Alten Reiches (ausser den Statuen) im Museum von Kairo Nr. 1298-1808, pt. 2, pl. 57;
Brovarski, JNES 32, fig. 6.
371 H. Frankfort, ‘The Cemeteries of Abydos: Work of the Season 1925-26’, JEA 14 (1928), pl. 20 (3).
372 Jéquier, La Pyramide d’Oudjebten, fig. 28.
373 For false doors of Tenth Dynasty date, see Daoud, Corpus of Inscriptions; Brovarski, ‘False Doors and History’.
374 Smith, Egyptian Sculpture and Painting, 208.
375 Firth and Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries, pls. 41, 54, 81-85.
376 Ibid., pls. 20 A, B; 83; 85 [6].
377 See J.C. Bennett, ‘Growth of the @tp-di-nswt Formula in the Middle Kingdom’, JEA 27 (1941), 77-78; Brovarski,
‘False Doors and History’.
378 Schenkel, Frühmittelägyptische Studien, 30-31.
379 Fischer, Dendera, 83, n. 359, and Brovarski, Naga-ed-Dêr, 251.
380 Brovarski, 'False doors and History' to 'A Second Style in Egyptian Art,' 70-75.

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