Painted Box of Kha and Merit

Real inlay of coloured stone and glass was a luxury for the nobility. On this box the inlay is only painted, panel by panel, and the box was most likely made for the funeral. The tomb held 13 chests, and five of them were probably decorated this way for the burial. Three show the same subject as this one.

Kha and Merit sit side by side and receive offerings from their son, whom the museum's record names Nakhttaneb. He seems to have been the child who kept up his parents' funerary cult, bringing food and drink to their chapel after their deaths. The same kind of scene, the couple with their children around them, was painted on a wall of that chapel. In the burial chamber the boxes carried short labels in ink, each one marked for Kha or for Merit.