NEW KINGDOM, 19TH DYNASTY, 1295-1186 B.C.

Featuring two elaborately-attired elite women wearing perfumed cones standing opposite a man with a shaved head in an elaborate kilt, all with their arms raised in the gesture of praise, this fragment once likely formed the lower part of a round-topped votive stele. Traces of an upper register are noticeable above, featuring a dais or base for either a sacred barque or a group of divinities. At some point in antiquity, the fragment was employed as a pivot stone for a door, resulting in the deep hole at the center of the inscription. Enough remains, however, to reveal a text of praise addressed to Osiris: “Giving adoration to [Osiris, kissing the ground to (?)] Wenen-nefru, that he may give ‘following the god’…his…at the head of the lake in his boat, for the Ka of the master of…Pa-wer. Justified.” The mention of the boat of the god may well imply that the upper portion of the stele represented Osiris in a divine barque, perhaps resting on a stand.