Statue of Wennefer

In about 380 BC an army commander from Sebennytos in the Nile Delta took the throne as Nectanebo I and founded the 30th Dynasty, the last line of native Egyptian kings. In his first year he issued a decree, set up at the Greek trading port of Naukratis, that gave a tenth of the duties on goods arriving there from the Greek world to the temple of Neith at Sais. Neith was the great goddess of the western Delta, a creator and a warrior.

Wennefer lived in that reign, and the museum dates his statue to it, from 380 to 362 BC. The inscription calls him a servant of the goddess Neith, a word the museum puts in quotation marks. It probably stands for the usual Egyptian title of a priest, hem-netjer, which means literally servant of the god. He was also overseer of the antechamber, and his father's name was Djedbastetiuefankh. The French Egyptologist Ivan Guermeur has brought together the monuments that survive of him.

This one, in dark granodiorite, comes from Thebes. Wennefer kneels, his head is lost, and the hieroglyphs with his name and titles are cut into the stone in front of him.