Stela of Djedkhonsuiufankh

The man kneeling at the right of this small wooden stela earned his living as a musician. The hieroglyphs call him a singer with the harp of Amun, lord of the thrones of the Two Lands, who resides in Thebes, which places him among the musicians of the god's great temple there. His name, Djedkhonsuiufankh, is a whole sentence, meaning Khonsu says he shall live, after the moon god of Thebes. He has a shaven head, a pleated shirt and kilt, and he plays a tall harp whose top is carved as a man's head wearing the blue crown of the kings. Facing him sits the falcon-headed sun god Re-Horakhty with crook and flail, an offering table with a ewer and a flower between them, and the text above is a hymn to Re. The temple musician is shown doing for eternity what he did for a living, playing before the god. The stela belongs to the Third Intermediate Period. It reached the Louvre in 1826 with the collection of Henry Salt, the British consul-general in Egypt, and in 2017 it travelled to Louvre-Lens for an exhibition devoted to music.