Stelae

Stelae, along with false doors and busts, provided an interface for two-way communication between the living and the dead: ‘The stela was the point to which offerings could be brought and contact established between living and deceased relatives through prayers and supplications.’497 The vast majority of provenanced ancestor stelae (that is, ih ikr n stelae) to which such dedications would have been made were found in chapels and houses at Deir el-Medina. Demaree points out that the concentration of stelae at this site is a result of the specialised nature of the village, and that ‘we might well expect similar objects from other settlement areas to be of poorer quality and uninscribed.’498

The location of tomb stelae is indicative of the role that they played in the mortuary cult. For instance, many were situated in forecourts and were therefore easily accessible to visitors intending to enter the tomb or to feast or make offerings outside it. The tomb of Maya at Saqqara incorporated a small purpose-built chapel against its exterior wall that housed such a stela, which depicts Maya before Osiris as well as a lector priest performing the offering ritual before the tomb owner and his wife.499 The general importance of stelae is indicated by O. Petrie 21, which suggests that the placing of such objects in houses (and perhaps tombs) conferred ownership of the building to the person who commissioned the stela.500 A ‘monumental ostracon’ of Pakhemeset, dating to the reign of Twosret, includes an admonition against removing a stela from an unspecified place:501

Amun said when he appeared: ‘As for the vizier who sh all remove/overturn this stela from

Its place:]

He shall not be sated with miat; he shall not follow Amun in any of his festivals. ’

If the stela and statue could serve as a medium for two-way communication between the living and the dead, this suggests that when ceremonial banquets were held in the courtyard, the dead would be accessible and able to partake in them. Shafts located below or adjacent to stelae (including false doors) or statues may have provided the route by which the deceased tomb owner could be present when offerings were placed before them.502 False doors, with their central depictions of the tomb owner seated before a pile of offerings often accompanied by his spouse, show the ideal situation created by communication with the living. The stela is frequently surrounded by images of offering bearers,503 who bring sustenance in perpetuity as well as indicating the purpose of the false door as a place where offerings were to be presented.504 The close proximity of stelae to burial shafts may have aided the deceased in gaining access to offerings, or facilitated ‘coming at the voice’ in response to prt-Xrw offerings, the importance of which is summarised in the appeal to the living in Paheri’s tomb at Elkab,505 and mentioned in tombs at Amarna.506